For it is not the person who commends himself who is approved, but the person the Lord commends.

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? We don’t need letters of recommendation to you or from you as some other people do, do we? ¹ 

But as God’s servants, ¹  we have commended ourselves in every way, ²  with great endurance, in persecutions, ³  in difficulties, in distresses,

We are not trying to commend ¹  ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to be proud of us, ²  so that you may be able to answer those who take pride ³  in outward appearance ⁴  and not in what is in the heart.

I have become a fool. You yourselves forced me to do it, for I should have been commended by you. For I lack nothing in comparison ¹  to those “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing.

But we have rejected ¹  shameful hidden deeds, ²  not behaving ³  with deceptiveness ⁴  or distorting the word of God, but by open proclamation of the truth we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience before God.

For see what this very thing, this sadness ¹  as God intended, has produced in you: what eagerness, what defense of yourselves, ²  what indignation, ³  what alarm, what longing, what deep concern, ⁴  what punishment! ⁵  In everything you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

For we would not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who recommend themselves. But when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding. ¹