New Testament Plan

¹And I, brothers and sisters, could not speak to you as spiritual people, but only as fleshly, as to infants in Christ.

²I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to consume it. But even now you are not yet able,

³for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like ordinary people?

⁴For when one person says, “I am with Paul,” and another, “I am with Apollos,” are you not ordinary people?

⁵What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.

⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.

⁷So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

⁸Now the one who plants and the one who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

⁹For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

¹⁰According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each person must be careful how he builds on it.

¹¹For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

¹²Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw,

¹³each one’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each one’s work.

¹⁴If anyone’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.

¹⁵If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet only so as through fire.

¹⁶Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

¹⁷If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.

¹⁸Take care that no one deceives himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise.

¹⁹For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God. For it is written: “He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE BY THEIR CRAFTINESS”;

²⁰and again, “THE LORD KNOWS THE THOUGHTS of the wise, THAT THEY ARE useless.”

²¹So then, no one is to be boasting in people. For all things belong to you,

²²whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come; all things belong to you,

²³and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

¹This is the way any person is to regard us: as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

²In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.

³But to me it is an insignificant matter that I would be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself.

⁴For I am not aware of anything against myself; however I am not vindicated by this, but the one who examines me is the Lord.

⁵Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of human hearts; and then praise will come to each person from God.

⁶Now these things, brothers and sisters, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos on your account, so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written, so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf of one against the other.

⁷For who considers you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?

⁸You are already filled, you have already become rich, you have become kings without us; and indeed, I wish that you had become kings so that we also might reign with you!

⁹For I think, God has exhibited us, the apostles, last of all as men condemned to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to mankind.

¹⁰We are fools on account of Christ, but you are prudent in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are without honor!

¹¹Up to this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, and are poorly clothed and roughly treated and homeless;

¹²and we labor, working with our own hands; when we are verbally abused, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it;

¹³when we are slandered, we reply as friends; we have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.

¹⁴I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

¹⁵For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

¹⁶Therefore I urge you, be imitators of me.

¹⁷For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church.

¹⁸Now some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you.

¹⁹But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant, but their power.

²⁰For the kingdom of God is not in words, but in power.

²¹What do you desire? That I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness?

¹It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and sexual immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, namely, that someone has his father’s wife.

²You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.

³For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present.

⁴In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,

⁵I have decided to turn such a person over to Satan for the destruction of his body, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

⁶Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?

⁷Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.

⁸Therefore let’s celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

⁹I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people;

¹⁰I did not at all mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to leave the world.

¹¹But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person, or a greedy person, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive, or habitually drunk, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a person.

¹²For what business of mine is it to judge outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?

¹³But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE EVIL PERSON FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.