Paul Greets the Corinthians
(Acts 18:1–11; 1 Corinthians 1:1–3)

1Paul, sent of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and brother Timothy, to the church of God being in Corinth, with all holy ones being in the whole of Achaia:

2Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The God of All Comfort

3Praised the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, and God of all comfort: 4Who comforting us upon all our pressure, that we may be able to comfort them in every pressure, by the comfort by which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so by Christ abounds also our comfort. 6And whether we are pressed, for your comfort and salvation, being well wrought in endurance of the same sufferings which we also suffer: whether we are comforted, for your comfort and salvation. 7And our hope firm for you, knowing, that as ye are participators of the sufferings, so also of the comfort.

8For we wish you not to be ignorant, brethren, of our pressure having been to us in Asia, that we were exceedingly loaded, above strength, so that we were in utter perplexity even to live: 9And we ourselves have had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not have trusted in ourselves, but in God raising the dead: 10Who saved us from so great a death, and does save: in whom we have hoped also that he will yet save; 11And ye serving together for us in prayer, that of many faces, the favor to us by many thanks be returned by us.

Paul’s Change of Plans

12For our boasting is this, the testimony of our consciousness, that in simplicity and purity of God, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we turned back in the world, and more eminently to you. 13For we write no others to you, but what ye either know or also observe; and I hope that also even to the end ye will observe; 14As also ye observed us by part, that we are your boast, as also ye ours in the day of the Lord Jesus.

15And in this confidence I wished to come to you before, that ye might have a second grace; 16And by you to pass into Macedonia, and again from Macedonia, to come to you, and by you to be sent forward to Judea. 17Therefore I resolved this, much less did I use levity: or what I resolve, do I resolve according to the flesh, that there be with me yea, yea, and nay, nay. 18And God faithful, for our word to you was not yea or nay. 19For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who proclaimed in you by us, by me, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but was yea in him. 20Forasmuch as the solemn promises of God in him yea, and in him Amen, for glory to God by us. 21And he making us firm with you in Christ, and having anointed us, is God; 22Who also having sealed us, and given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.

23And I call upon God a witness upon my soul, that, sparing you, I came no more to Corinth. 24Not that we are masters of your faith, but we are aiders of your joy: for ye have stood in the faith.