BibleWare/BibWare.bin/bibtrans/weymouth.exe/2CO.WNT

Text File | 1993-06-07 | 41KB | 784 lines

1:1 Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God--and our
 brother Timothy: To the Church of God in Corinth, with all
 God's people throughout /1 Greece.
1:2 May grace and peace be granted to you from God our Father
 and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1:3 Heartfelt thanks be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
 Christ--the /2 Father who is full of compassion and the God who
 gives all /3 comfort.
1:4 He comforts us in our every affliction so that we may be
 able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction by
 means of the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by
 God.
1:5 For just as we have more than our share of suffering for the
 Christ, so also through the Christ we have more than our share
 of comfort.
1:6 But if, on the one hand, we are enduring affliction, it is
 /4 for your comfort and salvation; and if, on the other hand,
 we are receiving comfort, it is for your comfort which is
 produced within you through your patient fortitude under the
 same sufferings as those which we also are enduring.
1:7 And our hope for you is stedfast; for we know that as you
 are partners with us in the sufferings, so you are also
 partners in the comfort.

1:8 For as for our troubles which came upon us in /1 the
 province of Asia, we would have you know, brethren, that we
 were exceedingly weighed down, /2 and felt overwhelmed, so that
 we renounced all hope even of life.
1:9 Nay, we had, as we still have, the /3 sentence of death
 within our own selves, in order that our confidence may repose,
 not on ourselves, but on God who raised the dead to life.
1:10 He it is who rescued us from so imminent a death, and will
 do so again; and we have a firm hope in Him that He will also
 rescue us in all the future,
1:11 while you on your part lend us your aid in entreaty for us,
 so that from many lips thanksgivings may rise on our behalf for
 the boon granted to us at the intercession of many.
1:12 For the reason for our boasting is this--the testimony of
 our own conscience that it was in holiness and with /4 pure
 motives before God, and in reliance not on worldly wisdom but
 on the gracious help of God, that we have conducted ourselves
 in the world, and above all in our relations with you.
1:13 For we are writing to you nothing different from what we
 have written before, or from what indeed you already recognize
 as truth and will, I trust, recognize as such to the very end;
1:14 just as some few of you have recognized us as your reason
 for boasting, even as you will be ours, on the day of Jesus our
 Lord.
1:15 It was because I entertained this confidence that I
 intended to visit you /5 before going elsewhere--so that you
 might receive a twofold /6 proof of God's favour--
1:16 and to pass by way of Corinth into Macedonia. Then my plan
 was to return from Macedonia to you, and be helped forward by
 you to Judaea.
1:17 Did I display any /7 vacillation or caprice in this? Or the
 purposes which I form--do I form them on worldly principles,
 now crying "Yes, yes," and now "No, no"?
1:18 As certainly as God is faithful, our language to you is not
 now "Yes" and now "No."

1:19 For Jesus Christ the Son of God--He who was proclaimed
 among you by us, that is by /1 Silas and Timothy and
 myself--did not show Himself a waverer between "Yes" and "No."
 But it /2 was and always is "Yes" with Him.
1:20 For all the promises of God, whatever their number, have /3
 their confirmation in Him; and for this reason through Him also
 our "Amen" acknowledges their truth /4 and promotes the glory
 of God through our faith.
1:21 But He who is making us as well as you stedfast through
 union with /5 the Anointed One, and has anointed us, is God,
1:22 and He has also set His seal upon us, and has /6 put /7 His
 Spirit into our hearts as a pledge and foretaste of future
 blessing.
1:23 But as for me, as my soul shall answer for it, I appeal to
 God as my witness, that it was to spare you pain that I gave up
 my visit to Corinth.
1:24 /8 Not that we want to lord it over you in respect of your
 faith--we do, however, desire to help your joy--for in the
 matter of your faith you are standing firm.
2:1 But, so far as I am concerned, I have resolved not to have a
 painful visit the next time I come to see you.
2:2 For if I of all men give you pain, who then is there to
 gladden my heart, but the very persons to whom I give pain?
2:3 And I write this to you in order that when I come I may not
 receive pain from those who ought to give me joy, confident as
 I am as to all of you that my joy is the joy of you all.
2:4 For with many tears I write to you, and in deep suffering
 and depression of spirit, not in order to grieve you, but in
 the hope of showing you how brimful my heart is with love for
 you.
2:5 Now if any one has caused sorrow, it has been caused not so
 much to me, as in some degree--for I have no wish to
 exaggerate--to all of you.
2:6 In the case of such a person the punishment which was
 inflicted by the majority of you is enough.

2:7 So that you may now take the opposite course, and forgive
 him /1 rather and comfort him, for fear he should perhaps be
 driven to despair by his excess of grief.
2:8 I beg you therefore fully to reinstate him in your love.
2:9 For in writing to you I have also this object in view--to
 discover by experience whether you are prepared to be obedient
 in every respect.
2:10 When you forgive a man an offence I also forgive it; for in
 fact what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has
 always been for your sakes in the presence of Christ,
2:11 for fear Satan should gain an advantage over us. For we are
 not ignorant of his /2 devices.
2:12 Now when I came into /3 the Troad to spread there the Good
 News about the Christ, even though in the Lord's providence a
 door stood open before me,
2:13 yet, obtaining no relief for my spirit because I did not
 find our brother Titus, I bade them farewell and went on into
 Macedonia.
2:14 But to God be the thanks who in Christ ever heads our /4
 triumphal procession, and by our hands waves in every place
 that sweet incense, the knowledge of Him.
2:15 For we are a fragrance of Christ grateful to God in those
 /5 whom He is saving and in those who are perishing;
2:16 to the last-named an odor of death predictive of death, and
 to the others an odor of life predictive of life. And for such
 service as this who is competent?
2:17 /6 We are; for, /7 unlike most teachers, we are not
 fraudulent hucksters of God's Message; but with /8 transparent
 motives, as commissioned by God, in God's presence and in
 communion with Christ, so we speak.
3:1 Do you say that this is self-recommendation once more? Or do
 we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from
 you?
3:2 Our letter of recommendation is yourselves--a letter written
 on our hearts and everywhere known and read.

3:3 For all can see that you are a letter of Christ entrusted to
 our care, and written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the
 /1 ever-living God--and not on tablets of stone, but on /2
 human hearts as tablets.
3:4 Such is the confidence which we have through Christ in the
 presence of God;
3:5 not that of ourselves we are competent to decide anything by
 our own reasonings, but our competency comes from God.
3:6 It is He also who has made us competent to serve Him in
 connexion with a new /3 Covenant, which is not a written code
 but a Spirit; for the written code inflicts death, but the
 Spirit gives Life.
3:7 If, however, the service /4 that proclaims death--its code
 being engraved in writing upon stones--came with glory, so that
 the children of Israel could not look steadily on the face of
 Moses because of the brightness of his face--a vanishing
 brightness;
3:8 will not the service of the Spirit be far more glorious?
3:9 For if the service which pronounces doom /5 had glory, far
 more glorious still is the service which tells of
 righteousness.
3:10 For, in fact, that which was once resplendent in glory has
 no glory at all in this re