Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?

For Christ did not think I baptized any one else. For Christ did not send me forth to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel; and that not in philosophic words, lest the Cross of Christ should be made an empty thing.

For consider your own calling, brothers, that not many wise in earthly wisdom, not many powerful, not many of noble birth, have been called.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. None who are immoral, or idolaters, or adulterers, or catamites, or sodomites,

To the rest it is I who am speaking, not the Lord. If any brother has a wife who is not a believer, if he is willing to live with her, let him not send her away.

Yet if you do not marry, you have not done wrong; and if a girl marries, she has not done wrong. Such people, however, will have trouble in worldly affairs, and I wish to spare you.

let those who weep be as though they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess,

If others share this authority over you, do not I far more? Yet I have not availed myself of it, but am patiently enduring; so that I may not in any way hinder the progress of Christ's gospel.