4Verse 1Let a man consider us like this: as Christ's subordinates and stewards of God's mysteries.+Verse 2Moreover, what is required of stewards is that each be found faithful.+Verse 3So to me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court; in fact, I do not even judge myself.Verse 4For I am conscious of nothing against myself, although I am not justified by this; it is the Lord who judges me.Verse 5Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and expose the motives of the hearts.+At that time the praise that comes to each will be from God.+
No room for boasting
Verse 6I have illustrated these things using myself and Apollos, brothers, for your sakes, so that you may learn from us not to think beyond what is written,+that no one of you be puffed up in favor of the one against the other.Verse 7Now who is distinguishing you? Or what do you have that you did not receive?+So if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?Verse 8You are already stuffed! You are already rich! You have become ‘kings’ without us! I could wish that you really did reign, so that we might be kings with you too!+
The cost of being an apostle
Verse 9For I keep thinking that God has displayed us, the apostles, at the end of the line, like men sentenced to death;+because we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.Verse 10We are fools for Christ while you are wise! We are weak but you are strong! You are esteemed, we are despised!Verse 11To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty; we are poorly dressed, brutally treated, and wander homeless;Verse 12yes, we labor, working with our own hands. Upon being reviled, we bless; upon being persecuted, we endure it;Verse 13upon being slandered, we exhort. We have been made as the refuse of the world, the off-scouring of whatever, to this moment.+
Children imitate fathers
Verse 14I am not writing these things to shame you; I am admonishing you as my dear children.Verse 15Because even if you were to have thousands of tutors in Christ, you would not have many fathers, because I am the one who begot you in Christ Jesus, through the Gospel.Verse 16Therefore I am urging you, become my imitators.+Verse 17That is why I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful son in Sovereign, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every congregation.
Not in word but in power
Verse 18Now some have been puffed up, as though I were not coming to you.Verse 19But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know, not the word of those who have been puffed up, but the power.Verse 20Because the Kingdom of God is not in word but in power.+Verse 21What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a gentle spirit?