But the wisdom from above is pure first of all; it is also peaceful, gentle, and friendly; it is full of compassion and produces a harvest of good deeds; it is free from prejudice and hypocrisy.

But if any of you lack wisdom, you should pray to God, who will give it to you; because God gives generously and graciously to all.

Every good gift and every perfect present comes from heaven; it comes down from God, the Creator of the heavenly lights, who does not change or cause darkness by turning.

For God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its savior.

because you still live as the people of this world live. When there is jealousy among you and you quarrel with one another, doesn't this prove that you belong to this world, living by its standards?

They are going to end up in hell, because their god is their bodily desires. They are proud of what they should be ashamed of, and they think only of things that belong to this world.

But he had a friend, a very shrewd man named Jonadab, the son of David's brother Shammah.

When David was told that Ahithophel had joined Absalom's rebellion, he prayed, "Please, LORD, turn Ahithophel's advice into nonsense!"

Any advice that Ahithophel gave in those days was accepted as though it were the very word of God; both David and Absalom followed it.

The LORD says, "My people are stupid; they don't know me. They are like foolish children; they have no understanding. They are experts at doing what is evil, but failures at doing what is good."

As a result the master of this dishonest manager praised him for doing such a shrewd thing; because the people of this world are much more shrewd in handling their affairs than the people who belong to the light."

They say they are wise, but they are fools;

The scripture says, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and set aside the understanding of the scholars."

So then, where does that leave the wise? or the scholars? or the skillful debaters of this world? God has shown that this world's wisdom is foolishness!

God purposely chose what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise, and he chose what the world considers weak in order to shame the powerful.

Yet I do proclaim a message of wisdom to those who are spiritually mature. But it is not the wisdom that belongs to this world or to the powers that rule this world---powers that are losing their power.

The wisdom I proclaim is God's secret wisdom, which is hidden from human beings, but which he had already chosen for our glory even before the world was made.

For what this world considers to be wisdom is nonsense in God's sight. As the scripture says, "God traps the wise in their cleverness";

We are proud that our conscience assures us that our lives in this world, and especially our relations with you, have been ruled by God-given frankness and sincerity, by the power of God's grace and not by human wisdom.

These are the people who cause divisions, who are controlled by their natural desires, who do not have the Spirit.

Whoever does not have the Spirit cannot receive the gifts that come from God's Spirit. Such a person really does not understand them, and they seem to be nonsense, because their value can be judged only on a spiritual basis.

Now the snake was the most cunning animal that the LORD God had made. The snake asked the woman, "Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?"

"except the tree in the middle of it. God told us not to eat the fruit of that tree or even touch it; if we do, we will die."

God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad."

You are the children of your father, the Devil, and you want to follow your father's desires. From the very beginning he was a murderer and has never been on the side of truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he is only doing what is natural to him, because he is a liar and the father of all lies.

and said, "You son of the Devil! You are the enemy of everything that is good. You are full of all kinds of evil tricks, and you always keep trying to turn the Lord's truths into lies!

I am afraid that your minds will be corrupted and that you will abandon your full and pure devotion to Christ---in the same way that Eve was deceived by the snake's clever lies.

Those men are not true apostles---they are false apostles, who lie about their work and disguise themselves to look like real apostles of Christ.

So it is no great thing if his servants disguise themselves to look like servants of righteousness. In the end they will get exactly what their actions deserve.

Whoever continues to sin belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the very beginning. The Son of God appeared for this very reason, to destroy what the Devil had done.

Here is the clear difference between God's children and the Devil's children: those who do not do what is right or do not love others are not God's children.

These are the people who cause divisions, who are controlled by their natural desires, who do not have the Spirit.

They have a king ruling over them, who is the angel in charge of the abyss. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon; in Greek the name is Apollyon (meaning "The Destroyer").

The huge dragon was thrown out---that ancient serpent, named the Devil, or Satan, that deceived the whole world. He was thrown down to earth, and all his angels with him.