The Message of the Cross is indeed mere folly to those who are in the path to Ruin, but to us who are in the path of Salvation it is the very power of God.

We are proclaiming Christ crucified!-to the Jews an obstacle, to the Gentiles mere folly,

The merely intellectual man rejects the teaching of the Spirit of God; for to him it is mere folly; he cannot grasp it, because it is to be understood only by spiritual insight.

But I, Brothers, could not speak to you as men with spiritual insight, but only as worldly-minded-mere infants in the Faith of Christ.

Though I speak in the 'tongues' of men, or even of angels, yet have not Love, I have become mere echoing brass, or a clanging cymbal!

And when you sow, you sow not the body that will be, but a mere grain-perhaps of wheat, or something else.