1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, with all the holy ones throughout Achaia:
2. grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement,
4. who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.
5. For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow.
6. If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
7. Our hope for you is firm, for we know that as you share in the sufferings, you also share in the encouragement.
8. We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction that came to us in the province of Asia; we were utterly weighed down beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life.
9. Indeed, we had accepted within ourselves the sentence of death, that we might trust not in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.
10. He rescued us from such great danger of death, and he will continue to rescue us; in him we have put our hope [that] he will also rescue us again,
11. as you help us with prayer, so that thanks may be given by many on our behalf for the gift granted us through the prayers of many.
12. For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with the simplicity and sincerity of God, [and] not by human wisdom but by the grace of God.
13. For we write you nothing but what you can read and understand, and I hope that you will understand completely,
14. as you have come to understand us partially, that we are your boast as you also are ours, on the day of [our] Lord Jesus.