- katapi - New Study Bible ... by URL bible references -
| DB1 | New English Bible
101 BUT I, PAUL, appeal to you by the gentleness and magnanimity of Christ - I, so feeble (you say) when I am face to face with you, so brave when I am away. 2 Spare me, I beg you, the necessity of such bravery when I come, for I reckon I could put on as bold a face as you please against those who charge us with moral weakness. 3 Weak men we may be, but it is not as such that we fight our battles. 4 The weapons we wield are not merely human, but divinely potent to demolish strongholds; 5 we demolish sophistries and all that rears its proud head against the knowledge of God; we compel every human thought to surrender in obedience to Christ; 6 and we are prepared to punish all rebellion when once you have put yourselves in our hands.
7 Look facts in the face. Someone is convinced, is he, that he belongs to Christ? Let him think again, and reflect that we belong to Christ as much as he does. 8 Indeed, if I am somewhat over-boastful about our authority-an authority given by the Lord to build you up, not pull you down-I shall make my boast good. 9 So you must not think of me as one who scares you by the letters he writes. 10 'His letters', so it is said, 'are weighty and powerful; but when he appears he has no presence, and as a speaker he is beneath contempt.' 11 People who talk in that way should reckon with this: when I come, my actions will show the same man as my letters showed in my absence.
12 We should not dare to class ourselves or compare ourselves with any of those who put forward their own claims. What fools they are to measure themselves by themselves, to find in themselves their own standard of comparison! 13 With us there will be no attempt to boast beyond our proper sphere; and our sphere is determined by the limit God laid down for us, which permitted us to come as far as Corinth. 14 We are not overstretching our commission, as we should be if it did not extend to you, for we were the first to reach Corinth in preaching the gospel of Christ. 15 And we do not boast of work done where others have laboured, work beyond our proper sphere. Our hope is rather that, as your faith grows, we may attain a position among you greater than ever before, but still within the limits of our sphere. 16 Then we can carry the Gospel to lands that lie beyond you, never priding ourselves on work already done in another man's sphere. 17 If a man must boast, let him boast of the Lord. 18 Not the man who recommends himself, but the man whom the Lord recommends - he and he alone is to be accepted.
111 I wish you would bear with me in a little of my folly; please do bear with me. 2 I am jealous for you, with a divine jealousy; for I betrothed you to Christ, thinking to present you as a chaste virgin to her true and only husband. 3 But as the serpent in his cunning seduced Eve, I am afraid that your thoughts may be corrupted and you may lose your single-hearted devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes who proclaims another Jesus, not the Jesus whom we proclaimed, or if you then receive a spirit different from the Spirit already given to you, or a gospel different from the gospel you have already accepted, you manage to put up with that well enough. 5 Have I in any way come short of those superlative apostles? I think not. 6 I may be no speaker, but knowledge I have; at all times we have made known to you the full truth.
7 Or was this my offence, that I made no charge for preaching the gospel of God, lowering myself to help in raising you? 8 It is true that I took toll of other congregations, accepting support from them to serve you. 9 Then, while I was with you, if I ran short I sponged on no one; anything I needed was fully met by our friends who came from Macedonia; I made it a rule, as I always shall, never to be a burden to you. 10 As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, I will preserve my pride in this matter throughout Achaia, and nothing shall stop me. 11 Why? Is it that I do not love you? God knows I do.
12 And I shall go on doing as I am doing now, to cut the ground from under those who would seize any chance to put their vaunted apostleship on the same level as ours. 13 Such men are sham-apostles, crooked in all their practices, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14 There is nothing surprising about that; Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15 It is therefore a simple thing for his agents to masquerade as agents of good. But they will meet the end their deeds deserve.
16 I repeat: let no one take me for a fool; but if you must, then give me the privilege of a fool, and let me have my little boast like others. 17 I am not speaking here as a Christian, but like a fool, if it comes to is bragging. 18 So many people brag of their earthly distinctions that I shall do so too. 19 How gladly you bear with fools, being yourselves so wise! 20 If a man tyrannizes over you, exploits you, gets you in his clutches, puts on airs, and hits you in the face, you put up with it. 21 And we, you say, have been weak! I admit the reproach.
But if there is to be bravado (and here I speak as a fool), I can indulge in it too. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Israelites? So am I. Abraham's descendants? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am mad to speak like this, but I can outdo them. More overworked than they, scourged more severely, more often imprisoned, many a time face to face with death. 24 Five times the Jews have given me the thirty-nine strokes; 25 three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked, and for twenty-four hours I was adrift on the open sea. 26 I have been constantly on the road; I have met dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my fellow-countrymen, dangers from foreigners, dangers in towns, dangers in the country, dangers at sea, dangers from false friends. 27 I have toiled and drudged, I have often gone without sleep; hungry and thirsty, I have often gone fasting; and I have suffered from cold and exposure.
28 Apart from these external things, there is the responsibility that weighs on me every day, my anxious concern for all our congregations. 29 If anyone is weak, do I not share his weakness? If anyone is made to stumble, does my heart not blaze with indignation? 30 If boasting there must be, I will boast of the things that show up my weakness. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus (blessed be his name for ever!) knows that what I say is true. 32 When I was in Damascus, the commissioner of King Aretas kept the city under observation so as to have me arrested; 33 and I was let down in a basket, through a window in the wall, and so escaped his clutches.
121 I AM OBLIGED TO BOAST. It does no good; but I shall go on to tell of visions and revelations granted by the Lord. 2 I know a Christian man who fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of it, I do not know- God knows) was caught up as far as the third heaven. 3 And I know that this same man (whether in the body or out of it, I do not know - God knows) 4 was caught up into Pdise, and heard words so secret that human lips may not repeat them. 5 About such a man as that I am ready to boast; but I will not boast on my own account, except of my weaknesses. 6 If I should choose to boast, it would not be the boast of a fool, for I should be speaking the truth. But I refrain, because I should not like anyone to form an estimate of me which goes beyond the evidence of his own eyes and ears. 7 And so, to keep me from being unduly elated by the magnificence of such revelations, I was given a sharp pain in my body which came as Satan's messenger to bruise me; this was to save me from being unduly elated. 8 Three times I begged the Lord to rid me of it, 9 but his answer was: 'My grace is all you need; power comes to its full strength in weakness.' I shall therefore prefer to find my joy and pride in the very things that are my weakness; and then the power of Christ will come and rest upon me. 10 Hence I am well content, for Christ's sake, with weakness, contempt, persecution, hardship, and frustration; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
11 I AM BEING VERY FOOLISH, but it was you who drove me to it; my credentials should have come from you. In no respect did I fall short of these superlative apostles, even if I am a nobody. 12 The marks of a true apostle were there, in the work I did among you, which called for such constant fortitude, and was attended by signs, marvels, and miracles. 13 Is there anything in which you were treated worse than the other congregations-except this, that I never sponged upon you? How unfair of me! I crave forgiveness.
14 Here am I preparing to pay you a third visit; and I am not going to sponge upon you. It is you I want, not your money; parents should make provision for their children, not children for their parents. 15 As for me, I will gladly spend what I have for you - yes, and spend myself to the limit. If I love you overmuch, am I to be loved the less? 16 But, granted that I did not prove a burden to you, still I was unscrupulous enough, you say, to use a trick to catch you. 17 Who, of the men I have sent to you, was used by me to defraud you? 18 I begged Titus to visit you, and I sent our friend is with him. Did Titus defraud you? Have we not both been guided by the same Spirit, and followed the same course?
19 Perhaps you think that all this time we have been addressing our defence to you. No; we are speaking in God's sight, and as Christian men. Our whole aim, my own dear people, is to build you up. 20 I fear that when I come I may perhaps find you different from what I wish you to be, and that you may find me also different from what you wish. I fear I may find quarrelling and jealousy, angry tempers and personal rivalries, backbiting and gossip, arrogance and general disorder. 21 I am afraid that, when I come again, my God may humiliate me in your presence, that I may have tears to shed over many of those who have sinned in the past and have not repented of their unclean lives, their fornication and sensuality.
131 This will be my third visit to you; and all facts must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 2 To those who have sinned in the past, and to everyone else, I repeat the warning I gave before; I gave it in person on my second visit, and I give it now in absence. It is that when I come this time, I will show no leniency. 3 Then you will have the proof you seek of the Christ who speaks through me, the Christ who, far from being weak with you, makes his power felt among you. 4 True, he died on the cross in weakness, but he lives by the power of God; and we who share his weakness shall by the power of God live with him in your service.
5 Examine yourselves: are you living the life of faith? Put yourselves to the test. Surely you recognize that Jesus Christ is among you? - unless of course you prove unequal to the test. 6 I hope you will come to see that we are not unequal to it. 7 Our prayer to God is that we may not have to hurt you; we are not concerned to be vindicated ourselves; we want you to do what is right, even if we should seem to be discredited. 8 For we have no power to act against the truth, but only for it. 9 We are well content to be weak at any time if only you are strong. Indeed, my whole prayer is that all may be put right with you. 10 My purpose in writing this letter before I come, is to spare myself, when I come, any sharp exercise of authority - authority which the Lord gave me for building up and not for pulling down.
11 And now, my friends, farewell. Mend your ways; take our appeal to heart; agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.
12 Greet one another with the kiss of peace.
13 All God's people send you greetings.