For consider, brothers, what happened when God called you. Not many of you were what men call wise, not many of you were influential, not many were of high birth.

So when I came to you, brothers, I did not come and tell you the secret purpose of God in superior, philosophical language,

Yet there is a wisdom that we impart when we are with people who have a mature faith, but it is not what this world calls wisdom, nor what the authorities of this world, doomed as they are to pass away, would call so.

for you are still worldly. For when there are still jealousy and quarrels among you, are you not worldly and living on a merely human level?

For when one man says, "I am a follower of Paul," and another, "I am a follower of Apollos," are you not simply human?

we have worked with our hands for a living. When people abuse us, we bless them, when they persecute us, we put up with it,

when they slander us, we try to conciliate them. We have come to be like the scum of the earth, the dregs of the world, and we are so now.

When one of you has a disagreement with his neighbor, does he dare to bring the matter before a heathen court, instead of laying it before his Christian brothers?

Only, everyone must continue in the station which the Lord has appointed for him, and in which he was when God's call came to him. This is the rule I make in all the churches.

If a man was circumcised when he was called, he must not try to alter it. If a man was uncircumcised when he was called, he must not have himself circumcised.

If you were a slave when you were called, never mind. Even if you can gain your freedom, make the most of your present condition instead.

It is no superhuman temptation that you have had. And God can be depended on, not to let you be tried beyond your strength, but when temptation comes, to give you a way out of it, so that you can withstand it.

For, in the first place, when you meet as a congregation, I hear that you divide into sets, and in a measure I believe it.

So when you hold your meetings it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat,

A man should examine himself, and only when he has done so should he eat any of the bread or drink from the cup.

So, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that your meetings may not bring down a judgment upon you. The details I will settle when I come.

You know that when you were heathen you would stray off, as impulse directed, to idols that could not speak.

But when perfection comes, what is imperfect will pass away.

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 put aside my childish ways.

Then what is the right course, brothers? When you meet together, suppose every one of you has a song, a teaching, a revelation, an ecstatic utterance, or an explanation of one; it must all be for the good of all.

and we are found guilty of misrepresenting God, for we have testified that he raised Christ, when he did not do it, if it is true that the dead are never raised.

After that will come the end, when he will turn over the kingdom to God his Father, bringing to an end all other government, authority, and power,

for everything is to be reduced to subjection and put under Christ's feet. But when it says that everything is subject to him, he is evidently excepted who reduced it all to subjection to him.

And when everything is reduced to subjection to him, then the Son himself will also become subject to him who has reduced everything to subjection to him, so that God may be everything to everyone.

But someone will say, "How can the dead rise? What kind of a body will they have when they come back?"

and when you sow it, it has not the form it is going to have, but is a naked kernel, perhaps of wheat or something else;

And when this mortal nature puts on immortality, then what the Scripture says will come true??Death has been triumphantly destroyed.

When I come I will send whatever persons you authorize with credentials, to carry your gift to Jerusalem.

So no one is to slight him. But see him off cordially when he comes back to me, for I am expecting him with the other brothers.

As for our brother Apollos, I have often urged him to visit you with the other brothers, and he is quite unwilling to come now, but he will come when he has a good opportunity.