I would that you endured me a little in foolishness, but, indeed, endure me.
2For I am jealous over you with a jealousy of God. For I have promised you to one Man, to present you a pure virgin to Christ.
3But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent deceived Eve in his craftiness, so your thoughts should be corrupted from the purity which is due to Christ.
4For if, indeed, the one coming proclaims another Jesus, whom we have not proclaimed, or if you receive another spirit which you have not received, or another gospel which you never accepted, you might well endure these.
5For I judge myself to have come behind the highest apostles in nothing.
6But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge. But in every way I have been clearly revealed to you in all things.
7Or did I commit sin, humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge?
8I stripped other assemblies, receiving wages for the serving of you.
9And being present with you and lacking, I was not a burden to anyone. The brothers coming from Macedonia completely made up for my lack. And in every way I kept myself without burden to you, and I will keep myself.
10The truth of Christ is in me, that this boasting shall not be silenced in me in the regions of Achaia.
11Why? Because I do not love you? God knows.
12But what I do, I also will do, that I may cut off the occasion of those desiring an occasion, so that in that which they boast, they be found also as we.
13For such ones are false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.
14And did not Satan marvelously transform himself into an angel of light?
15It is not a great thing, then, if also his ministers transform themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.
16Again I say, let not anyone think me to be foolish. But if not, even if as foolish, receive me, that I also may boast a little.
17What I speak, I speak not according to the Lord, but as in foolishness, in this boldness of boasting.
18Since many boast according to the flesh, I also will boast.
19For you with pleasure endure fools, being wise.
20For you endure if anyone enslaves you, if anyone devours, if anyone takes away from you, if anyone exalts self, if anyone beats you in the face.
21I speak according to dishonor, as if we have been weak. But in whatever anyone dares (I say it in foolishness), I also dare.
22Are they Hebrews? I also. Are they Israelites? I also. Are they Abraham's seed? I also.
23Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as beside myself.) I being beyond them: in labors, more abundantly; in stripes, beyond measure; in prisons, much more; in deaths, many times.
24Five times I received forty stripes minus one from the Jews.
25I was flogged three times; I was stoned once; I was shipwrecked three times; I have spent a night and a day in the deep.
26I have been in travels often, in dangers of rivers, in dangers of robbers, in dangers from my race, in dangers from the nations, in dangers in the city, in dangers in a wilderness, in dangers in the sea, in dangers among false brothers,
27in hardship and toil, often in watchings, in hunger and thirst, often in fastings, in cold and nakedness,
28besides the things outside conspiring against me day by day, the care of all the assemblies.
29Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is caused to stumble, and I do not burn?
30If it is right to boast, I will boast of the things of my infirmity.
31The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ knows, the One being blessed to the ages, that I am not lying.
32In Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes, desiring to seize me.
33And I was let down through a window through the wall in a basket and escaped their hands.