2 Corinthians

11 I wish you would put up with a little bit of silliness from me; yes, do put up with me. 2 For I am jealous over you, feeling God’s jealousy. For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you to Christ a pure virgin; 3 and I am afraid lest, as the snake befooled Eve by his trickery, your sentiments should be seduced away from Christ-directed single-mindedness and purity. 4 For if the one who comes preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach, or you get a different spirit that you did not get, or a different gospel that you did not receive, you are quite right in putting up with him. 5 For I figure that I have in no respect fallen behind the superlative apostles. 6* And even if I am uneducated in talk I am not in knowledge, but in everything we have made it manifest by everything on all occasions among you.

7 Or did I commit a sin by lowering myself to have you upraised, in that I preached God’s gospel to you gratis? 8 I looted other churches, taking pay for service to you; 9 and when I was there with you and was in want I did not squeeze anybody, for the brothers came from Macedonia and supplemented my shortage; and in everything I kept myself from being a load on you, and will do so. 10* It is gospel truth what I am telling you, I am not going to have this boast blocked against me in the territories of Achaea. 11 Why? because I do not love you? God knows. 12 But what I am doing and will do is in order to cut away the foothold of those who desire a foothold to start from, in order that in the point they boast of they may be found to be the same as we are. 13 For men of that sort are false apostles, tricky workmen, reshaping themselves into apostles of Christ’s— 14 and no wonder, for Satan himself reshapes himself into an angel of light, 15 so it is no great thing if his agents too reshape themselves like agents of righteousness; their end will be suitable to their deeds.

16* I say again, do not any of you think I am silly. But if you do, at least give me a silly man’s hearing so that I too may do a little boasting. 17 What I am saying I am not saying along the Lord’s line but, so to speak, in silliness, in this insistence on boasting. 18 Since many are boasting along the line of flesh, so will I. 19* For you do like to put up with silly people, you being so sensible; 20* for you put up with it if one enslaves you, if one eats you out of house and home, if one takes things, if one holds his head high, if one strikes you in the face.

21 I am speaking in terms of disrespect as if the point were that we had been weak. But as to what anybody presumes on, I say in silliness, so do I presume. 22 They are Hebrews—so am I. They are Israelites—so am I. They are descendants of Abraham—so am I. 23 They are Christ’s messengers—I am out of my senses to say it, more so I, with an uncommon amount of hard work, an uncommon number of imprisonments, a record-breaking number of beatings, a great number of deaths. 24 At Jews’ hands I five times received forty stripes lacking one; 25* three times I was beaten with Roman rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked, I have spent a day and a night in the deep; 26 often on the move, in dangers by rivers, dangers by robbers, dangers from those of my blood, dangers from foreigners, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among pretended brothers, 27 in toil and drudgery, with many a sleepless night, with hunger and thirst, many times without anything to eat, with cold and nakedness. 28* Apart from the things outside me, there is what takes up my mind day after day, anxiety about all the churches. 29* Who is sick and I am not sick? who trips up and my face does not burn? 30 If I have to boast I will boast of things connected with my weakness. 31 The Lord Jesus Christ’s God and Father knows, he who is blessed forever, that I am not lying: 32 at Damascus King Harithath’s sheik had a force in the city of the Damascenes to arrest me, 33 and I was let down in a basket through the wall by a window and escaped his hands.