grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

it is the mysterious Wisdom of God that we discuss, that hidden wisdom which God decreed from all eternity for our glory.

Now we have received the Spirit ??not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that comes from God, that we may understand what God bestows upon us.

In virtue of my commission from God, I laid the foundation of the house like an expert master-builder. It remains for another to build on this foundation. Whoever he is, let him be careful how he builds.

if a man's work is burnt up, he will be a loser ??and though he will be saved himself, he will be snatched from the very flames.

So do not criticize at all; the hour of reckoning has still to come, when the Lord will come to bring dark secrets to the light and to reveal life's inner aims and motives. Then each of us will get his meed of praise from God.

I will come to you before long, if the Lord wills, and then I will find out from these puffed up creatures not what their talk but what their power amounts to.

Clean out the old dough that you may be a fresh lump. For you are free from the old leaven; Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed.

as for outsiders, God will judge them. Expel the wicked from your company.

And yet, when you have mundane issues to settle, you refer them to the judgment of men who from the point of view of the church are of no account!

Do you not know your body is the temple of the holy Spirit within you ??the Spirit you have received from God? You are not your own,

Do not withhold sexual intercourse from one another, unless you agree to do so for a time in order to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again. You must not let Satan tempt you through incontinence.

For married people these are my instructions (and they are the Lord's, not mine). A wife is not to separate from her husband ??11 if she has separated, she must either remain single or be reconciled to him ??and a husband must not put away his wife.

I have no orders from the Lord for unmarried women, but I will give you the opinion of one whom you can trust, after all the Lord's mercy to him.

I want you to be free from all anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the Lord's affairs, how best to satisfy the Lord;

But the man of firm purpose who has made up his mind, who, instead of being forced against his will, has determined to himself to keep his maid a spiritual bride ??that man will be doing the right thing.

Thus both are right alike in marrying and in refraining from marriage, but he who does not marry will be found to have done better.

(So-called gods there may be, in heaven or on earth ??as indeed there are plenty of them, both gods and 'lords' ??6 but for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all comes, and for whom we exist; one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom all exists, and by whom we exist.)

What! are we the only ones, myself and Barnabas, who are denied the right of abstaining from work for our living?

Does a soldier provide his own supplies? Does a man plant a vineyard without eating its produce? Does a shepherd get no drink from the milk of the flock?

Do you not know that as men who perform temple-rites get their food from the temple, and as attendants at the altar get their share of the sacrifices,

And my reward? This, that I can preach the gospel free of charge, that I can refrain from insisting on all my rights as a preacher of the gospel.

Why, free as I am from all, I have made myself the slave of all, to win over as many as I could.

and all drank the same supernatural drink (drinking from the supernatural Rock which accompanied them ??and that Rock was Christ),

Now this took place as a warning for us, to keep us from craving for evil as they craved.

(Man was not made from woman, woman was made from man;

(Of course, in the Lord, woman does not exist apart from man, any more than man apart from woman;

for as woman was made from man, so man is now made from woman, while both, like all things, come from God.)

I passed on to you what I received from the Lord himself, namely, that on the night he was betrayed the Lord Jesus took a loaf,

Let a man test himself; then he can eat from the loaf and drink from the cup.

I may prophesy, fathom all mysteries and secret lore, I may have such absolute faith that I can move hills from their place, but if I have no love, I count for nothing;

You challenge this rule? Pray, did God's word start from you? Are you the only people it has reached?

Now if we preach that Christ rose from the dead, how can certain individuals among you assert that 'there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead'?

If 'there is no such thing as a resurrection from the dead,' then even Christ did not rise;

But it is not so! Christ did rise from the dead, he was the first to be reaped of those who sleep in death.

For since death came by man, by man came also resurrection from the dead;

There is a splendour of the sun and a splendour of the moon and a splendour of the stars ??for one star differs from another in splendour.

Man the first is from the earth, material; Man the second is from heaven.

On the first day of the week let each of you put aside a sum from his weekly gains, so that the money may not have to be collected when I come.

Watch, stand firm in the faith, play the man, be strong!