1 Corinthians 2:4,5

“And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; 5. that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

The apostle returns from his person to his preaching. Λόγος, speech, and κήρυγμα, preaching, have been distinguished in many ways: “My discourses in general, and especially my preaching” (Meyer); or, “My private conversations and my public discourses” (Neander, Rückert, etc.). I rather think that λόγος applies to the matter, and κήρυγμα to the form; the λόγος is the gospel itself; the κήρυγμα is the testimony the apostle renders to it. Neither the one nor the other has been corrupted in his work by the infiltration of human elements or by self - seeking. The adj. πειθός is not known in classic Greek, in which the word πιθανός is used for persuasive. But it is nevertheless regularly formed from the verb πείθω; comp. φειδός, from φείδομαι; and it is possible that in the apostle's day πειθός belonged only to the spoken language. Some documents have substituted for this adjective the dative πειθοῖ of the substantive πειθώ, persuasion (Itala: “in persuasione sapientiae verbi”). Heinrici adopts this reading, though it is almost entirely destitute of authorities, because of the fine contrast between this word πειθώ and the following term, ἀπόδειξις. But in that case we should have to read λόγου or λόγων, which are only found in very few authorities, and which are evidently corrections. The adj. ἀνθρωπίνης, human, found in the received text, is insufficiently supported.

Instead of endeavouring to satisfy the understanding by means of a system (wisdom) ably presented (persuasive discourses), the apostle has sought his strength in action of a wholly different nature, in what he calls “the demonstration of Spirit and of power. ” The word ἀπόδειξις indicates a clearness which is produced in the hearer's mind, as by the sudden lifting of a veil; a conviction mastering him with the sovereign force of moral evidence; comp. 1 Corinthians 14:24-25.

The gen. πνεύματος, of Spirit, is the complement of cause; it is the Divine Spirit alone who thus reveals the truth of salvation; comp. Ephesians 1:17-18. We have to represent this Spirit to ourselves acting at once in him who speaks and in him who hears, in such a way as to make the light pass, through the intervention of the spoken word, from the mind of the one into the mind of the other. The second gen. δυνάμεως, of power, is the complement of quality: it denotes the mode of the Spirit's action; it is, so to speak, a taking possession of the human soul, of its understanding and will, by the inward ascendency of the truth. Chrysostom, and in our day, Beet, apply these expressions to the outward miracles which St. Paul sometimes wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 11:12; Romans 15:19). Such an interpretation, allowable in the infancy of exegesis, should now be no longer possible. The apostle has just been stigmatizing the going after miracles on the part of the Jews, and we are to suppose him saying here that he sought to render the faith of the Corinthians immovable by the evidence of miracles!