¹ But I decided this within myself, not to come to you again in grief.

² For if I grieved you, who yet will be making me glad, if not the one being grieved by me?

³ And I wrote this same thing to you, lest coming I might have grief from those of whom I ought to rejoice, trusting in you all that my joy is the joy of all of you.

⁴ For out of much affliction and agony of heart I wrote to you, through many tears, not that you be grieved, but that you know the love which I have more abundantly toward you.

⁵ But if anyone has grieved, he has not grieved me, but in part, that I not overbear all of you.

⁶ This censure by the majority is enough for such a one.

⁷ So that on the contrary, you should rather forgive and comfort such a one, that he not be swallowed up by the overflowing grief.

⁸ So I beseech you to confirm your love to him.

⁹ For to this end I also wrote, that I might know the proof of you, if you are obedient in all things.

¹⁰ But to whom you forgive anything, I also. For also if I have forgiven anything, of whom I have forgiven it, it is for you, in Christ's person,

¹¹ so that we should not be overreached by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his devices.

¹² And coming to Troas for the gospel of Christ, and a door having been opened to me in the Lord,

¹³ I had no ease in my spirit at my not finding my brother Titus, but saying farewell to them, I went out to Macedonia.

¹⁴ But thanks be to God, He always leading us in triumph in Christ, and the One revealing through us the odor of the knowledge of Him in every place.

¹⁵ For we are a sweet smell to God because of Christ in those being saved, and in those being lost;

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

¹⁷ For we are not as the many, hawking the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God. We speak in Christ, in the sight of God.