2 You yourselves know, dear brothers, how worthwhile that visit was. ² You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet God gave us the courage to boldly repeat the same message to you, even though we were surrounded by enemies. ³ So you can see that we were not preaching with any false motives or evil purposes in mind; we were perfectly straightforward and sincere.

⁴ For we speak as messengers from God, trusted by him to tell the truth; we change his message not one bit to suit the taste of those who hear it; for we serve God alone, who examines our hearts’ deepest thoughts. ⁵ Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you very well know, and God knows we were not just pretending to be your friends so that you would give us money! ⁶ As for praise, we have never asked for it from you or anyone else, although as apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to some honor from you. ⁷ But we were as gentle among you as a mother feeding and caring for her own children. ⁸ We loved you dearly—so dearly that we gave you not only God’s message, but our own lives too.

⁹ Don’t you remember, dear brothers, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled and sweated to earn enough to live on so that our expenses would not be a burden to anyone there, as we preached God’s Good News among you. ¹⁰ You yourselves are our witnesses—as is God—that we have been pure and honest and faultless toward every one of you. ¹¹ We talked to you as a father to his own children—don’t you remember?—pleading with you, encouraging you and even demanding ¹² that your daily lives should not embarrass God but bring joy to him who invited you into his Kingdom to share his glory.

¹³ And we will never stop thanking God for this: that when we preached to you, you didn’t think of the words we spoke as being just our own, but you accepted what we said as the very Word of God—which, of course, it was—and it changed your lives when you believed it.

¹⁴ And then, dear brothers, you suffered what the churches in Judea did, persecution from your own countrymen, just as they suffered from their own people, the Jews. ¹⁵ After they had killed their own prophets, they even executed the Lord Jesus; and now they have brutally persecuted us and driven us out. They are against both God and man, ¹⁶ trying to keep us from preaching to the Gentiles for fear some might be saved; and so their sins continue to grow. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.

¹⁷ Dear brothers, after we left you and had been away from you but a very little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried hard to come back to see you once more. ¹⁸ We wanted very much to come, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan stopped us. ¹⁹ For what is it we live for, that gives us hope and joy and is our proud reward and crown? It is you! Yes, you will bring us much joy as we stand together before our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes back again. ²⁰ For you are our trophy and joy.