If I fought with wild animals at Ephesus with a merely human perspective, what would I have gained by it? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering.
At the same time, pray for us as well, that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison,