And even if I am unskilled in speaking, yet I am certainly not so in knowledge. Indeed, we have made this plain to you in everything in every way.

was caught up into paradise and heard things too sacred to be put into words, things that a person is not permitted to speak.

Now I will most gladly spend and be spent for your lives! If I love you more, am I to be loved less?

This is the third time I am coming to visit you. By the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter will be established.

For we rejoice whenever we are weak, but you are strong. And we pray for this: that you may become fully qualified.

For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow toward us, so also our comfort through Christ overflows to you.

as you also join in helping us by prayer, so that many people may give thanks to God on our behalf for the gracious gift given to us through the help of many.

For we do not write you anything other than what you can read and also understand. But I hope that you will understand completely

If you forgive anyone for anything, I also forgive him – for indeed what I have forgiven (if I have forgiven anything) I did so for you in the presence of Christ,

But thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and who makes known through us the fragrance that consists of the knowledge of him in every place.

who made us adequate to be servants of a new covenant not based on the letter but on the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from staring at the result of the glory that was made ineffective.

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

always carrying around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our body.

For we who are alive are constantly being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal body.

Therefore, because we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people, but we are well known to God, and I hope we are well known to your consciences too.

We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to be proud of us, so that you may be able to answer those who take pride in outward appearance and not in what is in the heart.

So then from now on we acknowledge no one from an outward human point of view. Even though we have known Christ from such a human point of view, now we do not know him in that way any longer.

And all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

For he says, “I heard you at the acceptable time, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation!