³ I say this not to condemn you, for I have said before, that you are in our hearts to die together and live together.

¹¹ Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians. Our heart is enlarged.

¹² You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections.

⁸ Even so, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you, not the Gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you had become very dear to us.

⁸ For God is my witness, how I long after all of you in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.

⁹ This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;

¹⁰ For this cause I write these things while absent, that I may not deal sharply when present, according to the authority which the Lord gave me for building up, and not for tearing down.

¹⁵ I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more abundantly, am I loved the less?

¹¹ Why? Because I don't love you? God knows.

¹² So although I wrote to you, I wrote not for his cause that did the wrong, nor for his cause that suffered the wrong, but that your earnest care for us might be revealed in you in the sight of God.

² You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;

⁴ For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears, not that you should be made sorry, but that you might know the love that I have so abundantly for you.

⁵ But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow, not to me, but in part (that I not press too heavily) to you all.

¹⁴ I don't write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

¹⁵ For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Gospel.

¹⁶ Ruth said, "Don't entreat me to leave you, and to return from following after you, for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God;

¹⁷ where you die, will I die, and there will I be buried: Yahweh do so to me, and more also, if anything but death part you and me."