PAUL'S SECOND LETTER TO THE

CORINTHIANS

I

PAUL, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy the brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth with all the holy that are in all Achaia:

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

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of loving kindness and the God of all encouragement, who encourages us in every distress so that we may be able to encourage those who are in every distress by the encouragement by which we ourselves have been encouraged by God. Because as the sufferings of Christ are abundant in our case, so through Christ our encouragement is abundant. But if we are in distress, it is for your encouragement and salvation. If we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement which is effective in the endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope is strong regarding you, since we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings so you are of the encouragement. For we do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, regarding the distress that came on us in Asia that we were exceedingly weighed down, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed we have the sentence of death within ourselves, that our trust may not rest on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a death and will deliver, and we have hope in him that he will go on delivering, while you help by your prayers for us, so that from many persons thanksgiving may arise for the gift granted to us through the prayers of many for us.

For this is what we boast of, the witness of our conscience that in holiness, and sincerity before God, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have lived in the world

and especially toward you. For we are not writing to you anything but what you read and acknowledge and I hope you will acknowledge to the end, as you have partly acknowledged it about us, that we are your ground of boasting and you are ours on the day of our Lord Jesus.

With this confidence I intended to come to you first, so that you might have a second favor, by my visiting you on the way to Macedonia and again coming back from Macedonia to you and being sped by you on my way toward Judæa. When I was intending this, did I show fickleness? Or do I plan what I plan according to the flesh, so that I may say yes, yes, and no, no? As God is faithful, my word to you is not yes and no. For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was proclaimed among you by us-myself and Silvanus and Timothy-was not yes and no, but in him was yes. For all the promises of God, however many, have their yes in him. Therefore also through him is the Amen to the glory of God through us. It is God who makes us and you steadfast to Christ, and has anointed us and sealed us and has given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.

I call God as a witness against my soul that in order to spare you I have not yet come to Corinth. Not that we are lords over your faith, but fellow workers sharing your joy, for you are standing firm in the faith.

II

BUT I decided this in my own mind, not to come again to you in sorrow. For if I grieve you, who is there to cheer me except those who are grieved by me? I am writing this very thing so that I may not come and have grief from those who ought to make me glad, for I am confident in regard to all of you that my joy is yours. For out of great distress and pain of heart I am writing with many tears, not that you may be grieved, but that you may know the love that I have beyond measure for you.

But if any one has caused grief, he has grieved not me, but to some extent - not to be too severe all of you. Sufficient for such a one is this punishment by the majority, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive him and encourage him,

that such a one may not be swallowed up in excessive grief. Therefore I beg you to assure him of your love. Because for this purpose I am writing, that I may know your tested character, whether you are obedient in everything. To whomever you forgive anything I also forgive it, and what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, it was for your sake in the sight of Christ, that Satan may not take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his purposes.

When I came to Troas for the good news of Christ and a door had been opened for me in the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit because I did not find Titus my brother, but bidding them farewell I came away to Macedonia. Thanks be to God who always leads us in his triumph in Christ and spreads through us the sweet odor of the knowledge of him in every place. For we are for God a sweet odor of Christ — in the saved and in the perishing. To the latter an odor from death to death, to the former an odor from life to life. And who is competent for this? For we are not, like the most, adulterating the message of God for gain, but in sincerity, as from God, in the presence of God, we speak in Christ.

III

ARE we beginning again to recommend ourselves? Do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men, evidently a letter of Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets, but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.

We have such confidence through Christ toward God. Not that of ourselves we are fit to reason out anything as from ourselves, but our fitness is from God, who has fitted us to be servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.

If the service that brought death, engraved in letters on stones, came in glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face that fading glory-how much more glorious will not the service of the Spirit be? For if the service that brought con

demnation was glory, much more will the service that brings righteousness surpass in glory. For what was made so glorious is in a way no longer glorious compared with the glory that surpasses it. For if what was to be ended came in glory, much more glorious must be that which is enduring.

With such a hope then we speak with great frankness, and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel might not see when the vanishing glory ended; but their thinking was dulled. For to this day the same veil remains unlifted when the old covenant is read; because it is done away only in Christ. To this day when Moses is read the veil lies on their hearts; "but when they turn to the Lord the veil is taken away." The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. And we all, with unveiled face, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same likeness from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord.

IV

THEREFORE, having this service through God's mercy, we are not downhearted, but we have renounced shameful secret things, not living in craftiness nor adulterating God's message, but by the openness of truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. If our good news is veiled, it is veiled to those who are going to ruin, in whom the god of this world has blinded the thinking of the unbelieving so that the light of the glorious good news of Christ, who is the image of God, may not shine in. For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. Because it is the God who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts bringing the light of the glorious knowledge of God in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in earthen jars, that the surpassing power may be God's and not ours in every way distressed, but not reduced to straits, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed, always bearing about in our bodies the death of Jesus that the

life also of Jesus may be manifest in our bodies. For we, though living, are always delivered up to death for Jesus' sake, that also the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you. Having the same spirit of faith, as it is written, "I believed, therefore I spoke," we too believe and therefore speak, knowing that he who raised up Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus and place us in his presence with you. For all things are for your sake, that grace abounding through many may overflow in thanksgiving to the glory of God.

Therefore we are not downhearted, but even if our outward man is wasting away, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. For our momentary and light distress is working out for us a far surpassing and eternal weight of glory while we contemplate not the things that are seen, but the things unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things unseen are eternal.

V

FOR we know that if this tent, our earthly home, is thrown down, we have a building of God, a home not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we sigh in earnest desire to put on our dwelling that comes from heaven, since if we put that on we shall not be found naked. For while we are in this tent we sigh being burdened, not that we wish to be unclothed, but to put on the other, that what is mortal may be swallowed up in life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, and he has given to us the pledge of the Spirit.

So being always of good courage and knowing that while living at home in the body we are living in a foreign land away from the Lord-for we walk by faith, not by sight - I say we are of good courage and wish rather to live in the land foreign to the body and be at home with the Lord. Therefore also we are ambitious to be pleasing to him, whether at home with him or in this foreign land. For we must all appear as we truly are before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive the award for what he has done with his body, according to his actions, whether good or bad.