1 Corinthians 2 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I didn't come with impressive rhetoric or philosophical arguments to tell you about what God has made known.

I made a deliberate decision to focus on one thing while I was with you: Jesus, The One — and specifically the fact that he was executed on a stake.

I showed up feeling weak, anxious, and honestly shaking with nervousness.

My message and my preaching didn't rely on clever, persuasive arguments. Instead, the Breath of God showed up with power that proved itself,

so that your trust wouldn't be built on human cleverness but on God's power.

Now, we do share a kind of wisdom — but it's for people who are growing up spiritually. It's not the kind of wisdom this current world system values, and it's not the kind the rulers of this age deal in — rulers who are already being shown to be irrelevant.

Instead, we share God's wisdom that was hidden — a secret plan he set in place before time even began, designed for our ultimate good.

None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had, they never would have executed the Lord of everything on a stake.

But as the Scriptures say: "Things no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has imagined — these are the things God has prepared for those who love him."

But God has revealed these things to us through his Breath. The Breath explores everything — even the deepest depths of God himself.

Think about it — who really knows what's going on inside a person except that person's own spirit? In the same way, nobody knows what's going on inside God except God's own Breath.

And here's the thing — we haven't received the spirit that drives this world. We've received the Breath that comes from God, so that we can actually understand the gifts God has generously given us.

And that's exactly what we talk about — not using language taught by human cleverness, but using language taught by the Breath, explaining things from God's perspective to people who have God's Breath in them.

But someone operating on purely human instincts can't receive the things that come from God's Breath. They seem like nonsense to that person, and they can't make sense of them because these things can only be evaluated through the Breath's perspective.

The person who has the Breath, though, can evaluate everything, while no one operating without the Breath can properly evaluate them.

"Who has ever understood what Yahweh is thinking? Who could possibly advise him?" But we actually share The One's way of thinking.