Christ’s apostles
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📚✭So men should regard us as the servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 📚✭Moreover it is required of stewards that a man be found faithful. 3 📚✭But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by any human judgment. Indeed, I do not judge myself. 4 📚For I know nothing against myself, yet I am not counted righteous by that. The one who judges me is the Lord. 5 📚✭Therefore do not judge anything before the time, until the Lord comes. He will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make known the purposes of the heart. And then everyone will have praise from God✭.6 📚✭And these things, brethren, I have applied as an example to myself and Apollos for your benefit, that you might learn in our case not to think beyond what is written, so that none of you becomes puffed up for one against another. 7 📚✭For who makes you to differ from others? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you received it, why do you boast, as if you had not received it?
8 📚✭✭Already you are full! Already you are rich! You have reigned as kings without us! How I wish you really were reigning, that we also might reign with you. 9 📚✭For it seems to me that God has displayed us, the apostles, last in the procession, like those condemned to death. For we have been made a spectacle to the world, and to angels and to men. 10 📚We are fools for Christ’s sake✭, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak✭, but you are strong. You are honoured, but we are despised. 11 📚✭Even to this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are poorly clothed, and are beaten, and homeless. 12 📚And we labour, working with our own hands✭. Being reviled, we bless✭; being persecuted, we bear it; 13 📚being slandered, we plead. To this day, we have become like the filth of the world, and like the scum✭ of all things.
14 📚✭I do not write these things to shame you, but as my dear children I warn you. 15 📚✭For though you may have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. 16 📚✭Therefore I beg you, imitate me. 17 📚✭For this reason I have sent Timothy to you. He is my dear son, and faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways in Christ, which I teach everywhere in every church.
18 📚✭Now some of you are puffed up, as though I would not come to you. 19 📚But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills✭, and will know, not the talk, but the power of those who are puffed up. 20 📚✭For the kingdom of God is not in talk, but in power. 21 📚What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod✭, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?