5. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
6. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
7. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
8. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.
9. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.
10. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.
11. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
12. For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.
13. For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand—
14. just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you.
15. Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace.
16. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea.