who comforts me in all my distress, so that I am able to comfort people who are in any distress by the comfort with which I myself am comforted by God.

For as the sufferings of Christ are abundant in my case, so my comfort is also abundant through Christ.

Hence my hope for you is well-founded, since I know that as you share the sufferings you share the comfort also.

Now I would like you to know about the distress which befell me in Asia, brothers. I was crushed, crushed far more than I could stand, so much so that I despaired even of life;

in fact I told myself it was the sentence of death. But that was to make me rely not on myself but on the God who raises the dead;

he rescued me from so terrible a death, he rescues still, and I rely upon him for the hope that he will continue to rescue me.

Let me have your cooperation in prayer, so that many a soul may render thanks to him on my behalf for the boon which many have been the means of him bestowing on myself.

My proud boast is the testimony of my conscience that holiness and godly sincerity, not worldly cunning but the grace of God, have marked my conduct in the outside world and in particular my relations with you.

You don't have to read between the lines of my letters; you can understand them. Yes, I trust you will understand the full meaning of my letters

as you have partly understood the meaning of my life, namely that I am your source of pride (as you are mine) on the Day of our Lord Jesus.

I intended to take you on my way to Macedonia, and to visit you again on my way back from Macedonia, so as to be sped by you on my journey to Judaea.

Such was my intention. Now, have I shown myself 'fickle'? When I propose some plan, do I propose it in a worldly way, ready to mean 'no' as well as 'yes'?

By the good faith of God, my word to you was not 'yes and no';

And it is God who confirms me along with you in Christ, who consecrated me,

who stamped me with his seal and gave me the Spirit as a pledge in my heart.

I call God to witness against my soul, it was to spare you that I refrained from revisiting Corinth.

For if I pain you, then who is to give me pleasure? None but the very people I am paining!

So the very reason I wrote was that I might not come only to be pained by those who ought to give me joy; I relied on you all, I felt sure that my joy would be a joy for everyone of you.

For I wrote you in sore distress and misery of heart, with many a tear ??not to pain you but to convince you of my love, my special love for you.

If a certain individual has been causing pain, he has been causing pain not so much to me as to all of you ??at anyrate (for I am not going to overstate the case) to a section of you.

For my aim in writing was simply to test you, to see if you were absolutely obedient.

my spirit could not rest, because I did not find Titus my brother there; so I said goodbye and went off to Macedonia.

Wherever I go, thank God, he makes my life a constant pageant of triumph in Christ, diffusing the perfume of his knowledge everywhere by me.

Why, you are my certificate yourselves, written on my heart, recognized and read by all men;

Such is the confidence I possess through Christ in my service of God.

It is not that I am personally qualified to form any judgment by myself; my qualifications come from God,

and he has further qualified me to be the minister of a new covenant ??a covenant not of written law but of spirit; for the written law kills but the Spirit makes alive.

Such being my hope then, I am quite frank and open ??13 not like Moses, who used to hang a veil over his face to keep the children of Israel from gazing at the last rays of a fading glory.

Hence, as I hold this ministry by God's mercy to me, I never lose heart in it;

Even if my gospel is veiled, it is only veiled in the case of the perishing;

For God who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," has shone within my heart to illuminate men with the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Christ.

persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed ??10 wherever I go, I am being killed in the body as Jesus was, so that the life of Jesus may come out in my body:

every day of my life I am being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may come out within my mortal flesh.

In me then death is active, in you life.

sure that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise me too with Jesus and set me at your side in his presence.

It is all in your interests, so that the more grace abounds, the more thanksgiving may rise and redound to the glory of God.

Hence I never lose heart; though my outward man decays, my inner man is renewed day after day.

It makes me sigh indeed, this yearning to be under the cover of my heavenly habitation,

I do sigh within this tent of mine with heavy anxiety ??not that I want to be stripped, no, but to be under the cover of the other, to have my mortal element absorbed by life.

I am prepared for this change by God, who has given me the Spirit as its pledge and instalment.

Come what may, then, I am confident; I know that while I reside in the body I am away from the Lord

(for I have to lead my life in faith, without seeing him):

If I 'appeal to the interests of men,' then, it is with the fear of the Lord before my mind. What I am is plain to God without disguise, plain also, I trust, to your own conscience.

This is not 'recommending myself to you again'; it is giving you an incentive to be proud of me, which you can use against men who are proud of externals instead of the inward reality.

It is all the doing of the God who has reconciled me to himself through Christ and has permitted me to be a minister of his reconciliation.

For in Christ God reconciled the world to himself instead of counting men's trespasses against them; and he entrusted me with the message of his reconciliation.

So I am an envoy for Christ, God appealing by me, as it were ??be reconciled to God, I entreat you on behalf of Christ.

I put no obstacle in the path of any, so that my ministry may not be discredited;

O Corinthians, I am keeping nothing back from you; my heart is wide open for you.

'Restraint'? ??that lies with you, not me.

A fair exchange now, as the children say! Open your hearts wide to me.

What compact can there be between God's temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God ??as God has said, I will dwell and move among them, I will be their God and they shall be my people.

I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord almighty.

Make a place for me in your hearts; I have wronged no one, ruined no one, taken advantage of no one.

I am not saying this to condemn you. Condemn you? Why, I repeat, you are in my very heart, and you will be there in death and life alike.

I have absolute confidence in you, I am indeed proud of you, you are a perfect comfort to me, I am overflowing with delight, for all the trouble I have to bear.

For I got no relief from the strain of things, even when I reached Macedonia; it was trouble at every turn, wrangling all round me, fears in my own mind.

But the God who comforts the dejected comforted me by the arrival of Titus.

Yes, and by more than his arrival, by the comfort which you had been to him; for he gave me such a report of how you longed for me, how sorry you were, and how eagerly you took my part, that it added to my delight.

In fact, if I did pain you by that letter, I do not regret it. I did regret it when I discovered that my letter had pained you even for the time being,

See what this pain divine has done for you, how serious it has made you, how keen to clear yourselves, how indignant, how alarmed, how eager for me, how determined, how relentless! You have shown in every way that you were honest in the business.

So my letter was written to you, not on account of the offender nor for the sake of the injured party, but in order to let you realize before God how seriously you do care for me.

That is what comforts me. And over and above my personal comfort, I was specially delighted at the delight of Titus. You have all set his mind at rest.

I told him of my pride in you, and I have not been disappointed. No, just as all I have had to say to you has been true, so all I said about you to Titus, all my pride in you, has also proved true.

I can testify that up to their means, aye and beyond their means, they have given ??4 begging me of their own accord, most urgently, for the favour of contributing to the support of the saints.

They have done more than I expected; they gave themselves to the Lord, to begin with, and then (for so God willed it) they put themselves at my disposal.

This has led me to ask Titus to complete the arrangements for the same gracious contribution among yourselves, as it was he who started it.

Now, carry it through, so that your readiness to take it up may be equalled by the way you carry it through ??so far as your means allow.

it is a matter of give and take; at the present moment your surplus goes to make up what they lack, in order that their surplus may go to make up what you lack.

Thanks be to God who has inspired Titus with an interest in you equal to my own;

he has indeed responded to my request, but he is off to you by his own choice, so keen is his interest in you.

besides, he has been appointed by the churches to travel with me on the business of administering this fund to the glory of the Lord. His appointment has my full consent,

Titus is my colleague, he shares my work for you, and these brothers of mine are apostles of the church, a credit to Christ.

So let them have proof of how you can love, and of my reasons for being proud of you; it will be a proof read by the churches.

Indeed it is quite superfluous for me to be writing to you about this charitable service to the saints;

At the same time I am sending these brothers just in case my pride in you should prove an empty boast in this particular instance; I want you to be "all ready," as I have been telling them that you would be,

in case any Macedonians accompany me and find you are not ready ??which would make me (not to speak of yourselves) ashamed of having been so sure.

God is able to bless you with ample means, so that you may always have quite enough for any emergency of your own and ample besides for any kind act to others;

I beg of you that when I do come I may not have to speak out and be peremptory; but my mind is made up to tackle certain people who have made up their minds that I move on the low level of the flesh.

the weapons of my warfare are not weapons of the flesh, but divinely strong to demolish fortresses ??5 I demolish theories and any rampart thrown up to resist the knowledge of God, I take every project prisoner to make it obey Christ,

Even supposing I were to boast somewhat freely of my authority (and the Lord gave it to me for building you up, not for demolishing you), I would feel quite justified.

My opponent says, 'Paul's letters are weighty and telling, but his personality is weak and his delivery is beneath contempt.'

I do not venture to class myself or to compare myself with certain exalted individuals! They belong to the class of self-praisers; while I limit myself to my own sphere, I compare myself with my own standard,

and so my boasting never goes beyond the limit ??it is determined by the limits of the sphere marked out for me by God. That sphere stretches to include yourselves;

I am not overstepping the limit, as if you lay beyond my sphere; I was the very first to reach you with the gospel of Christ.

I do not boast beyond my limits in a sphere where other men have done the work; my hope rather is that the growth of your faith will allow me to enlarge the range of my appointed sphere

I wish you would put up with a little 'folly' from me. Do put up with me,

You put up with it all right, when some interloper preaches a second Jesus (not the Jesus I preached), or when you are treated to a Spirit different from the Spirit you once received, and to a different gospel from what I gave you! Why not put up with me?

even when I ran short, during my stay with you, I was no encumbrance to anybody, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my wants. Thus I kept myself, as I intend to keep myself, from being a burden to you in any way.

By the truth of Christ within me, I am going to make this my pride and boast unchecked throughout the regions of Achaia!

I repeat, no one is to think me a fool; but even so, pray bear with me, fool as I am, that I may have my little boast as well as others!

Ministers of Christ? yes perhaps, but not as much as I am (I am mad to talk like this!), with all my labours, with all my lashes, with all my time in prison ??a record longer far than theirs. I have been often at the point of death;

I have been often on my travels, I have been in danger from rivers and robbers, in danger from Jews and Gentiles, through dangers of town and of desert, through dangers on the sea, through dangers among false brothers ??27 through labour and hardship, through many a sleepless night, through hunger and thirst, starving many a time, cold and ill-clad, and all the rest of it.

(At Damascus the ethnarch of king Aretas had patrols out in the city of the Damascenes to arrest me,

Of an experience like that I am prepared to boast, but not of myself personally ??not except as regards my weaknesses.

(If I did care to boast of other things, I would be no 'fool,' for I would have a true tale to tell; however, I abstain from that ??I want no one to take me for more than he can see in me or make out from me.)

My wealth of visions might have puffed me up, so I was given a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to rack me and keep me from being puffed up;

three times over I prayed the Lord to make it leave me,

but he told me, "It is enough for you to have my grace: it is in weakness that [my] power is fully felt." So I am proud to boast of all my weakness, and thus to have the power of Christ resting on my life.

It makes me satisfied, for Christ's sake, with weakness, insults, trouble, persecution, and calamity; for I am strong just when I am weak.