Study Desk

The first man was named Adam, and the Scriptures tell us that he was a living person. But Jesus, who may be called the last Adam, is a life-giving spirit.

The first man was made from the dust of the earth, but the second man came from heaven.

I will explain a mystery to you. Not every one of us will die, but we will all be changed.

The bodies we now have are weak and can die. But they will be changed into bodies that are eternal. Then the Scriptures will come true, "Death has lost the battle!

But thank God for letting our Lord Jesus Christ give us the victory!

because there is a wonderful opportunity for me to do some work here. But there are also many people who are against me.

I have tried hard to get our friend Apollos to visit you with the other followers. He doesn't want to come just now, but he will come when he can.

We share in the terrible sufferings of Christ, but also in the wonderful comfort he gives.

In fact, we felt sure that we were going to die. But this made us stop trusting in ourselves and start trusting God, who raises the dead to life.

At the time I wrote, I was suffering terribly. My eyes were full of tears, and my heart was broken. But I didn't want to make you feel bad. I only wanted to let you know how much I cared for you.

I don't want to be hard on you. But if one of you has made someone feel bad, I am not really the one who has been made to feel bad. Some of you are the ones.

But I was worried when I didn't find my friend Titus there. So I left the other followers and went on to Macedonia.

In fact, God thinks of us as a perfume that brings Christ to everyone. For people who are being saved, this perfume has a sweet smell and leads them to a better life. But for people who are lost, it has a bad smell and leads them to a horrible death. No one really has what it takes to do this work.

A lot of people try to get rich from preaching God's message. But we are God's sincere messengers, and by the power of Christ we speak our message with God as our witness.

But you are our letter, and you are in our hearts for everyone to read and understand.

You are like a letter written by Christ and delivered by us. But you are not written with pen and ink or on tablets made of stone. You are written in our hearts by the Spirit of the living God.

He makes us worthy to be the servants of his new agreement that comes from the Holy Spirit and not from a written Law. After all, the Law brings death, but the Spirit brings life.

The Law was given with a glory that faded away. But the glory of the new agreement is much greater, because it will never fade away.

We are not like Moses. His face was shining, but he covered it to keep the people of Israel from seeing the brightness fade away.

We often suffer, but we are never crushed. Even when we don't know what to do, we never give up.