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¹ But I decided this within myself, not to come to you again in grief.² For if I grieve 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 trouble 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 from 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 forgive . 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, the One 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, peddling the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God. We speak in Christ, in the sight of God.