2 Corinthians 1:12

2 Corinthians 1:12. For our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness [1] and sincerity of God ‘in purity of motive, and integrity of heart, as in the sight of the great Searcher of hearts,' not with (‘in') fleshly wisdom, but with (‘in') the grace of God not even trusting to our own judgment how to act, but under the guidance of Divine grace, we behaved ourselves in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward, ‘If there is one place more than another where I have acted on this principle, it is Corinth and among you.' It would have been hypocrisy to ask their prayers for him had he been conscious of pursuing a crooked policy. But conscious as he was that he had but one object in view throughout his whole apostolic work to finish his course with joy and the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24), yea, “glorying” in the consciousness of this, though maligned by self-seeking enemies, he could freely ask them to unite with him in prayer for his deliverance from the perils by which he was then surrounded, and the anxieties which were well-nigh weighing him down.

[1] The authority for this reading is decisive. The received reading “sincerity” the word for which in the Greek is almost identical in look with “holiness” came in no doubt as a gloss, as making the sense more obvious.