12. We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure.
13. Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now.
14. I don’t write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children.
15. For though you have ten thousand tutors in Messiah, you don’t have many fathers. For in Messiah Yeshua, I became your father through the Good News.
16. I beg you therefore, be imitators of me.
17. Because of this I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways which are in Messiah, even as I teach everywhere in every assembly.
18. Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you.
19. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord is willing. And I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power.
20. For God’s Kingdom is not in word, but in power.