2 Corinthians 1

¹Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, with all the saints who are in all Achaia:

²Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³Blessed be 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 in any affliction through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God;

⁵For just as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, so also through Christ our comfort abounds.

⁶But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort and salvation, which is at work in the patient endurance of the same sufferings that we also suffer,

⁷knowing that as you are sharers of the sufferings, so also of the comfort.

⁸For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about our affliction that happened to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of living;

⁹But we ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves, so that we might not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead;

¹⁰who delivered us from so great a death and will deliver us; on whom we have set our hope that he will also still deliver us,

¹¹you also joining in helping on our behalf by prayer, so that thanks may be given by many persons for the gracious gift to us through many, on our behalf.

¹²For this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and sincerity of God, and not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and more abundantly toward you.

¹³For we write nothing other to you than what you read or even understand; and I hope that you will understand, even to the end,

¹⁴as also you have understood us in part, that we are your boast even as you also are ours in the day of our Lord Jesus.

¹⁵And with this confidence I was planning to come to you first, so that you might have a second grace,

¹⁶and to pass through you into Macedonia, and again to come from Macedonia to you, and by you to be sent on my way to Judea.

¹⁷Therefore, intending this, did I then act with fickleness? Or what I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, so that with me there should be the Yes, yes and the No, no?

¹⁸But God is faithful, that our word to you is not Yes and No;

¹⁹For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed among you through us, through me and Silvanus and Timothy, did not prove to be Yes and No, but in him it has become Yes;

²⁰For as many as are the promises of God, in him is the Yes; therefore also through him is the Amen, to God for glory through us.

²¹Now the one who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God,

²²who also sealed us and gave the down payment of the Spirit in our hearts.

²³But I call upon God as witness against my soul, that 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; for by faith you stand firm.