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Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia:
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Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Praise to the God of All Comfort
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
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who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
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For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.
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If we are distressed, 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 we suffer.
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And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
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Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
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Paul’s Change of Plans
Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, with integrity and godly sincerity. We have done so, relying not on worldly wisdom but on God’s grace.
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as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus.
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But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.”
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For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me and Silas and Timothy—was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.”
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For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.
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Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us,
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set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
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I call God as my witness—and I stake my life on it—that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth.
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Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm.
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For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved?
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The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient.
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But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.
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For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.
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To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?
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Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God.
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You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
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Such confidence we have through Christ before God.
