1 Corinthians 1:18-28

18The message about the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but it is God’s power to us who are being saved.

19Scripture says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. I will reject the intelligence of intelligent people.”

20Where is the wise person? Where is the scholar? Where is the persuasive speaker of our time? Hasn’t God turned the wisdom of the world into nonsense?

21The world with its wisdom was unable to recognize God in terms of his own wisdom. So God decided to use the nonsense of the Good News we speak to save those who believe.

22Jews ask for miraculous signs, and Greeks look for wisdom,

23but our message is that Christ was crucified. This offends Jewish people and makes no sense to people who are not Jewish.

24But to those Jews and Greeks who are called, he is Christ, God’s power and God’s wisdom.

25God’s nonsense is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

26Brothers and sisters, consider what you were when God called you to be Christians. Not many of you were wise from a human point of view. You were not in powerful positions or in the upper social classes.

27But God chose what the world considers nonsense to put wise people to shame. God chose what the world considers weak to put what is strong to shame.

28God chose what the world considers ordinary and what it despises—what it considers to be nothing—in order to destroy what it considers to be something.