Chronological Plan

¹Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, and Timothy our brother: To the church of God at Corinth, with all the saints who are throughout 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 the God of all comfort.

⁴He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

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

⁶If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.

⁷And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will also share in the comfort.

⁸We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed — beyond our strength  — so that we even despaired of life itself.

⁹Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.

¹⁰He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and he will deliver us. We have put our hope in him that he will deliver us again

¹¹while you join in helping us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.

¹²Indeed, this is our boast: The testimony of our conscience is that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with godly sincerity and purity, not by human wisdom but by God’s grace.

¹³For we are writing nothing to you other than what you can read and also understand. I hope you will understand completely —

¹⁴just as you have partially understood us — that we are your reason for pride, just as you also are ours in the day of our Lord Jesus.

¹⁵Because of this confidence, I planned to come to you first, so that you could have a second benefit,

¹⁶and to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and then come to you again from Macedonia and be helped by you on my journey to Judea.

¹⁷Now when I planned this, was I of two minds? Or what I plan, do I plan in a purely human way so that I say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time?

¹⁸As God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes and no.”

¹⁹For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you — Silvanus, Timothy, and I — did not become “Yes and no.” On the contrary, in him it is always “Yes.”

²⁰For every one of God’s promises is “Yes” in him. Therefore, through him we also say “Amen” to the glory of God.

²¹Now it is God who strengthens us together with you in Christ, and who has anointed us.

²²He has also put his seal on us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.

²³I call on God as a witness, on my life, that it was to spare you that I did not come to Corinth.

²⁴I do not mean that we lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy, because you stand firm in your faith.

¹In fact, I made up my mind about this: I would not come to you on another painful visit.

²For if I cause you pain, then who will cheer me other than the one being hurt by me?

³I wrote this very thing so that when I came I wouldn’t have pain from those who ought to give me joy, because I am confident about all of you that my joy will also be yours.

⁴For I wrote to you with many tears out of an extremely troubled and anguished heart — not to cause you pain, but that you should know the abundant love I have for you.

⁵If anyone has caused pain, he has caused pain not so much to me but to some degree — not to exaggerate  — to all of you.

⁶This punishment by the majority is sufficient for that person.

⁷As a result, you should instead forgive and comfort him. Otherwise, he may be overwhelmed by excessive grief.

⁸Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.

⁹I wrote for this purpose: to test your character to see if you are obedient in everything.

¹⁰Anyone you forgive, I do too. For what I have forgiven — if I have forgiven anything — it is for your benefit in the presence of Christ,

¹¹so that we may not be taken advantage of by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his schemes.

¹²When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though the Lord opened a door for me,

¹³I had no rest in my spirit because I did not find my brother Titus. Instead, I said good-bye to them and left for Macedonia.

¹⁴But thanks be to God, who always leads us in Christ’s triumphal procession and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place.

¹⁵For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

¹⁶To some we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others, an aroma of life leading to life. Who is adequate for these things?

¹⁷For we do not market the word of God for profit like so many. On the contrary, we speak with sincerity in Christ, as from God and before God.

¹Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you?

²You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.

³You show that you are Christ’s letter, delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God  — not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

⁴Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God.

⁵It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

⁶He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷Now if the ministry that brought death, chiseled in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the Israelites were not able to gaze steadily at Moses’s face because of its glory, which was set aside,

⁸how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?

⁹For if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory.

¹⁰In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it.

¹¹For if what was set aside was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious.

¹²Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.

¹³We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside,

¹⁴but their minds were hardened. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ.

¹⁵Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts,

¹⁶but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

¹⁷Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

¹⁸We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

¹Therefore, since we have this ministry because we were shown mercy, we do not give up.

²Instead, we have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone’s conscience by an open display of the truth.

³But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

⁴In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

⁵For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake.

⁶For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

⁷Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.

⁸We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair;

⁹we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed.

¹⁰We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body.

¹¹For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh.

¹²So then, death is at work in us, but life in you.

¹³And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore speak.

¹⁴For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you.

¹⁵Indeed, everything is for your benefit so that, as grace extends through more and more people, it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.

¹⁶Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.

¹⁷For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.

¹⁸So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.