On this I was resolved in my own mind, that I would not pay you a second visit on a sad errand.✻

Was I to make you sorry? It meant bringing sorrow on those who are my own best source of comfort.

And those were the very terms in which I wrote to you: I would not come, if it meant finding fresh cause for sorrow where I might have expected to find cause for happiness. I felt confidence in you all, I knew that what made me happy would make you happy too.✻

When I wrote to you, I wrote in great anguish and distress of mind, with many tears. I did not wish to bring sorrow on you, only to assure you of the love I bear you, so abundantly.

Well, if someone has caused distress, it is not myself that he has distressed but, in some measure, all of you, so that I must not be too hard on him.✻

This punishment inflicted on him by so many of you is punishment enough for the man I speak of,

and now you must think rather of shewing him indulgence, and comforting him; you must not let him be overwhelmed by excess of grief.

Let me entreat you, then, to give him assurance of your good will.

The reason why I wrote to you, after all, was to test your loyalty, by seeing whether you would obey me in full.

If you shew indulgence to anybody, so do I too; I myself, wherever I have shewn indulgence, have done so in the person of Christ for your sakes,

for fear that Satan should get the advantage over us; we know well enough how resourceful he is.

I went to Troas, then, to preach Christ’s gospel there, and found a great opportunity open to me in the Lord’s service;✻

but still I had no peace of mind, because I had not yet seen my brother Titus; so I took my leave of them all, and pressed on into Macedonia.

I give thanks to God, that he is always exhibiting us as the captives in the triumph of Christ Jesus,✻ and through us spreading abroad everywhere, like a perfume, the knowledge of himself.

We are Christ’s incense offered to God, making manifest both those who are achieving salvation and those who are on the road to ruin;

as a deadly fume where it finds death, as a life-giving perfume where it finds life. Who can prove himself worthy of such a calling?

We do not, like so many others, adulterate the word of God, we preach it in all its purity, as God gave it to us, standing before God’s presence in Christ.