He comforts me in all my trouble, so that I can comfort people who are in any trouble with the comfort with which I myself am comforted by God.

Why, I felt in my heart that the end must be death. That was to keep me from relying on myself instead of on God, who can even raise the dead.

The Son of God, Christ Jesus, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus, Timothy, and I, you have not found wavering between "Yes" and "No." With him it has always been "Yes,"

But it is God who guarantees us and you to Christ; he has anointed us

For if I hurt your feelings, who is there to cheer me up but the man whose feelings I hurt?

This is what I said in my letter, so that I might avoid coming and having my feelings hurt by the very people who might have been expected to make me happy, for I felt sure about you all, that what made me happy would make you all happy.

Yes, I am the fragrance of Christ to God, diffused among those who are being saved, and those who are perishing alike;

to the one, a deathly, deadly odor, to the other a vital, life-giving one. Who is qualified for this task? I am!

not like Moses, who used to wear a veil over his face, to keep the Israelites from gazing at the fading of the splendor from it.

And all of us, reflecting the splendor of the Lord in our unveiled faces, are being changed into likeness to him, from one degree of splendor to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

If the meaning of my preaching of the good news is veiled at all, it is so only in the case of those who are on the way to destruction.

For God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in my heart, to give me the light of the knowledge of God's glory, that is on the face of Christ.

In the same spirit of faith as his who said, "I believed, and so I spoke," I too believe, and so I speak,

sure that he who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will raise me also like Jesus, and bring me side by side with you into his presence.

For I who am still in my tent sigh with anxiety, because I do not want to be stripped of it, but to put on the other over it, so that what is only mortal may be absorbed in life.

It is God himself who has prepared me for this change, and he has given me the Spirit as his guaranty.

I am not trying to recommend myself to you again. I am giving you cause to be proud of me, to use in answering men who pride themselves on external advantages and not on sincerity of heart.

and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.

All this comes from God, who through Christ has reconciled me to himself, and has commissioned me to proclaim this reconciliation??19 how God through Christ reconciled the world to himself, refusing to count men's offenses against them, and intrusted me with the message of reconciliation.

He made him who knew nothing of sin to be sin, for our sake, so that through union with him we might become God's uprightness.

But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted me by the coming of Titus,

but to equalize the burden, and in the present situation to have your plenty make up for what they need, so that some day their plenty may make up for what you need, and so things may be made equal??15 as the Scripture says, "The man who got much did not have too much, and the man who got little did not have too little."

I am sending with him his brother, who is famous in all the churches for his work in spreading the good news.

Remember this: The man who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and the man who sows generously will reap generously.

Everyone must give what he has made up his mind to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion; God loves a man who is glad to give.

He who supplies the sower with seed and so with bread to eat will supply you with seed, and multiply it and enlarge the harvest of your uprightness.

I appeal to you personally, by the gentleness and forbearance of Christ??he Paul who is so humble when face to face with you, but so bold in dealing with you when he is far away!

I beg you not to make me take as bold an attitude when I come, as I count on taking toward some people who suspect me of acting from worldly motives.

I do not indeed venture to class or compare myself with certain individuals who approve of themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they do not show good sense.

It is no strain for me to do this, as it might be for people who had never got so far, for I was the first to come all the way to you with the good news of the Christ.

But let the man who boasts, boast about the Lord.

For it is not the man who approves of himself who is really approved; it is the man of whom the Lord approves.

And I shall go on doing as I do, so as to cut the ground from under those who want to make out that in their boasted apostleship they work on the same terms that I do.

Who is weak without my being weak? Whose conscience is hurt without my being fired with indignation?

The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, he who is forever blessed, knows that I am telling the truth.

and that when I come back my God may humiliate me before you, and I may have to mourn over many who have kept on in their old sins and have never repented of the impurity, immorality, and sensuality in which they have indulged.

Those who have kept on in their old sins and all the rest I have warned, and I warn them now while I am still away, as I did on my second visit, that if I come back I will spare nobody??3 since you demand proof that Christ really speaks through me. He is not weak in dealing with you. On the contrary, right among you he exhibits his power.