¹For you yourselves know, brothers, our coming to you, that it has not been in vain;

²but when we had previously suffered and had been mistreated, even as you know, in Philippi, we had boldness in our God to speak to you the good news of God amid much conflict.

³For our exhortation is not of error nor of impurity nor in trickery;

⁴but even as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the good news, so we speak, not as pleasing men but as God who is examining our hearts.

⁵For never at any time were we with word of flattery, even as you know, nor with a pretext for greed — God is witness —

⁶nor seeking glory from men, nor from you nor from others,

⁷though having authority with weight to be as the Anointed One's sent ones; but we were infants in your midst, as a nursing mother shall cherish her own children,

⁸so, yearning for you, we were pleased to have imparted to you not only the good news of God but also our own lives, because you have become beloved to us.

⁹For you remember, brothers, our labor and the hardship: for by night and day, working in order not to burden anyone of you, we proclaimed to you the good news of God.

¹⁰You are witnesses, and God, how holily and righteously and blamelessly toward you who trust we were,

¹¹just as you know how each one of you, as a father his own children,

¹²exhorting you and comforting and charging you, unto the walk worthily of God who is calling you to His own kingdom and glory.

¹³And because of this we ourselves also give thanks to God unceasingly, that when you had received from us the word of God by your hearing, you accepted it not as the word of men but, even as it is truly, the word of God, which also works in you who trust.

¹⁴For you yourselves became imitators, brothers, of the assemblies of God which are in Judea in the Anointed One Jesus, for these same things you yourselves also suffered from your own countrymen, even as they also did from the Jews,

¹⁵who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and drove us out, and are not pleasing God, and are opposed to all men,

¹⁶hindering us to speak to the nations that they may be saved, so as to fill up their sins always; now the wrath of God has come upon them to the utmost.

¹⁷However, we ourselves, brothers, having been bereaved of you for the appointed-time of an hour, in face not in heart, were more abundantly eager to see your face with great desire.

¹⁸Therefore we wanted to come to you — I myself, Paul, indeed both once and twice — and the adversary hindered us.

¹⁹For who is our hope or joy or wreath of boasting? Is it not even you, before our Lord Jesus the Anointed One at His coming?

²⁰For you yourselves are our glory and the joy.