Paul is caught up to Heaven and returns
12
📚✭Without doubt, boasting is useless to me. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2 📚✭I know a man in Christ who, more than fourteen years ago, was caught up to the third heaven, whether in the body, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell; God knows. 3 And I know that this man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell; God knows) 4 📚was caught up to paradise✭, and heard inexpressible matters which are not lawful for a man to utter. 5 📚Of such a one I will boast, but of myself I will not boast, except in my weaknesses. 6 📚✭For even if I might choose to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so that no one will think of me above what he sees me to be, or what he hears of me.Paul’s thorn in the flesh, its good results
7 📚✭And so that I would not be highly lifted up with pride because of the greatness of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to beat me, so that I would not become highly lifted up with pride. 8 📚✭Three times✭ I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it might depart from me. 9 📚✭And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness”. Therefore✭ I will boast more gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. 10 📚✭Therefore I take pleasure in✭ weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul’s love for the believers at Corinth
11 📚I have become a fool✭ in boasting. You have compelled me. For I ought to have been commended by you✭, because in nothing am I inferior to those “super” apostles, though I am nothing✭. 12 📚✭Truly the miraculous signs of an apostle were performed by me among you with all patient endurance, in signs, and wonders✭, and mighty deeds✭. 13 📚✭For in what were you inferior to other churches, except that I myself was not a burden to you? Forgive me this wrong!
14 📚✭See, I am ready to come to you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you. For I do not seek what is yours but you, because children should not save up for parents, but parents for the children. 15 📚And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved. 16 📚✭But be that as it may, I did not burden you. However, being crafty, I caught you with guile! 17 📚Did I exploit you through any of the men I sent to you? 18 📚I urged Titus to go there, and I sent a brother with him. Did Titus exploit you? Did we not conduct ourselves in the same spirit? Did we not walk in the same steps?
19 📚✭Once again, do you think that we are defending ourselves to you? We are speaking in God’s presence, in Christ, and we do everything, dearly loved brethren, for your building up. 20 📚✭For I fear that when I come I will not find you as I would like, and you will find me as you would not like, and that there will be debates, jealousies, angry passions, selfish ambitions, backbitings, slanderous whisperings, arrogant attitudes, disturbances. 21 📚And I fear that when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and I will have to mourn over many who have already sinned, and have not repented of the uncleanness and sexual immorality and lewdness which they have committed.