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The God of Comfort
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
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He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
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For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
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If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.
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And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will also share in the comfort.
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We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life itself.
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For we are writing nothing to you other than what you can read and also understand. I hope you will understand completely—
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A Visit Postponed
Because of this confidence, I planned to come to you first, so that you could have a second benefit,
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and to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and then come to you again from Macedonia and be helped by you on my journey to Judea.
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I call on God as a witness, on my life, that it was to spare you that I did not come to Corinth.
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In fact, I made up my mind about this: I would not come to you on another painful visit.
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As a result, you should instead forgive and comfort him. Otherwise, he may be overwhelmed by excessive grief.
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Living Letters
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
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Paul’s Competence
Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God.
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It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.
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He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
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In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it.
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Instead, we have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone’s conscience by an open display of the truth.
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We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to be proud of us, so that you may have a reply for those who take pride in outward appearance rather than in the heart.
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For the love of Christ compels us, since we have reached this conclusion, that one died for all, and therefore all died.
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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!
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That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
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Instead, as God’s ministers, we commend ourselves in everything: by great endurance, by afflictions, by hardships, by difficulties,
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What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
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Therefore, come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord; do not touch any unclean thing, and I will welcome you.
