Study Desk

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost,

Now about our brother Apollos: I strongly urged him to come to you with the brothers, but he was not at all willing to come now. However, he will come when he has an opportunity.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.

Indeed, this is our boast: The testimony of our conscience is that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with godly sincerity and purity, not by human wisdom but by God’s grace.

I do not mean that we lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy, because you stand firm in your faith.

For I wrote to you with many tears out of an extremely troubled and anguished heart—not to cause you pain, but that you should know the abundant love I have for you.

If anyone has caused pain, he has caused pain not so much to me but to some degree—not to exaggerate—to all of you.

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in Christ’s triumphal procession and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place.

To some we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others, an aroma of life leading to life. Who is adequate for these things?

You show that you are Christ’s letter, delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

but their minds were hardened. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ.

but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

Instead, we have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone’s conscience by an open display of the truth.

But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake.

We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair;

we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed.