Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, 1 Corinthians

Part 1

Produced by Martin Ward

Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, 1 Corinthians

Third Edition 1913

R. F. Weymouth

Book 46 1 Corinthians

001:001 Paul, called to be an Apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God--and our brother Sosthenes:

001:002 To the Church of God in Corinth, men and women consecrated in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ-- their Lord as well as ours.

001:003 May grace and peace be granted to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

001:004 I thank my God continually on your behalf for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ Jesus--

001:005 that you have been so richly blessed in Him, with readiness of speech and fulness of knowledge.

001:006 Thus my testimony as to the Christ has been confirmed in your experience,

001:007 so that there is no gift of God in which you consciously come short while patiently waiting for the reappearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,

001:008 who will also keep you stedfast to the very End, so that you will be free from reproach on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

001:009 God is ever true to His promises, and it was by Him that you were, one and all, called into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.

001:010 Now I entreat you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to cultivate a spirit of harmony--all of you--and that there be no divisions among you, but rather a perfect union through your having one mind and one judgement.

001:011 For I have been distinctly informed, my brethren, about you by Chloe's people, that there are dissensions among you.

001:012 What I mean is that each of you is a partisan. One man says "I belong to Paul;" another "I belong to Apollos;" a third "I belong to Peter;" a fourth "I belong to Christ."

001:013 Is the Christ in fragments? Is it Paul who was crucified on your behalf? Or were you baptized to be Paul's adherents?

001:014 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius--

001:015 for fear people should say that you were baptized to be my adherents.

001:016 I did, however, baptize Stephanas' household also: but I do not think that I baptized any one else.

001:017 Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the Good News; and not in merely wise words--lest the Cross of Christ should be deprived of its power.

001:018 For the Message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are on the way to perdition, but it is the power of God to those whom He is saving.

001:019 For so it stands written, "I will exhibit the nothingness of the wisdom of the wise, and the intelligence of the intelligent I will bring to nought."

001:020 Where is your wise man? Where your expounder of the Law? Where your investigator of the questions of this present age? Has not God shown the world's wisdom to be utter foolishness?

001:021 For after the world by its wisdom--as God in His wisdom had ordained-- had failed to gain the knowledge of God, God was pleased, by the apparent foolishness of the Message which we preach, to save those who accepted it.

001:022 Seeing that Jews demand miracles, and Greeks go in search of wisdom,

001:023 while we proclaim a Christ who has been crucified--to the Jews a stumbling-block, to Gentiles foolishness,

Part 2

001:024 but to those who have received the Call, whether Jews or Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

001:025 Because that which the world deems foolish in God is wiser than men's wisdom, and that which it deems feeble in God is mightier than men's might.

001:026 For consider, brethren, God's call to you. Not many who are wise with merely human wisdom, not many of position and influence, not many of noble birth have been called.

001:027 But God has chosen the things which the world regards as foolish, in order to put its wise men to shame; and God has chosen the things which the world regards as destitute of influence, in order to put its powerful things to shame;

001:028 and the things which the world regards as base, and those which it sets utterly at nought--things that have no existence-- God has chosen in order to reduce to nothing things that do exist;

001:029 to prevent any mortal man from boasting in the presence of God.

001:030 But you--and it is all God's doing--are in Christ Jesus: He has become for us a wisdom which is from God, consisting of righteousness and sanctification and deliverance;

001:031 in order that it may be as Scripture says, "He who boasts-- let his boast be in the Lord."

002:001 And as for myself, brethren, when I came to you, it was not with surpassing power of eloquence or earthly wisdom that I came, announcing to you that which God had commanded me to bear witness to.

002:002 For I determined to be utterly ignorant, when among you, of everything except of Jesus Christ, and of Him as having been crucified.

002:003 And so far as I myself was concerned, I came to you in conscious feebleness and in fear and in deep anxiety.

002:004 And my language and the Message that I proclaimed were not adorned with persuasive words of earthly wisdom, but depended upon truths which the Spirit taught and mightily carried home;

002:005 so that your trust might rest not on the wisdom of man but on the power of God.

002:006 Yet when we are among mature believers we do speak words of wisdom; a wisdom not belonging, however, to the present age nor to the leaders of the present age who are soon to pass away.

002:007 But in dealing with truths hitherto kept secret we speak of God's wisdom--that hidden wisdom which, before the world began, God pre-destined, so that it should result in glory to us;

002:008 a wisdom which not one of the leaders of the present age possesses, for if they had possessed it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.

002:009 But--to use the words of Scripture--we speak of things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, and which have never entered the heart of man: all that God has in readiness for them that love Him.

002:010 For us, however, God has drawn aside the veil through the teaching of the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, including the depths of the divine nature.

002:011 For, among human beings, who knows a man's inner thoughts except the man's own spirit within him? In the same way, also, only God's Spirit is acquainted with God's inner thoughts.

002:012 But we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which comes forth from God, that we may know the blessings that have been so freely given to us by God.

002:013 Of these we speak--not in language which man's wisdom teaches us, but in that which the Spirit teaches--adapting, as we do, spiritual words to spiritual truths.

002:014 The unspiritual man rejects the things of the Spirit of God, and cannot attain to the knowledge of them, because they are spiritually judged.

002:015 But the spiritual man judges of everything, although he is himself judged by no one.

002:016 For who has penetrated the mind of the Lord, and will instruct Him? But *we* have the mind of Christ.

003:001 And as for myself, brethren, I found it impossible to speak to you as spiritual men. It had to be as to worldlings-- mere babes in Christ.

003:002 I fed you with milk and not with solid food, since for this you were not yet strong enough. And even now you are not strong enough:

003:003 you are still unspiritual. For so long as jealousy and strife continue among you, can it be denied that you are unspiritual and are living and acting like mere men of the world?

003:004 For when some one says, "I belong to Paul," and another says, "I belong to Apollos," is not this the way men of the world speak?

Part 3

003:005 What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? They are just God's servants, through whose efforts, and as the Lord granted power to each, you accepted the faith.

003:006 I planted and Apollos watered; but it was God who was, all the time, giving the increase.

003:007 So that neither the planter nor the waterer is of any importance. God who gives the increase is all in all.

003:008 Now in aim and purpose the planter and the waterer are one; and yet each will receive his own special reward, answering to his own special work.

003:009 Apollos and I are simply fellow workers for and with God, and you are *God's* field--God's* building.

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