because our gospel did not come to you with word only, but also with power and with the Holy Spirit and with much certainty, just as you know what sort of [people] we became among you for your sake.

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit,

so that you became an example to all those who believe in Macedonia and in Achaia,

{Although we could have insisted on our own importance} as apostles of Christ, yet we became infants in your midst, like a nursing mother cherishes her own children.

You [are] witnesses, and [so is] God, how devoutly and righteously and blamelessly we became to you who believe,

For you became imitators, brothers, of the churches of God [which] are in Judea in Christ Jesus, because you also suffered the same [things] at the hands of your own people, just as [they] themselves [did] also at the hands of the Jews,