Chapter 1

1Paul, called by God’s will to be an apostle—a commissioned representative—of Jesus the Messiah, and our fellow believer Sosthenes.

2To God’s community in Corinth: to those made holy through union with Jesus the Messiah and called to be God’s holy people, together with everyone everywhere who calls on our Lord Jesus the Messiah, who is their Lord and ours.

3May generous favor and peace come to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus the Messiah.

4I always thank my God for you because of the generous favor God has given you through Jesus the Messiah.

5Through him, God has made you rich in every way—in all speech and all knowledge.

6This confirms how firmly the message about the Messiah has taken hold among you.

7As a result, you do not lack any gift from God while you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus the Messiah to be revealed.

8He will also keep you firm to the end, free from accusation on the day our Lord Jesus the Messiah comes.

9God is faithful. He called you to share life with his Son, Jesus the Messiah, our Lord.

10Brothers and sisters, I urge you in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah to agree with one another and allow no divisions among you. Instead, be joined together in the same understanding and purpose.

11My brothers and sisters, people associated with Chloe have told me that there are quarrels among you.

12This is what I mean: each of you says something different—“I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas, also called Peter,” or “I follow the Messiah.”

13Has the Messiah been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into Paul’s name, marking you as belonging to him?

14I am thankful that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius.

15So no one can say that you were baptized into my name.

16I also baptized the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.

17The Messiah did not send me to baptize but to announce the good news. I was not to use clever rhetoric, so that such speech would not empty the Messiah’s cross of its power.

18The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are headed for destruction. But to us who are being rescued, it is God’s power.

19Scripture says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and reject the understanding of those who think they understand.”

20Where is the wise person? Where is the scholar? Where is this age’s skilled debater? Has God not shown the world’s wisdom to be foolish?

21In God’s wisdom, the world did not come to know God through its own wisdom. So God was pleased to rescue those who believe through what seemed like a foolish message being proclaimed.

22Jews demand miraculous signs, while Greeks search for wisdom.

23But we proclaim a Messiah who was crucified. To Jews, this is an offensive stumbling block; to non-Jews, it is foolishness.

24Yet to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, the Messiah is God’s power and God’s wisdom.

25What seems foolish about God is wiser than human wisdom, and what seems weak about God is stronger than human strength.

26Brothers and sisters, think about what you were when God called you. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were powerful, and not many came from important families.

27Instead, God chose those the world considers foolish to shame the wise. God chose those the world considers weak to shame the strong.

28God chose those of low status, those the world despises and treats as nobodies, to bring to nothing those it regards as somebodies.

29He did this so that no human being could boast before God.

30God is the reason you are united with Jesus the Messiah. The Messiah became wisdom from God for us: he puts us right with God, makes us holy, and sets us free.

31This fulfills what Scripture says: “If anyone boasts, let it be about the Lord.”