Those who teach what is false must come to realize that I also belong to Christ and that God has given me authority over you. I worry that they will deceive you and that you will stop being faithful to Christ alone.

2 Corinthians 10:7—11:6

7 I want you to understand what is happening among you. There are certain people there who are telling you that they know for sure that they are Christ’s representatives and that I am not. Those people should realize that I represent Christ as much as they do. 8 I say that because the authority that the Lord gave me as his apostle is to help you to become mature believers, not to cause you to stop trusting in Christ. So even if I were to boast a little more than I have already done (OR, proudly talk a little more than I have already talked about the authority the Lord gave me as his apostle), no one would be able to make me ashamed by proving that Jesus has not given me that authority. 9 I do not intend to make you afraid of me by the letters that I write to you. 10 I say that because some people are saying, “When Paul writes letters, he says severe things in order to make you obey him, but when he is here with you, people look at him and say he is weak, and he certainly is not a skillful speaker.” 11 The people who say such things should think carefully about this: The kind of severe person that you think me to be when you read my letters is exactly the kind of person I will be when I come. I will do what I wrote that I would do.

12 Those who oppose me tell others how good they are. If they really were superior to me [IRO], I would not be so bold as to say that I was equal to them, or to compare myself with them. But they are not superior to me. They make up their own standards about what God’s servants should be like, and then they look at their own conduct and decide whether or not they meet those standards. By doing that, they show that they are foolish. 13 But as for me, I will not boast about working among people living in areas outside of the areas that God sent/assigned me to work in. But it is right for me to say that I have worked in the areas that God assigned to me. And since those areas include the one where you live, 14 when I talk about working among you, I am not boasting about working in an area where God did not give me the right to work. What those who oppose me say about my not having authority as an apostle to you might be true if I had not already come all the way to your area. But that is not true, because I was the one who first brought the message about Christ to you. I came to Corinth before they did!

15 Also, my opponents boast about work that others have done as if it were their own work. It is improper for them to do that, but I do not do as they do. I confidently expect that as you trust more and more in the gospel that I preach, you will more and more agree that God has given me the right to work as Christ’s representative among you. 16 Then I will be able to go to places beyond where you are. I will be able to tell the good message about Christ to people in areas where no one has yet gone to tell that message. And I will be able to talk about the work I myself have done in that area, instead of boasting about work that someone else has already done as if it were my work. 17 I try to do according to what someone/Jeremiah wrote in the Scriptures,

If anyone wants to boast about something, he should boast only about what the Lord God has done.

18 You can realize, then, that it is not those who ◄praise themselves/tell you what great things they have done►, as my opponents do, whom you should accept as apostles. Instead, you should accept as true apostles only those whom the Lord commends.

11 But now, because my opponents are saying that Christ sent them to you as his representatives and that he did not send me, please be patient with me, too, while I say a few things that may sound as if [IRO] I am praising myself, like a foolish person would do. You have been ◄putting up with/tolerating► those who teach what is false; now then, ◄put up with/tolerate► me too. 2 I really do care about what happens to you, just as God cares about what happens to you. Just like a father wants his daughter to be sexually pure when he presents her to the man she will marry [MET], I want you to belong to Christ alone and to no other. I want to present you to him as people who remain faithful to him only, and who have not believed the deceitful message of those who are teaching what is false. 3 However, just like Satan, when he cunningly appeared as a snake, deceived Eve and caused her to disobey the Lord God, I am concerned that those teachers will cause you to think wrongly so that you will no longer be faithful to Christ alone. 4 I say that because some people have come among you who are teaching their own thoughts about Jesus. They are saying about him things that are entirely different from what I taught you. They are urging you to receive a powerful spirit who would come to live in you, but it is not the same Spirit that you received from God when you believed in Christ. They preach what they call a good message, and you accept their message, even though it is not the same as the good message about Christ that you heard from me. And you have gladly accepted them and their message! 5 I consider that [LIT] none of those men, even though they think of themselves as being [IRO] extra-special apostles, are in any way greater than I am. 6 I admit that I am not an eloquent speaker, but I do know God’s message. I have made that clear to you by everything that I have done among you and by everything that I have taught you.