Dual Panel1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, together with all the saints who are in all Achaia.
2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3Blessed [is] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
4who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those [who are] in all affliction with the comfort with which [we] ourselves are comforted by God.
5For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, thus through Christ our comfort overflows also.
6But if we are afflicted, [it is] for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, [it is] for your comfort that is at work in the patient endurance of the same sufferings that we also suffer.
7And our hope for you [is] firm, [because we] know that as you are sharers in the sufferings, so also [you will be sharers] in the comfort.
8For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning our affliction that happened in the [province of] Asia, that we were burdened to an extraordinary degree, beyond [our] strength, so that we were in despair even of living.
9But [we] ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we would not be putting confidence in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead,
10who delivered us from so great [a risk] of death, and will deliver [us], in whom we have put our hope that he will also deliver [us] again,
11[while] you also join in helping _on our behalf_ by prayer, so that thanks may be given _on our behalf_ by many persons for this gracious gift [given] to us through [the help] of many.
12For our reason for boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, in sincerity and purity of motive from God and not in merely human wisdom, but by the grace of God.
13For we are not writing [anything] else to you except what you can read or also understand. But I hope that you will understand _completely_ ,
14just as you have also understood us in part, that we are your reason for boasting, just as you [are] also ours in the day of our Lord Jesus.
15And with this confidence, I was wanting to come to you previously, in order that you may have a second proof of my goodwill,
16and through you to go to Macedonia, and to come to you again from Macedonia, and to be sent on my way by you to Judea.
17Therefore, [when I] was wanting [to do] this, perhaps then was I making use of vacillation? Or was I deciding what I was deciding according to the flesh, in order that with me my "yes" may be "yes" and my "no" [may be] "no" [at the same time]?
18But God [is] faithful, so that our word to you is not "yes" and "no.
19For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the one who was proclaimed among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timothy, did not become "yes" and "no," but has become "yes" in him.
20For as many as [are the] promises of God, in him [they are] "yes"; therefore also through him [is] the "amen" to the glory of God through us.
21Now the one who establishes us together with you in Christ and who anoints us [is] God,
22[who] also sealed us and gave the down payment of the Spirit in our hearts.
23But I call upon God [as] witness against my life, that [in order to] spare you, I did not come again to Corinth.
24Not that we lord it over your faith, but we are fellow workers for your joy, because by faith you stand firm.