1 To the Church of God which is in Corinth, and to all the saints throughout Greece. from Paul, by Gods will an apostle of Christ, and from brother Timothy.

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

3 Thanks be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of tender mercies and the God of all comfort,

4 who ever comforts me in all my troubles, so that I may be continually able to comfort those who are in any trouble by the comfort with which God is ever comforting me.

5 For just as I have more than my share in the sufferings of the Christ, so also through the Christ I have more than my share of comfort.

6 If I am afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if I am receiving comfort, it is for your comfort - a comfort produced within you by your patient fortitude, under the same sufferings which I also am enduring.

7 My hope for you is firm; for I know that as you are comrades in my sufferings, so also are you comrades in my comfort.

8 Now, brothers, I want you to know about the troubles which befell me in Asia; how I was burdened altogether beyond my strength, so that I renounced all hope even of life itself.

9 Indeed, I had in myself, and still have, the sentence of death, in order that I might not rely on myself, but on God who raises the dead to life.

10 He delivered me from such a death, and will deliver me. On him I have set my hopes that he will continue to deliver me,

11 while all of you also are helping me by your prayers; so that from many lips thanksgiving may rise on my behalf for the blessings vouchsafed to me through the intercessions of many.

12 For this is my proud boast, the testimony of my conscience, that it was in holiness and with pure motives before God, not in worldly wisdom, but in the grace of God, that I have conducted myself in the world, and above all in my relations with you.

13 For I am writing to you nothing different from what you read aloud and very well recognize, and I hope will continue to recognize to the very end,

14 as some indeed did recognize in part at last, that I am your cause of boasting, just as you will be mine on the Day of Jesus our Lord.

15 And in this confidence I intended to visit you, before going elsewhere, that you might have a pleasure twice over.

16 I intended to go by you into Macedonia, and to come again to you from Macedonia, and by you to be sent forward on my way to Judea.

17 In purposing this did I display "caprice"? Or what I purpose do I purpose in a worldly way,so that it may mean either "Yes, yes," or "No, no"?

18 As God is faithful, my message to you is not now "Yes," now "No."

19 For Jesus Christ, Son of God, who was proclaimed among you by us, that is, by Silvanus and Timothy and me, was not wavering between "Yes" and "No," but in him is the everlasting "Yes."

20 For however many are the promises of God, in him they are "Yes." Therefore also through him let the Amen be said by our voices to the glory of God.

21 And he who has established me with you in the Anointed One, and has anointed me, is God.

22 He has also set his seal upon me, and given me the pledge of his Spirit in my heart.

23 But for my part I call God to witness, as my soul shall answer for it, that it was to spare you that I came not to Corinth

24 (not that I am attempting to lord it over your faith, but rather to work with you for your happiness); for your faith is stedfast.