¹ But I determined this in myself, not to come again to you in sadness.

² For if I make you sad, who then is he who makes me glad except he who is made sad by me?

³ And I wrote this same thing to you, so that when I came, I would not have sadness from whom I ought to rejoice, having been confident toward you all, because my joy is of all of you.

⁴ For out of much stress and dismay of heart, through many tears, I wrote to you, not that ye would be grieved, but that ye might know the love that I have so much more for you.

⁵ But if any man has caused sadness, he has not caused me sadness, but in part (that I may not bear down) you all.

⁶ Sufficient to such a man is this punishment by the many,

⁷ so that instead, for you rather to forgive and encourage, lest perhaps such a man would be swallowed up with too much sorrow.

⁸ Therefore I beseech you to affirm love for him.

⁹ For I also wrote for this, so that I might know the proof of you, whether ye are obedient in all things.

¹⁰ But to whom ye forgive anything, I too. For I also, whom I have forgiven (if anything), I have forgiven because of you in the presence of Christ,

¹¹ so that we may not be exploited by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his methods.

¹² Now having come to Troas for the good news of the Christ, and a door having been opened to me in the Lord,

¹³ I had no rest in my spirit, my not finding Titus my brother. But having departed from them, I went forth into Macedonia.

¹⁴ And thanks is to God who always causes us to triumph in the Christ, and who makes manifest the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place, through us.

¹⁵ Because we are a fragrance of Christ to God, in those being saved and in those perishing:

¹⁶ to the one an odor of death for death, and to the other an aroma of life for life. And who is adequate for these things?

¹⁷ For we are not as other men, huckstering the word of God, but as from purity. But we speak in Christ as from God in the sight of God.