Skip to main content
Psalmlog Logo

1 Corinthians 2

Paul centers his preaching on Christ crucified and explains why knowing God’s wisdom depends on God’s Spirit.

Paul recalls coming to the Corinthian believers with fear and trembling, preaching Jesus Christ crucified. He explains that their faith rests on God’s power, then describes the wisdom God had hidden and has now revealed through the Spirit. The rulers who crucified Jesus failed to recognize that wisdom. Paul goes on to explain how the Spirit knows God’s thoughts and enables people to receive what God has given.

sermon or Bible study notesdoubtleadership weight
Read
1When I came to you, brothers, I didn’t come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
2For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
3I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.
4My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
6We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown, yet a wisdom not of this world nor of the rulers of this world who are coming to nothing.
7But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory,
8which none of the rulers of this world has known. For had they known it, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory.
9But as it is written, “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him.”
10But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.
11For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except God’s Spirit.
12But we received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.
13We also speak these things, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.
14Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him; and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15But he who is spiritual discerns all things, and he himself is to be judged by no one.
16“For who has known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct him?” But we have Christ’s mind.
World English BibleRead in NIV in Psalmlog →Highlighted verses are the most connected.
Key verses
1 Corinthians 2:9This verse describes what human perception cannot discover, preparing for Paul’s claim that God has revealed it through the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:7God’s hidden wisdom precedes the world’s rulers and their judgments, placing the crucifixion within God’s purpose for his people.
1 Corinthians 2:14Paul explains why the message meets rejection: receiving the things of God requires discernment supplied by God’s Spirit.
Where this chapter reaches

Paul draws on Isaiah’s language about what human eyes have never seen and who can know the Lord’s mind, linking revelation with God’s unmatched wisdom. Romans and Ephesians share this chapter’s themes of the Spirit’s work and God’s wisdom beyond human discovery.

1 Corinthians 2's chapter linksAll strongest linksHover or tap a book
Notice

After reading the whole chapter

How does Paul’s account of fear and trembling shape your expectations of someone who speaks about Christ?

Write on this

What does this chapter lead you to ask God for as you seek to understand Christ crucified?

Write on this

Questions people ask about 1 Corinthians 2

Is 1 Corinthians 2:9 talking about heaven?

Verse 9 describes what God has prepared for those who love him. The next verse says God has revealed these things through the Spirit. In context, Paul is explaining God’s once-hidden wisdom centered on Christ crucified. Treating the verse as a description of heaven alone misses that immediate connection.

What does the natural man mean in 1 Corinthians 2:14?

The phrase describes a person who does not receive the things of God’s Spirit and regards them as foolishness. Paul locates the barrier in the need for discernment through the Spirit. His contrast concerns how people receive God’s wisdom; it does not rank people by intelligence or education.

Read it. Now write it.

Start an entry on 1 Corinthians 2. Your words go beside the text, and you get one next step for the week.

1 Corinthians · 16 chapters
12345678910111213141516
What the Bible says about doubt →

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).