Study Desk

I tell you this, and I ask God to be my witness that this is true: The reason I did not come back to Corinth was that I did not want to punish or hurt you.

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in victory through Christ. God uses us to spread his knowledge everywhere like a sweet-smelling perfume.

Our offering to God is to be the perfume of Christ that goes out to those who are being saved and to those who are being lost.

You show that you are a letter from Christ that he sent through us. This letter is not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. It is not written on stone tablets but on human hearts.

We can say this, because through Christ we feel sure before God.

I don't mean that we are able to do anything good ourselves. It is God who makes us able to do all that we do.

This is what I mean: That old agreement judged people guilty of sin, but it had glory. So surely the new agreement that makes people right with God has much greater glory.

God, with his mercy, gave us this work to do, so we don't give up.

But we have turned away from secret and shameful ways. We don't use trickery, and we don't change the teaching of God. We teach the truth plainly. This is how we show people who we are. And this is how they can know in their hearts what kind of people we are before God.

The ruler of this world has blinded the minds of those who don't believe. They cannot see the light of the Good News—the message about the divine greatness of Christ. Christ is the one who is exactly like God.

God once said, "Let light shine out of the darkness!" And this is the same God who made his light shine in our hearts to let us know that his own divine greatness is seen in the face of Christ.

We have this treasure from God, but we are only like clay jars that hold the treasure. This is to show that the amazing power we have is from God, not from us.

We are persecuted, but God does not leave us. We are hurt sometimes, but we are not destroyed.

God raised the Lord Jesus from death, and we know that he will also raise us with Jesus. God will bring us together with you, and we will stand before him.

All these things are for you. And so the grace of God is being given to more and more people. This will bring more and more thanks to God for his glory.

We know that our body—the tent we live in here on earth—will be destroyed. But when that happens, God will have a home for us to live in. It will not be the kind of home people build here. It will be a home in heaven that will continue forever.

But now we are tired of this body. We want God to give us our heavenly home.

This is what God himself made us for. And he has given us the Spirit as the first payment to guarantee the life to come.

We know what it means to fear the Lord, so we try to help people accept the truth. God knows what we really are, and I hope that in your hearts you know us too.

If we are crazy, it is for God. If we have our right mind, it is for you.