Letters to the Churches

but he told me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is brought to perfection in weakness.” Therefore, I am very happy to boast about my weaknesses, in order that the Messiah’s power will rest upon me.

Yes, I am well pleased with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties endured on behalf of the Messiah; for it is when I am weak that I am strong.

I have behaved like a fool, but you forced me to do it — you who should have been commending me. For I am in no way inferior to the “super-emissaries,” even if I am nothing.

The things that prove I am an emissary — signs, wonders and miracles — were done in your presence, despite what I had to endure.

Is there any way in which you have been behind any of the other congregations, other than in my not having been a burden to you? For this unfairness, please forgive me!

Look, I am ready this third time to come and visit you; and I will not be a burden to you; for it is not what you own that I want, but you! Children are not supposed to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

And as for me, I will most gladly spend everything I have and be spent myself too for your sakes. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?

Let it be granted, then, that I was not a burden to you; but, crafty fellow that I am, I took you with trickery!

Was it perhaps through someone I sent you

that I took advantage of you? I urged Titus to go and sent the brother with him; Titus didn’t take advantage of you, did he? Didn’t we live by the same Spirit and show you the same path?

Perhaps you think that all this time we have been defending ourselves before you. No, we have been speaking in the sight of God, as those united with the Messiah should; and, my dear friends, it is all for your upbuilding.

For I am afraid of coming and finding you not the way I want you to be, and also of not being found the way you want me to be. I am afraid of finding quarreling and jealousy, anger and rivalry, slander and gossip, arrogance and disorder.

I am afraid that when I come again, my God may humiliate me in your presence, and that I will be grieved over many of those who sinned in the past and have not repented of the impurity, fornication and debauchery that they have engaged in.

This will be the third time that I have come to visit you. Any charge must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

To those who sinned in the past and to the rest I say beforehand while absent the same thing I said when I was with you the second time: if I come again I will not spare you —

since you are looking for proof of the Messiah speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but he is powerful among you.

For although he was executed on a stake in weakness, now he lives by God’s power. And we too are weak in union with him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by God’s power.

Examine yourselves to see whether you are living the life of trust. Test yourselves. Don’t you realize that Yeshua the Messiah is in you? — unless you fail to pass the test.

But I hope you will realize that we are not failures.

And we pray to God that you will do nothing wrong. We are not concerned with our appearing successful, but with your doing what is right, even if we appear to be failures.

For we cannot act against the truth, only for it.

So we rejoice whenever we are weak and you are strong; indeed, what we pray for is that you become perfect.

I write these things while away from you, so that when I am with you I will not have to use my authority to deal sharply with you, for the Lord gave it to me for building up and not for tearing down.

And now, brothers, shalom! Put yourselves in order, pay attention to my advice, be of one mind, live in shalom — and the God of love and shalom will be with you.

Greet one another with a holy kiss.