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¹ I would that you endured me a little in foolishness, but, indeed, endure me.² For 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.³ But 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.⁴ For 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 .

⁵ For I judge myself to have come behind the highest apostles in nothing.⁶ But 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.⁷ Or did I commit sin, humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge?⁸ I stripped other assemblies, receiving wages for the serving of you.⁹ And 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 .¹⁰ The truth of Christ is in me, that this boasting shall not be silenced in me in the regions of Achaia.¹¹ Why? Because I do not love you? God knows.¹² But 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.¹³ For such ones are false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.¹⁴ And did not Satan marvelously transform himself into an angel of light?¹⁵ It is not a great thing, then, if also his ministers transform themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.

¹⁶ Again 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.¹⁷ What I speak, I speak not according to the Lord, but as in foolishness, in this boldness of boasting.¹⁸ Since many boast according to the flesh, I also will boast.¹⁹ For you with pleasure endure fools, being wise.²⁰ For 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.²¹ I speak according to dishonor, as if we have been weak. But in whatever anyone dares (I say it in foolishness), I also dare.

²² Are they Hebrews? I also. Are they Israelites? I also. Are they Abraham's seed? I also.²³ Are 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.²⁴ Five times I received forty stripes minus one from the Jews.²⁵ I was flogged three times; I was stoned once; I was shipwrecked three times; I have spent a night and a day in the deep.²⁶ I 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,²⁷ in hardship and toil, often in watchings, in hunger and thirst, often in fastings, in cold and nakedness,²⁸ besides the things outside conspiring against me day by day, the care of all the assemblies.²⁹ Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is caused to stumble, and I do not burn?³⁰ If it is right to boast, I will boast of the things of my infirmity.³¹ The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ knows, the One being blessed to the ages, that I am not lying.³² In Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes, desiring to seize me.³³ And I was let down through a window through the wall in a basket and escaped their hands.