I've lost all hope, so what if God kills me? I am going to state my case to him.

Examine me and test me, LORD; judge my desires and thoughts.

So then, you should each examine yourself first, and then eat the bread and drink from the cup.

Put yourselves to the test and judge yourselves, to find out whether you are living in faith. Surely you know that Christ Jesus is in you?---unless you have completely failed.

Bad people will get what they deserve. Good people will be rewarded for their deeds.

Now, I am not at all concerned about being judged by you or by any human standard; I don't even pass judgment on myself.

My conscience is clear, but that does not prove that I am really innocent. The Lord is the one who passes judgment on me.

We are proud that our conscience assures us that our lives in this world, and especially our relations with you, have been ruled by God-given frankness and sincerity, by the power of God's grace and not by human wisdom.

This, then, is how we will know that we belong to the truth; this is how we will be confident in God's presence.

And so, my dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have courage in God's presence.

Even those who practice circumcision do not obey the Law; they want you to be circumcised so that they can boast that you submitted to this physical ceremony.

The Pharisee stood apart by himself and prayed, 'I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there.

Let me put it this way: each one of you says something different. One says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Peter"; and another, "I follow Christ."

Christ has been divided into groups! Was it Paul who died on the cross for you? Were you baptized as Paul's disciples?

No one, then, should boast about what human beings can do. Actually everything belongs to you:

and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

For your sake, my friends, I have applied all this to Apollos and me, using the two of us as an example, so that you may learn what the saying means, "Observe the proper rules." None of you should be proud of one person and despise another.

Who made you superior to others? Didn't God give you everything you have? Well, then, how can you boast, as if what you have were not a gift?

I will go on doing what I am doing now, in order to keep those other "apostles" from having any reason for boasting and saying that they work in the same way that we do.

Those men are not true apostles---they are false apostles, who lie about their work and disguise themselves to look like real apostles of Christ.