Greeting
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia: 2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The God of all comfort
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we can comfort those in any affliction with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5For as the sufferings of the Christ overflow into us, so through the Christ our comfort overflows as well. 6If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which does its work as you endure the same sufferings we endure. 7And our hope for you is unshaken, since we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you share in the comfort. 8We do not want you left in the dark, brothers and sisters, about the affliction that came upon us in Asia: we were crushed beyond measure, beyond our strength, until we despaired even of living. 9Within ourselves we had already received the sentence of death, so that we would place no confidence in ourselves but in God, who raises the dead. 10He rescued us from so deadly a peril, and he rescues us still; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, 11while you join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the favor granted us through the prayers of many.
Why Paul changed his plans
12This is our boast: the testimony of our conscience that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and above all toward you, with the holiness and sincerity that come from God, not with worldly cleverness but by the grace of God. 13We write you nothing but what you can read and understand, and I hope you will understand to the end, 14as you have already understood us in part: that we are your boast, just as you will be ours on the day of our Lord Jesus. 15Confident of this, I meant to come to you first, so that you might have a second occasion of grace: 16to pass your way on my journey to Macedonia, to come back to you from Macedonia, and to be sent on by you toward Judea. 17When I planned this, was I being careless? Or do I make my plans in a merely human way, saying “Yes, yes” and “No, no” in the same breath? 18As surely as God is faithful, our word to you is not Yes and No. 19For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was proclaimed among you by us — by me and Silvanus and Timothy — was not Yes and No; in him it has always been Yes. 20For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we say the Amen, to the glory of God. 21It is God who makes us stand firm with you in the Christ; he anointed us, 22he set his seal on us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as the down payment of what is to come. 23I call God as witness against my own life: it was to spare you that I did not come again to Corinth. 24Not that we lord it over your faith; we are fellow workers for your joy, for it is by faith that you stand.
