| 12:1 | I DON'T think it's really a good thing for me to boast at all, but if I must I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord himself. |
| 12:2 | I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago, had the experience of being caught up into the third Heaven. |
| 12:3 | I don't know whether it was an actual physical experience, only God knows that. All I know is that this man was caught up into paradise. (I repeat, I do not know whether this was a physical happening or not, God alone knows.) |
| 12:4 | This man heard words that cannot, and indeed must not, be put into human speech. |
| 12:5 | I am proud of an experience like that, but I have made up my mind not to boast of anything personal, except of my weaknesses. |
| 12:6 | If I should want to boast I should certainly be no fool, for I should be speaking nothing but the truth. Yet I am not going to do so, for I don't want anyone to think more highly of me than is warranted by what he sees of me and hears from me. |
| 12:7 | So tremendous, however, were the revelations that God gave me that, in order to prevent my becoming absurdly conceited, I was given a stabbing painone of Satan's angelsto plague me and effectually stop any conceit. |
| 12:8 | Three times I begged the Lord for it to leave me, |
| 12:9 | but his reply has been, "My grace is enough for you: for where there is weakness, my power is shown the more completely." Therefore, I have cheerfully made up my mind to be proud of my weaknesses, because they mean a deeper experience of the power of Christ. |
| 12:10 | I can even enjoy weaknesses, insults, privations, persecutions and difficulties for Christ's sake. For my very weakness makes me strong in him. |
| 12:11 | I have made a fool of myself in this "boasting" business, but you forced me to do it. If only you had had a better opinion of me it would have been quite unnecessary. For I am not really in the least inferior, nobody as I am, to these extraspecial messengers. |
| 12:12 | You have had a demonstration of the power God gives to a genuine messenger by his sheer endurance as well as the miracles, signs and works of spiritual power that you saw with your own eyes. |
| 12:13 | What makes you feel so inferior to other churches? Is it because I have not allowed you to support me financially? My humblest apologies for this great wrong! |
| 12:14 | Now I am all ready to visit you for the third time, and I am still not going to be a burden to you. It is you I wantnot your money. Children don't have to put by their savings for their parents; parents do that for their children. |
| 12:15 | Consequently I will roost gladly spend and be spent for your good utterly. Does that mean that the more I love you the less you love me? |
| 12:16 | "All right then," I hear you say, "we agree that he himself had none of our money." But are you thinking that I nevertheless was rogue enough to catch you by some trick? |
| 12:17 | Just think. Did I make any profit out of the messengers I sent you? |
| 12:18 | I asked Titus to go, and sent the brother with him. You don't think Titus made anything out of you, do you? Yet didn't I act in the same spirit as he, and take the same line as he did? |
| 12:19 | Are you thinking all this time that I am trying to justify myself in your eyes? Actually I am speaking in Christ before God himself, and my only reason for so doing, my dear friends, is to help you in your spiritual life. |
| 12:20 | For I must confess that I am afraid that when I come I shall not perhaps find you as I should like to find you, and that you will not find me quite as you would like me to be. I am afraid of finding arguments, jealousy, illfeeling, divided loyalties, slander, whispering, pride and disharmony. |
| 12:21 | When I come again, will God make me feel ashamed of you as I stand among you? Shall I have to grieve over many who have sinned already and are not yet sorry for the impurity, the immorality and the lustfulness of which they are guilty? |
2 Corinthians 12 - Philips NT in Modern English
