2 Cô-rinh-tô 2

¹For I settled this in my own mind: I would not come to you again bringing grief. ²For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad, except the very ones I have grieved? ³That is the very reason I wrote to you before: so that when I came I would not be grieved by the very people who ought to give me joy. For I was sure of every one of you, sure that what gives me joy gives joy to all of you.^{a 4}I wrote to you out of great affliction and anguish of heart, and with many tears. I did not write to make you grieve. I wrote so that you would come to know my love, which overflows toward you above all.

Forgiving the offender

⁵Now if someone has caused grief, he has caused it not to me but to all of you, at least in part (I do not want to press the point too hard).^{b 6}The penalty that most of you imposed on this man is enough for him. ⁷So now you should turn the other way: forgive him and comfort him, or he may be swallowed up by grief that is more than he can bear. ⁸So I urge you to confirm your love for him openly. ⁹For this was another purpose of my writing: to learn whether you would prove yourselves true, obedient in every matter. ¹⁰If you forgive anyone anything, I forgive that person too. For whatever I have forgiven, so far as I have had anything to forgive, I have forgiven for your sake, in the presence of Christ, ¹¹so that Satan does not gain the advantage over us. We know well enough what he has in mind.

No rest in Troas

¹²When I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ, I found a door standing open for me in the Lord’s work. ¹³Even so, my spirit could not settle, because Titus my brother was nowhere to be found. So I took leave of the believers there and set out for Macedonia.

The fragrance of Christ

¹⁴But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us along in his triumphal procession, and who through us makes known in every place the fragrance that is the knowledge of him.^{c 15}For to God we are the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. ¹⁶To some it is a fragrance of death that leads to death; to others, a fragrance of life that leads to life. And who is fit for a calling like this? ¹⁷For we are not like the many who trade in the word of God for gain. We speak with pure motives, as people from God, in the sight of God, in Christ.^d