1 Paul, by the will of God an apostle of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God that is at Corinth, with all God's people all over Greece: 2 spiritual blessing and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merciful Father and the all-comforting God, 4 who comforts me in every sorrow I have, so that I can comfort people who are in sorrow with the comfort with which I am comforted by God. 5 For just as my sufferings for Christ are running over the cup, so through Christ my comfort is running over too. 6 If I am in sorrow, it is on behalf of your comfort and salvation; if I am comforted, it is for the comfort that is experienced by you in your patient endurance of the same sort of sufferings that I am enduring too. 7 My hope for you is well founded; because I know that just as you, brothers, are sharers of my sufferings, so you will be sharers of my comfort too.
8 For I do not want you to be uninformed about the sorrow that I suffered in Asia, because I was so crushed beyond any power to endure that I was in dire despair of life itself. 9 Yes, I felt within my very self the sentence of death, to keep me from depending on myself instead of God who raises the dead. 10 He saved me from a death so horrible, and He will save me again! He it is on whom I have set my hope that He will still save me, 11 because you are helping me by your prayers for me, so that thanks to God will be given by many on my behalf for God's gracious gift to me in answer to the prayers of many.
12 For my boast is this, to which my conscience testifies, that before the world, but especially before you, I have acted from pure motives and in sincerity before God, not depending on worldly wisdom but on God's unmerited favor. 13 For what I am writing you is nothing more than what you can read and understand, and I hope that you will understand it perfectly, just as some of you have come to understand me partially; 14 that is, to understand that you have grounds for boasting of me just as I have for boasting of you, on the day of our Lord Jesus.
15 It was because of this confidence that first I planned to visit you, to give you a double delight; 16 that is, to go by you on my way to Macedonia, and then to come back to you from Macedonia, and have you send me on to Judea. 17 Now I did not resort to fickleness, did I, in planning that? Or, do I make my plans in accordance with worldly notions, to have my "Yes" mean "No," if I want it so? 18 As certainly as God is to be trusted, my message to you has not been a "Yes" that might mean "No." 19 For God's Son, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you by us, Silvanus, Timothy, and me, did not become a "Yes" that might mean "No." 20 But with Him it is always "Yes," for, as many as the promises of God may be, through Him they are always "Yes." This is why our "Amen" through Him is for the glory of God when spoken by us. 21 But it is God who makes us as well as you secure through union with Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and put His seal upon us, and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a first installment of future rewards.
23 But upon my soul I call God to witness that it was to spare you pain that I gave up my visit to Corinth. 24 Not that we are trying to lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you to promote your joy, for in your faith you are standing firm.