And he said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee: for power is made perfect in infirmity. Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Hebrew / JewishChristianity
The Bible (Old and New Testaments)
2 Corinthians
For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful.
I am become foolish. You have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended by you. For I have no way come short of them that are above measure apostles, although I be nothing.
Yet the signs of my apostleship have been wrought on you, in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds.
For what is there that you have had less than the other churches but that I myself was not burthensome to you? Pardon me this injury.
Behold now the third time I am ready to come to you and I will not be burthensome unto you. For I seek not the things that are yours, but you. For neither ought the children to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.
But I most gladly will spend and be spent myself for your souls: although loving you more, I be loved less.
But be it so: I did not burthen you: but being crafty, I caught you by guile.
Did I overreach you by any of them whom I sent to you?
I desired Titus: and I sent with him a brother. Did Titus overreach you? Did we not walk with the same spirit? Did we not in the same steps?
Of old, think you that we excuse ourselves to you? We speak before God in Christ: but all things, my dearly beloved, for your edification.
For I fear lest perhaps, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found by you such as you would not. Lest perhaps contentions, envyings, animosities, dissensions, detractions, whisperings, swellings, seditions, be among you.
Lest again, when I come, God humble me among you: and I mourn many of them that sinned before and have not done penance for the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness that they have committed.
Behold, this is the third time I am coming to you: In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word stand.
I have told before and foretell, as present and now absent, to them that sinned before and to all the rest, that if I come again, I will not spare.
Do you seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me, who towards you is not weak, but is mighty in you?
For although he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him: but we shall live with him by the power of God towards you.
Try your own selves if you be in the faith: prove ye yourselves. Know you not your own selves, that Christ Jesus is in you, unless perhaps you be reprobates?
But I trust that you shall know that we are not reprobates.
Now we pray God that you may do no evil, not that we may appear approved, but that you may do that which is good and that we may be as reprobates.
For we can do nothing against the truth: but for the truth.
For we rejoice that we are weak and you are strong. This also we pray for, your perfection.
Therefore I write these things, being absent, that, being present, I may not deal more severely, according to the power which the Lord hath given me unto edification and not unto destruction.
For the rest, brethren, rejoice, be perfect, take exhortation, be of one mind, have peace. And the God of grace and of love shall be with you.
Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the saints salute you.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the charity of God and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen.
Galatians
Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead:
And all the brethren who are with me: to the churches of Galatia.
Grace be to you, and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present wicked world, according to the will of God and our Father:
To whom is glory for ever and ever. Amen.
I wonder that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel.
Which is not another: only there are some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.
As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema.
For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
For I give you to understand, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.
For neither did I receive it of man: nor did I learn it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
For you have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion: how that, beyond measure, I persecuted the church of God and wasted it.
And I made progress in the Jew's religion above many of my equals in my own nation, being more abundantly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
But when it pleased him who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace,
To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles: immediately I condescended not to flesh and blood.
Neither went I to Jerusalem, to the apostles who were before me: but I went into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus.
Then, after three years, I went to Jerusalem to see Peter: and I tarried with him fifteen days.
But other of the apostles I saw none, saving James the brother of the Lord.
Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not.
Afterwards, I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.
And I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ:
But they had heard only: He, who persecuted us in times past doth now preach the faith which once he impugned.
And they glorified God in me.
Then, after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me.
And I went up according to revelation and communicated to them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles: but apart to them who seemed to be some thing: lest perhaps I should run or had run in vain.
But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Gentile, was compelled to be circumcised.
But because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privately to spy our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into servitude.
To whom we yielded not by subjection: no, not for an hour: that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.
But of them who seemed to be some thing, (what they were some time it is nothing to me, God accepteth not the person of man): for to me they that seemed to be some thing added nothing.
But contrariwise, when they had seen that to me was committed the gospel of the uncircumcision, as to Peter was that of the circumcision.
(For he who wrought in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision wrought in me also among the Gentiles.)
And when they had known the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision:
Only that we should be mindful of the poor: which same thing also I was careful to do.
But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.
For before that some came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them who were of the circumcision.
And to his dissimulation the rest of the Jews consented: so that Barnabas also was led by them into that dissimulation.
But when I saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all: If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not as the Jews do, how dost thou compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?
We by nature are Jews: and not of the Gentiles, sinners.
But knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, we also believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
But if, while we seek to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ then the minister of sin? God forbid!
For if I build up again the things which I have destroyed, I make myself a prevaricator.
For I, through the law, am dead to the law, that I may live to God; with Christ I am nailed to the cross.
And I live, now not I: but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself for me.
I cast not away the grace of God. For if justice be by the law, then Christ died in vain.
O senseless Galatians, who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth: before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth, crucified among you?
This only would I learn of you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
Are you so foolish that, whereas you began in the Spirit, you would now be made perfect by the flesh?
Have you suffered so great things in vain? If it be yet in vain.
He therefore who giveth to you the Spirit and worketh miracles among you: doth he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing of the faith?
As it is written: Abraham believed God: and it was reputed to him unto justice.
Know ye, therefore, that they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
And the scripture, foreseeing that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, told unto Abraham before: In thee shall all nations be blessed.
Therefore, they that are of faith shall be blessed with faithful Abraham.
For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written: Cursed is every one that abideth, not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
But that in the law no man is justified with God, it is manifest: because the just man liveth by faith.
But the law is not of faith: but he that doth those things shall live in them.
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (for it is written: Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree).
That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus: that we may receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.
Brethren (I speak after the manner of man), yet a man's testament, if it be confirmed, no man despiseth nor addeth to it.
To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed. He saith not: And to his seeds as of many. But as of one: And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Now this I say: that the testament which was confirmed by God, the law which was made after four hundred and thirty years doth not disannul, to make the promise of no effect.
For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Why then was the law? It was set because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom he made the promise, being ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
Now a mediator is not of one: but God is one.
Was the law then against the promises of God: God forbid! For if there had been a law given which could give life, verily justice should have been by the law.
But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise, by the faith of Jesus Christ, might be given to them that believe.
But before the faith came, we were kept under the law shut up, unto that faith which was to be revealed.
Wherefore the law was our pedagogue in Christ: that we might be justified by faith.
But after the faith is come, we are no longer under a pedagogue.
For you are all the children of God, by faith in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you be Christ's, then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise.