1 And I determined this with myself, that I would not again come to you in sadness.
2 For if I should make you sad, who would make me joyful, unless he whom I had made sad ?
3 And I wrote that very thing to you, lest when I came, those persons whom I ought to make joyful, should make me sad. For I have confidence concerning you, that my joy is the joy of you all.
4 And in much affliction, and in anguish of heart, I wrote those things to you, with many tears; not that ye might have sorrow, but that ye might know the exceeding love I have for you.
5 And if one hath caused grief, he hath not grieved me [only], but,-that the declaration may not bear too hard on you-in a measure, all of you.
6 And sufficient for him, is this rebuke proceeding from many:
7 so that, on the other hand, ye ought to forgive him and console him; lest he who is such a man, should be swallowed up with excessive grief.
8 I therefore beseech you, that ye confirm to him your love.
9 For it was for this also that I wrote [to you], that I might learn by a trial, whether ye would be obedient in every thing.
10 And whom ye forgive, I also [forgive]: for that which I forgave to any one, for your sakes I forgave it, in the presence of the Messiah;
11 lest Satan should overreach us; for we know his devices.
12 Moreover, when I came to Troas in announcing the Messiah, and a door was opened to me by the Lord,
13 there was no quietude in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother: and I took leave of them, and went into Macedonia.
14 But thanks be to God, who always procureth us a triumph in the Messiah, and manifesteth by us the odor of the knowledge of him in every place.
15 For, through the Messiah, we are unto God a sweet odor, in them that live and in them that perish:
16 to these, an odor of death unto death; and to those, an odor of life unto life. And who is adequate to these things !
17 For we are not like others, who dilute the words of God; but as of the truth, and as of God, we speak in the Messiah before God.
