In this way my testimony to Christ has been confirmed in your experience,

For consider, brothers, the way God called you; that not many of you, in accordance with human standards, were wise, not many influential, not many of high birth.

These truths we are setting forth, not in words that man's wisdom teaches but in words that the Spirit teaches, in this way fitting spiritual words to spiritual truths.

The wife does not have the right to do as she pleases with her own body; the husband has his right to it. In the same way the husband does not have the right to do as he pleases with his own body; the wife has her right to it.

But I say this by way of concession, not by way of command.

However, I should like for everyone to be just as I am myself, yet each of us has his own special gift from God, one for one way, another for another.

For the unbelieving husband is consecrated by union with his wife and the unbelieving wife by union with her Christian husband, for otherwise your children would be unblessed, but in this way they are consecrated.

For the slave who has been called to union with the Lord is the Lord's freedman; in the same way the freeman who has been called is a slave of Christ.

Now if in such a way you sin against your brothers and wound their overscrupulous consciences, you are actually sinning against Christ.

I am not saying this only by way of human illustrations, am I? Does not the law say so too?

Do you not know that in a race the runners all run, but only one can get the prize? You must run in such a way that you can get the prize.

So that is the way I run, with no uncertainty as to winning. That is the way I box, not like one that punches the air.

Now all these things occurred as warnings to us, to keep us from hankering after what is evil, in the ways they did.

No temptation has taken hold of you but what is common to human nature. And God is to be trusted not to let you be tempted beyond your strength, but when temptation comes, to make a way out of it, so that you can bear up under it.

In the same way, after supper, He took the cup of wine, saying, "This cup is the new covenant ratified by my blood. Whenever you drink it, do so in memory of me."

So whoever eats the bread and drinks from the Lord's cup in an unworthy way is guilty of sinning against the Lord's body and blood.

A man, then, must examine himself, and only in this way should he eat any of the bread and drink from the cup.

But you must earnestly continue to cultivate your higher spiritual gifts. And yet I will show you a way that is better by far:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I laid aside my childish ways.

For in this way you can all, one after another, speak your prophetic message, so that all may learn and be encouraged,

Everything must always be done in a proper and orderly way.

This is the way the Scripture puts it too, "The first man Adam became a living creature." The last Adam has become a life-giving Spirit.