Because I was confident, I planned to come to you first so you might receive a double blessing.

For God's Son, Jesus the Messiah, who was preached among you by us by me, Silvanus, and Timothy was not "Yes" and "No." But with him it is always "Yes."

I call upon God as a witness on my behalf that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth.

When you forgive someone, I do, too. Indeed, what I have forgiven if there was anything to forgive I did in the presence of the Messiah for your benefit,

Now if the ministry of death that was inscribed in letters of stone came with such glory that the people of Israel could not gaze on Moses' face (because the glory was fading away from it),

not like Moses, who kept covering his face with a veil to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of what was fading away.

So if we were crazy, it was for God; if we are sane, it is for you.

for through the Messiah, God was reconciling the world to himself by not counting their sins against them. He has committed his message of reconciliation to us.

So, even though I wrote to you, it wasn't because of the man who did the wrong or because of the man who was hurt. Instead, I wrote to you so that your devotion to us might be made perfectly clear to you before God.

For if I have been doing some boasting about you to him, I have never been ashamed of it. Moreover, since everything we told you was true, our boasting to Titus has also proved to be true.

We want you to know, brothers, about God's grace that was given to the churches of Macedonia.

We did not expect that! They gave themselves to the Lord first and then to us, since this was God's will.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Although he was rich, for your sakes he became poor, so that you, through his poverty, might become rich.

And so in their prayers for you they will long for you because of God's exceptional grace that was shown to you.

When I was with you and needed something, I did not bother any of you, because our brothers who came from Macedonia supplied everything I needed. I kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and I will continue to do so.

Three times I was beaten with a stick, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, and I drifted on the sea for a day and a night.

but I was let down in a basket through an opening in the wall and escaped from him.

I know a man who belongs to the Messiah. Fourteen years ago whether in his body or outside of his body, I do not know, but God knows that man was snatched away to the third heaven.

was snatched away to Paradise and heard things that cannot be expressed in words, things that no human being has a right even to mention.

To keep me from becoming conceited because of the exceptional nature of these revelations, a thorn was given to me and placed in my body. It was Satan's messenger to keep on tormenting me so that I would not become conceited.

Granting that I have not been a burden to you, was I a clever schemer who trapped you by some trick?

Though he was crucified in weakness, he lives by God's power. We are weak with him, but by God's power we will live for you.