11 ¹ I wish you would bear with me in a little of my folly; please do bear with me. 11 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. 11 ³ But as the serpent in his cunning seduced Eve, I am afraid that your thoughts may be corrupted and you may lose your Some witnesses insert: purity and ... single-hearted devotion to Christ. 11 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. 11 ⁵ Have I in any way come short of those superlative apostles? I think not. 11 ⁶ I may be no speaker, but knowledge I have; at all times we have made known to you the full truth.

11 ⁷ Or was this my offence, that I made no charge for preaching the gospel of God, lowering myself to help in raising you? 11 ⁸ It is true that I took toll of other congregations, accepting Or: Did I take toll of other congregations by accepting ... ? support from them to serve you. 11 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. 11 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 ¹¹ Why? Is it that I do not love you? God knows I do.

11 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. 11 ¹³ Such men are sham-apostles, crooked in all their practices, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 11 ¹⁴ There is nothing surprising about that; Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 11 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.