1   I wish you would bear with me in a little of my folly; please do bear with me. 2   I am jealous for you, with a divine jealousy; for I betrothed you to Christ, thinking to present you as a chaste virgin to her true and only husband. 3   But as the serpent in his cunning seduced Eve, I am afraid that your thoughts may be corrupted and you may lose your ^note single-hearted devotion to Christ. 4   For if someone comes who proclaims another Jesus, not the Jesus whom we proclaimed, or if you then receive a spirit different from the Spirit already given to you, or a gospel different from the gospel you have already accepted, you manage to put up with that well enough. 5   Have I in any way come short of those superlative apostles? I think not. 6   I may be no speaker, but knowledge I have; at all times we have made known to you the full truth.

7   Or was this my offence, that I made no charge for preaching the gospel of God, lowering myself to help in raising you? 8   It is true that I took toll of other congregations, accepting ^note support from them to serve you. 9   Then, while I was with you, if I ran short I sponged on no one; anything I needed was fully met by our friends who came from Macedonia; I made it a rule, as I always shall, never to be a burden to you. 10   As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, I will preserve my pride in this matter throughout Achaia, and nothing shall stop me. 11   Why? Is it that I do not love you? God knows I do.

12   And I shall go on doing as I am doing now, to cut the ground from under those who would seize any chance to put their vaunted apostleship on the same level as ours. 13   Such men are sham-apostles, crooked in all their practices, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14   There is nothing surprising about that; Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15   It is therefore a simple thing for his agents to masquerade as agents of good. But they will meet the end their deeds deserve.

16   I repeat: let no one take me for a fool; but if you must, then give me the privilege of a fool, and let me have my little boast like others. 17   I am not speaking here as a Christian, but like a fool, if it comes to bragging. 18   So many people brag of their earthly distinctions that I shall do so too. 19   How gladly you bear with fools, being yourselves so wise! 20   If a man tyrannizes over you, exploits you, gets you in his

Trials of a Christian missionary clutches, puts on airs, and hits you in the face, you put up with it. 21   And we, you say, have been weak! I admit the reproach.

But if there is to be bravado (and here I speak as a fool), I can indulge in it too. 22   Are they Hebrews? So am I. Israelites? So am I. 23   Abraham's descendants? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am mad to speak like this, but I can outdo them. More overworked than they, scourged more severely, more often imprisoned, many a time face to face with death. 24   Five times the Jews have given me the thirty-nine strokes; 25   three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked, and for twenty-four hours I was adrift on the open sea. 26   I have been constantly on the road; I have met dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my fellow-countrymen, dangers from foreigners, dangers in towns, dangers in the country, dangers at sea, dangers from false friends. 27   I have toiled and drudged, I have often gone without sleep; hungry and thirsty, I have often gone fasting; and I have suffered from cold and exposure.

28   Apart from these external things, ^note there is the responsibility that weighs on me every day, my anxious concern for all our congregations. 29   If anyone is weak, do I not share his weakness? If anyone is made to stumble, does my heart not blaze with indignation? 30   If boasting there must be, I will boast of the things that show up my weakness. 31   The God and Father of the Lord Jesus (blessed be his name for ever!) knows that what I say is true. 32   When I was in Damascus, the commissioner of King Aretas kept the city under observation so as to have me arrested; 33   and I was let down in a basket, through a window in the wall, and so escaped his clutches.

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