If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.

And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,

Paul’s Change of Plans

Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, with integrity and godly sincerity. We have done so, relying not on worldly wisdom but on God’s grace.

But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.”

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me and Silas and Timothy—was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.”

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us,

set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm.

For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved?

The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient.

Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.

Another reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything.

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.

To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?

The Greater Glory of the New Covenant

Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was,

If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!

And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!

We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.

But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.

Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.

But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.