²³ Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.^(A)

⁴ but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, ⁵ beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;^(A)

²⁴ Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.^{(A) 25} Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea;^(B)

⁹ as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed,^(A)

⁶ who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.^(A)

⁹ Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us;^[a] on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again,^(A)

¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.^(A)

²⁹ For this I toil and strive with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.^(A)

Paul’s Interest in the Colossians

²⁴ I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

¹⁶ I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”^(A)