1 Corinthians 4:11-21 ▼

11 Up to this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, and are poorly clothed and roughly treated and homeless;

12 and we labor, working with our own hands; when we are verbally abused, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it;

13 when we are slandered, we reply as friends; we have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.

14 I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

15 For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

16 Therefore I urge you, be imitators of me.

17 For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church.

18 Now some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you.

19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant, but their power.

20 For the kingdom of God is not in words, but in power.

21 What do you desire? That I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness?