“But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:”
King James Version (KJV)
1:9 Yea, we had the sentence of death in ourselves - We ourselves expected nothing but death.
2Co 1:9 We had the sentence of death in ourselves. The meaning seems to be that he felt that the time had come for him to die, and his reprieve from death was, as it were, a resurrection from death by the providence of God.