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¹ Would that you could bear with me in a little foolishness: but indeed you do bear with me.² For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you [as] a pure virgin to Christ.³ But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ.⁴ For if he that comes preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or [if] you receive a different spirit, which you did not receive, or a different gospel, which you did not accept, you do well to bear with [him].

⁵ For I reckon that I am not a bit behind the very chiefest apostles.⁶ But though [I am] unskilled in speaking, yet [I am] not [unskilled] in knowledge; certainly, in every way we have made [this] manifest to you in all things.⁷ Or did I commit a sin in abasing myself that you might be exalted, because I preached to you the gospel of God for nothing?⁸ I robbed other churches, taking wages to serve you;⁹ and when I was present with you and was in want, I was not a burden on any man; for the brothers, when they came from Macedonia, supplied the measure of my want; and in everything I kept myself from being burdensome to you, and [so] I will keep [myself].¹⁰ As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this glorying in the regions of Achaia.¹¹ Why? because I do not love you? God knows.¹² But what I do, I will continue to do, that I may cut off occasion from those that desire an occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we.¹³ For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ.¹⁴ And no wonder; for even Satan fashions himself into an angel of light.¹⁵ It is no great thing therefore if his servants also fashion themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.

¹⁶ I say again, let no man think me foolish; but if [you do], yet receive me as foolish, that I also may glory a little.¹⁷ That which I speak, I don't speak after the Lord, but as in foolishness, in this confidence of glorying.¹⁸ Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also.¹⁹ For you bear with the foolish gladly, being wise [yourselves].²⁰ For you bear with a man, if he brings you into slavery, if he devours you, if he takes you [captive], if he exalts himself, if he smites you on the face.²¹ I speak by way of shame, as though we had been weak. Yet in what any is bold (I speak in foolishness), I am bold also.

²² Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I.²³ Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as one beside himself) I more; in labors more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths often.²⁴ Of the Jews five times I received forty [stripes] save one.²⁵ Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;²⁶ [in] journeyings often, [in] perils of rivers, [in] perils of robbers, [in] perils from [my] countrymen, [in] perils from the Gentiles, [in] perils in the city, [in] perils in the wilderness, [in] perils in the sea, [in] perils among false brothers;²⁷ [in] labor and travail, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fasts often, in cold and nakedness.²⁸ Besides those things that are outside, there is that which presses on me daily, anxiety for all the churches.²⁹ Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is caused to stumble, and I do not burn [with distress]?³⁰ If I must surely glory, I will glory of the things that concern my weakness.³¹ The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed for evermore knows that I do not lie.³² In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes in order to take me:³³ and through a window I was let down in a basket by the wall, and escaped his hands.