1 Corinthians 4:9-21 ▼

9 For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals.

10 We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.

11 To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless,

12 and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure;

13 when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.

14 I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

15 For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

16 I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me.

17 For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

18 But some of you, thinking that I am not coming to you, have become arrogant.

19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power.

20 For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.

21 What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?