1But I determined this in myself, not to come again to you in sadness. 2For if I make you sad, who then is he who makes me glad except he who is made sad by me? 3And 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. 4For 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. 5But if any man has caused sadness, he has not caused me sadness, but in part (that I may not bear down) you all. 6Sufficient to such a man is this punishment by the many, 7so that instead, for you rather to forgive and encourage, lest perhaps such a man would be swallowed up with too much sorrow. 8Therefore I beseech you to affirm love for him. 9For I also wrote for this, so that I might know the proof of you, whether ye are obedient in all things. 10But 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, 11so that we may not be exploited by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his methods. 12Now having come to Troas for the good-news of the Christ, and a door having been opened to me in Lord, 13I had no rest in my spirit, my not finding Titus my brother. But having departed from them, I went forth into Macedonia. 14And 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. 15Because we are a fragrance of Christ to God, in those being saved and in those perishing: 16to 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? 17For 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.