Romans 16

1 Be sure to welcome our friend Phoebe in the way of the Master, with all the generous hospitality we Christians are famous for. I heartily endorse both her and her work. She’s a key representative of the church at Cenchrea.2 Help her out in whatever she asks. She deserves anything you can do for her. She’s helped many a person, including me.3 Say hello to Priscilla and Aquila, who have worked hand in hand with me in serving Jesus.4 They once put their lives on the line for me. And I’m not the only one grateful to them. All the non-Jewish gatherings of believers also owe them plenty,

5 to say nothing of the church that meets in their house.
Hello to my dear friend Epenetus. He was the very first follower of Jesus in the province of Asia.6 Hello to Mary. What a worker she has turned out to be!7 Hello to my cousins Andronicus and Junias. We once shared a jail cell. They were believers in Christ before I was. Both of them are outstanding leaders.8 Hello to Ampliatus, my good friend in the family of God.9 Hello to Urbanus, our companion in Christ’s work, and my good friend Stachys.

10 Hello to Apelles, a tried-and-true veteran in following Christ.
Hello to the family of Aristobulus.

11 Hello to my cousin Herodion.
Hello to those who belong to the Lord from the family of Narcissus.

12 Hello to Tryphena and Tryphosa—such diligent women in serving the Master.
Hello to Persis, a dear friend and hard worker in Christ.13 Hello to Rufus—a good choice by the Master!—and his mother. She has also been a dear mother to me.14 Hello to Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and also to all of their families.15 Hello to Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas—and all the followers of Jesus who live with them.16 Holy embraces all around! All the churches of Christ send their warmest greetings!17 One final word of counsel, friends. Keep a sharp eye out for those who take bits and pieces of the teaching that you learned and then use them to make trouble. Give these people a wide berth.18 They have no intention of living for our Master Christ. They’re only in this for what they can get out of it, and aren’t above using pious sweet talk to dupe unsuspecting innocents.19 And so while there has never been any question about your honesty in these matters—I couldn’t be more proud of you!—I want you also to be smart, making sure every “good” thing is the real thing. Don’t be gullible in regard to smooth-talking evil. Stay alert like this,20 and before you know it the God of peace will come down on Satan with both feet, stomping him into the dirt. Enjoy the best of Jesus!21 And here are some more greetings from our end. Timothy, my partner in this work, Lucius, and my cousins Jason and Sosipater all said to tell you hello.22 I, Tertius, who wrote this letter at Paul’s dictation, send you my personal greetings.

23 Gaius, who is host here to both me and the whole church, wants to be remembered to you.
Erastus, the city treasurer, and our good friend Quartus send their greetings.25 All of our praise rises to the One who is strong enough to make you strong, exactly as preached in Jesus Christ, precisely as revealed in the mystery kept secret for so long26 but now an open book through the prophetic Scriptures. All the nations of the world can now know the truth and be brought into obedient belief, carrying out the orders of God, who got all this started, down to the very last letter.27 All our praise is focused through Jesus on this incomparably wise God! Yes!

1 Corinthians 1

1 I, Paul, have been called and sent by Jesus, the Messiah, according to God’s plan, along with my friend Sosthenes.2 I send this letter to you in God’s church at Corinth, believers cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life. I include in my greeting all who call out to Jesus, wherever they live. He’s their Master as well as ours!3 May all the gifts and benefits that come from God our Father, and the Master, Jesus Christ, be yours.4 Every time I think of you—and I think of you often!—I thank God for your lives of free and open access to God, given by Jesus.5 There’s no end to what has happened in you—it’s beyond speech, beyond knowledge.6 The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.7 Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale.8 And not only that, but God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus.

9 God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.
The Cross: The Irony of God’s Wisdom10 I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.11 I bring this up because some from Chloe’s family brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves!12 I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, “I’m on Paul’s side,” or “I’m for Apollos,” or “Peter is my man,” or “I’m in the Messiah group.”13 I ask you, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul’s name?”14 I was not involved with any of your baptisms—except for Crispus and Gaius—and on getting this report, I’m sure glad I wasn’t.15 At least no one can go around saying he was baptized in my name.16 (Come to think of it, I also baptized Stephanas’s family, but as far as I can recall, that’s it.)17 God didn’t send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn’t send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.18 The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out.

19 It’s written,
I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots.20 So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense?21 Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.22 While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom,23 we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd.24 But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.25 Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”26 Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families.27 Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses,28 chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”?29 That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God.30 Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.31 That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

1 Corinthians 2

1 You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s master stroke, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy.2 I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified.3 I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate—I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it—4 and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God’s Spirit and God’s power did it,5 which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God’s power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else.6 We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it’s not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so.7 God’s wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don’t find it lying around on the surface. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene.8 The experts of our day haven’t a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn’t have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross.

9 That’s why we have this Scripture text:
No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this,
Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.

10 But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.
The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along.11 Who ever knows what you’re thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God—except that he not only knows what he’s thinking,12 but he lets us in on it. God offers a full report on the gifts of life and salvation that he is giving us.13 We don’t have to rely on the world’s guesses and opinions. We didn’t learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we’re passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.14 The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion.15 Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics.16 Isaiah’s question, “Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?” has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.