17For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
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From the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.
And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: …
Commentary
Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary on the Bible (1710)
(vv. 17-31)We have here, I. The manner in which Paul preached the gospel, and the cross of Christ: Not with the wisdom of words (1 Cor. 1:17), the enticing words of man’s wisdom (1 Cor. 2:4), the flourish of oratory, or the accuracies of philosophical language, upon which the Greeks so much prided themselves, and which seem to have been the peculiar recommendations of some of the heads of the faction in this…
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