10. We are fools for Messiah’s sake, but you are wise in Messiah! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, but we are dishonored!
11. To this very hour we are both hungry and thirsty, dressed in rags and mistreated and homeless.
12. We toil, working with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure.
13. When we are slandered, we speak kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the dregs of all things—even to this moment.
14. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to warn you as my dearly loved children.
15. For though you may have ten thousand guardians in Messiah, yet you do not have many fathers. For in Messiah Yeshua, I became your father through the Good News.
16. I urge you therefore—be imitators of me.
17. For this reason I have sent you Timothy, my dearly loved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways in Messiah, just as I teach everywhere in every community.
18. Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you.
19. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord is willing; and I will find out not the talk of those who are puffed up, but their power.
20. For the kingdom of God does not consist of talk but of power.
21. What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?