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.

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.

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,

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."

But it is God who makes us as well as you secure through union with Christ, and has anointed us,

For if I make you sad, who is there to make me glad but the very man who has been made sad by me?

This is the very thing I wrote you, that when I did come I might not be made sad by the very people who ought to make me glad, for I had confidence in you all that my gladness would be gladness to you all.

Indeed, I am the fragrance of Christ to God, alike for those who are being saved and for those who are perishing;

Now who is qualified for such a task? I am, for I am not a peddler of God's message, like the most of them, but like a man of sincerity, like a man that is sent from God and living in His presence, in union with Christ I speak His message.

not as Moses did, who used to wear a veil over his face, to keep the Israelites from gazing at the end of what was passing away.

And all of us, with faces uncovered, because we continue to reflect like mirrors the splendor of the Lord, are being transformed into likeness to Him, from one degree of splendor to another, since it comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

If the meaning of the good news I preach is covered up at all, it is so only in the case of those who are on the way to destruction.

In their case, the god of this world has blinded the eyes of the unbelievers, to keep the glorious light of the good news of Christ, who is the likeness of God, from dawning upon them.

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

Now since I have the same spirit of faith as he who said in the Scriptures, "I believed, and so I spoke," I too believe, and so I speak,

because I know that He who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will raise me too in fellowship with you.

For I who am still in my tent am sighing beneath my burdens, because I do not want it to be put off but to put on the other over it, so that my dying body may be absorbed in life.

Now it is God Himself who has put the finishing touches on me for this change, because He has given me the Spirit as the first installment of future bliss.

I am not trying to recommend myself to you again. I am giving you ground for speaking well of me, that you may have something to say to those who are constantly prating about external privileges and not concerned about the state of the heart.

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

He made Him who personally knew nothing of sin to be a sin-offering for us, so that through union with Him we might come into right standing with God.

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

just as the Scripture says, "The man who gathered much did not have too much, and the man who gathered little did not have too little."

But thanks be to God, who kindles in the heart of Titus the same enthusiasm for you that I have;

I send with them another brother of ours, whom I have often in many ways tested and found to be enthusiastic, but now he is more enthusiastic than ever, because of his great confidence in you.

He who always supplies the sower with seed and the eater with bread will supply you with seed and multiply it and enlarge the harvest which your deeds of charity yield.

Now I appeal to you in person, by the gentleness and fairness of Christ, I, Paul, who am so "condescending when face to face with you, but so courageous toward you when far away!"

I beg you not to make me too courageous in that confidence in which I think to take a daring stand against some people who try to think that I am acting from the lowest human motives.

Indeed, I do not dare to count or compare myself with certain men who are always recommending themselves. But they do not show good sense, because they do continue measuring themselves with one another and comparing themselves with one another.

"But the man who boasts must boast in the Lord.

For it is not the man who keeps on recommending himself who is really approved, but it is the man whom the Lord recommends.

And I shall keep on doing as I am, in order to cut the ground from under the feet of those who want an opportunity to show themselves on a level with me in the matters of which they boast.

For you who are so wise yourselves are glad to listen to fools!

Who is weak without my being weak too? Who is caused to fall without my being fired with indignation?

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

I know a man in union with Christ fourteen years ago -- whether in the body or out of it, I do not know, but God knows -- who was caught up to the third heaven.

I have made a fool of myself, but you have forced me to do it, for I am the man who ought to have been constantly approved by you. For I am not a single bit inferior to your surpassingly superior apostles, though really I am "nobody."

Are you thinking all this time that I am defending myself to you? It is in the very presence of God and as one who is in union with Christ that I am speaking. And it is all for building you up, beloved, for I am apprehensive that, somehow or other, when I come I shall find you not as I want to find you, and that you may find me not as you want to find me.

and that when I come back my God may humiliate me before you, and I may have to mourn over some of those who formerly have committed shocking sins, and have not repented for them -- their impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality, which once they practiced.

I have already warned those who formerly committed shocking sins, and all the rest, and though so far away I warn them now, as I did on my second visit, that if I come back I will not spare them,