1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, together with all the saints who are in the whole of 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 overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
6But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is at work in your endurance of the same sufferings that we also suffer.
7And our hope for you is firm, knowing that as you are sharers in the sufferings, so also in the comfort.
8For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about our affliction that came upon us in Asia: that we were burdened utterly beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of living.
9Indeed, we ourselves had within ourselves the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God, who raises the dead.
10He rescued us from so great a death and will rescue us; in him we have set our hope that he will yet rescue us again,
11as you also join in helping us by your prayer, so that thanks may be given by many persons for the gift granted to us, given through many on our behalf.
12For this is our boast: the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves in the world—and all the more toward you—in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God.
13For we write you nothing other than what you read or also understand; and I hope that you will understand fully to the end,
14just as you have also understood us in part—that we are your boast, just as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.
15And in this confidence I intended to come to you first, so that you might have a second grace,
16and to pass through your region into Macedonia, and again to come to you from Macedonia and be sent on my way by you to Judea.
17So when I intended this, did I act with fickleness? Or the things I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, so that with me there is “Yes, yes” and “No, no”?
18But 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,” but in him it has been “Yes.”
20For as many as are the promises of God, in him they are “Yes.” Therefore also through him is the “Amen,” to the glory of God through us.
21Now the one who establishes us with you in Christ and has 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 it was to spare you that I did not come again to Corinth.
24Not that we lord it over your faith, but we are fellow workers for your joy; for it is by faith that you stand.
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