for I am controlled by the love of Christ, convinced that as One has died for all, then all have died,

and that he died for all in order to have the living live no longer for themselves but for him who died and rose for them.

For our sakes He made him to be sin who himself knew nothing of sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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

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

As these great promises are ours, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates either flesh or spirit; let us be fully consecrated by reverence for God].

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,

but I am glad now ??not glad that you were pained but glad that your pain induced you to repent. For you were pained as God meant you to be pained, and so you got no harm from what I did;

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.

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 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.

(You know how gracious our Lord Jesus Christ was; rich though he was, he became poor for the sake of you, that by his poverty you might be rich.)

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.

This does not mean that other people are to be relieved and you to suffer:

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.

Along with him I am sending that brother whose services to the gospel are praised by all the churches;

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,

That is why I have thought it necessary to ask these brothers to go on in advance and get your promised contribution ready in good time. I want it to be forthcoming as a generous gift, not as money wrung out of you.

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;

He who furnishes the sower with seed and with bread to eat will supply seed for you and multiply it; he will increase the crop of your charities ??11 you will be enriched on all hands, so that you can be generous on all occasions, and your generosity, of which I am the agent, will make men give thanks to God;

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.

Look at this obvious fact. So-and-so is perfectly sure he 'belongs to Christ'? Well then, let him understand, on second thoughts, that I 'belong to Christ' as much as he does.

Let him understand that I will act when I arrive, as forcibly as I express myself by letter when I am absent.

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 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

and preach the gospel in the lands that lie beyond you, instead of boasting within another's province over work that is already done.

But perhaps I did wrong in taking a humble place that you might have a high one ??I mean, in preaching the gospel of God to you for nothing!

No, I intend to go on as I am doing, in order to checkmate those who would fain make out that in the apostolate of which they boast they work on the same terms as I do.

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!

I am quite ashamed to say I was not equal to that sort of thing! But let them vaunt as they please, I am equal to them (mind, this is the role of a fool!).

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. In the body or out of the body? That I do not know: God knows.

I simply know that in the body or out of the body (God knows which)

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.)

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.

Now this is playing the fool! But you forced me to it, instead of coming forward yourselves and vouching for me. That was what I deserved; for, 'nobody' as I am, I am not one whit inferior to these precious 'apostles.'

You had all the miracles that mark an apostle done for you fully and patiently ??miracles, wonders, and deeds of power.

Where were you inferior to the rest of the churches? ??unless in this, that your apostle did not choose to make himself a burden to you. Pray pardon me this terrible wrong!

Here am I all ready to pay you my third visit. And I will not be a burden to you; I want yourselves and not your money. Children have not to put money by for their parents; that is what parents do for their children.

But let that pass, you say; I was not a burden to you, no, but I was clever enough to dupe you with my tricks? Was I?

For I am afraid I may perhaps come and find you are not what I could wish, while you may find I am not what you could wish; I am afraid of finding quarrels, jealousy, temper, rivalry, slanders, gossiping, arrogance, and disorder ??21 afraid that when I come back to you, my God may humiliate me before you, and I may have to mourn for many who sinned some time ago and yet have never repented of the impurity, the sexual vice, and the sensuality which they have practised.

I warned you already, on my second visit, and I warn you now before I come, both you who sinned some time ago and the rest of you as well, that I will spare no one if I come back.

That will prove to you that I am indeed a spokesman of Christ. It is no weak Christ you have to do with, but a Christ of power.

Put yourselves to the proof, not me; test yourselves, to see if you are in the faith. Do you not understand that Christ Jesus is within you? Otherwise you must be failures.

and I pray to God that you may not go wrong ??not to prove I am a success, that is not the point, but that you should come right, even if I seemed to be a failure.

I am glad to be weak if you are strong; mend your ways, that is all I ask.

I am writing thus to you in absence, so that when I do come I may not have to deal sharply with you; I have the Lord's authority for that, but he gave it to me for building you up, not for demolishing you.

It simply means that certain individuals are unsettling you; they want to distort the gospel of Christ.

Now even though it were myself or some angel from heaven, whoever preaches a gospel that contradicts the gospel I preached to you, God's curse be on him!

I have said it before and I now repeat it: whoever preaches a gospel to you that contradicts the gospel you have already received, God's curse be on him!

Now is that 'appealing to the interests of men' or of God? Trying to 'satisfy men'? Why, if I still tried to give satisfaction to human masters, I would be no servant of Christ.

No, brothers, I tell you the gospel that I preach is not a human affair;

and when he chose to reveal his Son to me, that I might preach him to the Gentiles, instead of consulting with any human being,

they merely heard that 'our former persecutor is now preaching the faith he once harried,'

(It was in consequence of a revelation that I went up at all.) I submitted the gospel I am in the habit of preaching to the Gentiles, submitting it privately to the authorities, to make sure that my course of action would be and had been sound.

But we refused to yield for a single instant to their claims; we were determined that the truth of the gospel should hold good for you.

Only, we were to 'remember the poor.' I was quite eager to do that myself.

The rest of the Jewish Christians also played false along with him, so much so that even Barnabas was carried away by their false play.

If it is discovered that in our quest for justification in Christ we are 'sinners' as well as the Gentiles, does that make Christ an agent of sin? Never!

For through the Law I died to the Law that I might live for God;

Have you had all that experience for nothing (if it has really gone for nothing)?

Why, it is as with Abraham, he had faith in God and that was counted to him as righteousness.

Well then, you see that the real sons of Abraham are those who rely on faith.

So that those who rely on faith are blessed along with believing Abraham.

Whereas a curse rests on all who rely upon obedience to the Law; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not hold by all that is written in the book of the law, to perform it.

that the blessing of Abraham might reach the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promised Spirit.

If the Inheritance is due to law, it ceases to be due to promise. Now it was by a promise that God bestowed it on Abraham.

but Scripture has consigned all without exception to the custody of sin, in order that the promise due to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who have faith.

Before this faith came, we were confined by the Law and kept in custody, with the prospect of the faith that was to be revealed;

the Law thus held us as wards in discipline, till such time as Christ came, that we might be justified by faith.

to ransom those who were under the Law, that we might get our sonship.

It is because you are sons that God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts crying 'Abba! Father!'

but now that you know God ??or rather, are known by God ??how is it you are turning back again to the weakness and poverty of the Elemental spirits? Why do you want to be enslaved all over again by them?

no, although it was because of an illness (you know) that I preached the gospel to you on my former visit,

Now, what has become of all that? (I can bear witness that you would have torn out your very eyes, if you could, and given me them.)

These men make much of you ??yes, but for dishonest ends; they want to debar you from us, so that you may make much of them.

would that I could be with you at this moment, and alter my tone, for I am at my wits' end about you!

Surely it is written in the Law that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave-woman and one by the free-woman;

Now this is an allegory. The women are two covenants. One comes from mount Sinai, bearing children for servitude; that is Hagar,

I insist on this again to everyone who gets circumcised, that he is obliged to carry out the whole of the Law.

for it is by faith that 'we' wait in the Spirit for the righteousness we hope for;

You were doing splendidly. Who was it that prevented you from obeying the Truth?

That sort of suasion does not come from Him who called you!

I feel persuaded in the Lord that you will not go wrong. But he who unsettles you will have to meet his doom, no matter who he is.

O that those who are upsetting you would get themselves castrated!

For the passion of the flesh is against the Spirit, and the passion of the Spirit against the flesh ??the two are at issue, so that you are not free to do as you please.

envy, [murder], drinking bouts, revelry, and the like; I tell you beforehand as I have told you already, that people who indulge in such practices will never inherit the Realm of God.

so to order it in the fulness of the ages that all things in heaven and earth alike should be gathered up in Christ ??11 in the Christ in whom we have had our heritage allotted us (as was decreed in the design of him who carries out everything according to the counsel of his will),

which is the pledge and instalment of our common heritage, that we may obtain our divine possession and so redound to the praise of his glory.

illuminating the eyes of your heart so that you can understand the hope to which He calls us, the wealth of his glorious heritage in the saints,

above all the angelic Rulers, Authorities, Powers, and Lords, above every Name that is to be named not only in this age but in the age to come ??22 he has put everything under his feet and set him as head over everything for the church,

But, dead in trespasses as we were, God was so rich in mercy that for his great love to us

not the outcome of what you have done ??lest anyone should pride himself on that;

Remember, then, that once upon a time you Gentiles in the flesh, who are called 'the Uncircumcision' by that so-called 'Circumcision' which is itself the product of human hands in the flesh ??12 remember you were in those days outside Christ, aliens to the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the Promise, devoid of hope and God within the world.

so as himself to give the death-blow to that feud by reconciling them both to God in one Body through the cross;

he came with a gospel of peace for those far away (that is, for you) and for those who were near,

for it is through him that we both enjoy our access to the Father in one Spirit.

you are a building that rests on the apostles and prophets as its foundation, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone;

you can understand my insight into that secret of Christ