¹Now I myself, Paul, exhort you through the meekness and the gentleness of the Anointed One — I who in appearance indeed am humble among you, yet being absent am bold toward you.

²Now I implore you that, being present, I may not be bold with the confidence with which I reckon to be daring toward some who reckon us as walking according to flesh.

³For though in flesh we walk, we do not wage war according to flesh.

⁴For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly but powerful in the divinely to the demolition of strongholds, overthrowing arguments

⁵and every high thing lifting itself up against the knowledge of God, and taking captive every thought into the obedience of the Anointed One,

⁶and having in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience may have been fulfilled.

⁷Are you looking at the things according to appearance? If anyone is persuaded in himself to be of the Anointed One, this he should reckon again within himself: that even as he is of the Anointed One, so also are we ourselves of the Anointed One.

⁸For even if I should boast somewhat more excessively concerning our authority, which the Lord has given to us for building you up and not for tearing you down, I will not be ashamed —

⁹that I may not seem as if to frighten you through the letters.

¹⁰For the letters indeed, they say, are weighty and strong, however the presence of the body is weak and the speech ignored.

¹¹This the type of person should realise: that such as we are in word through letters being absent, such we are also being present in action.

¹²For we do not dare to classify or to compare ourselves with some of those commending themselves; but these, measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves with themselves, do not understand.

¹³However we ourselves will not boast into the things beyond measure, but according to the measure of the area that God has assigned to us, a measure to reach as far as also you.

¹⁴For we are not overextending ourselves, as not reaching to you; for as far as also you we came in the good news of the Anointed One;

¹⁵not boasting in the things beyond measure in others' labors, however having hope, as your trust increases, to be enlarged among you according to our area, to excess,

¹⁶so as to bring good news to the things beyond you, not to boast in another's area in things ready.

¹⁷However the one boasting, in the Lord he should boast;

¹⁸for not the one commending himself, this one is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.