12. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”
13. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
14. I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,
15. so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.
16. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)
17. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
18. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21. For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.