Second Letter to the Corinthians 2

¹ Well then, I made up my mind not to pay you a second distressing visit.

² I may have hurt you, but if so I have hurt the only people who could give me any pleasure.

³ I wrote as I did to make sure that, when I came, I should not be distressed by the very people who should have made me happy. I am sure you all know that I could never be happy unless you were.

⁴ When I wrote to you, in deep distress and anguish of mind, and in tears, it was not to make you feel hurt but to let you know how much love I have for you.

⁵ Someone has been the cause of pain; and the cause of pain not to me, but to some degree – not to overstate it – to all of you.

⁶ The punishment already imposed by the majority on the man in question is enough;

⁷ and the best thing now is to give him your forgiveness and encouragement, or he might break down from so much misery.

⁸ So I am asking you to give some definite proof of your love for him.

⁹ What I really wrote for, after all, was to test you and see whether you are completely obedient.

¹⁰ Anybody that you forgive, I forgive; and as for my forgiving anything – if there has been anything to be forgiven, I have forgiven it for your sake in the presence of Christ.

¹¹ And so we will not be outwitted by Satan – we know well enough what his intentions are.

¹² When I went up to Troas to preach the Good News of Christ, and the door was wide open for my work there in the Lord,

¹³ I was so continually uneasy in mind at not meeting brother Titus there, I said good-bye to them and went on to Macedonia.

¹⁴ Thanks be to God who, wherever he goes, makes us, in Christ, partners of his triumph,[*a] and through us is spreading the knowledge of himself, like a sweet smell, everywhere.

¹⁵ We are Christ’s incense to God for those who are being saved and for those who are not;

¹⁶ for the last, the smell of death that leads to death, for the first the sweet smell of life that leads to life. And who could be qualified for work like this?

¹⁷ At least we do not go round offering the word of God for sale, as many other people do. In Christ, we speak as men of sincerity, as envoys of God and in God’s presence.