For you put up with it if someone enslaves you, if someone devours you, if someone takes from you, if someone exalts himself, if someone strikes you in the face.

If I am not an apostle to others, yet indeed I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

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

For though you might have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet [you do] not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

But I used none of these things, nor have I written these things that it should become thus for me; for it is better for me rather to die than that anyone should make my boasting void.

What then is my reward? That when I preach the gospel, I may present the gospel of Christ free of charge, so as not to exploit my rights in the gospel.

Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years, night and day I did not cease, with tears, exhorting each one.

I have desired the silver or gold or clothes of no one.

Or did I commit sin in humbling myself in order that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you free of charge?

and when I was present with you, and in need, I did not burden anyone; for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. And in everything I kept myself from being a burden to you, and so I will keep myself.

For what is it in which you were inferior to other churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!

Now for the third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not burden you. For I do not seek what is yours, but you. For the children ought not to store up for the parents, but the parents for the children.

Nor seeking glory from men, neither from you, nor from others, even though we were able to carry weight as apostles of Christ.

In this way longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.

nor did we eat bread from anyone without paying, but in labor and hardship, working night and day, so as not to be a burden to any of you,

not because we do not have authority, but in order that we may give ourselves as a pattern to you, so that you might follow us.

Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are naked, and beaten, and homeless.

And we labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure;

Actually then, it is already a defeat for you that you have lawsuits against one another. Why not rather accept wrong? Why not rather accept being defrauded?

But he said to them, Hinder me not, for the Lord has prospered my journey for me; send me away, that I may depart to my master.

And all of them assembled together, to come to fight against Jerusalem, and to destroy it utterly.

Woe to you lawyers! Because you have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter in, and those who were entering in you hindered."

For this reason I also have been hindered many times from coming to you.

But what I am doing, I will also continue to do, that I may cut off the opportunity of those who desire an opportunity, that in what they boast they may be found just as we [are].