2 Corinthians 2:1-17
2 But I made this resolution, not to come to you with an annoyance again.
2 For if I annoy you, then who is it that gladdens me but the one who is annoyed by me?
3 And I wrote that very thing in order that I might not, when I come, have annoyance from those over whom I ought to be rejoicing, being confident of you all that my joy is that of all of you.
4 * For in much distress and heartache I wrote to you with many tears, not in order that you might be annoyed but in order that you might know the love I specially feel toward you.
5 And if anyone has caused an annoyance he has caused it not to me but in part, not to come down too hard, to all of you.
6 For such a one this rebuke by the majority is sufficient;
7 * so that on the contrary you should rather be condoning and encouraging, for fear such a one should be crushed with excessive grief.
8 For which reason I urge you to take the line of love toward him;
9 for this was what I wrote for, in order to ascertain your quality, whether you are obedient on all points.
10 But to him to whom you condone anything, so do I—for what I have condoned, if anything I have, has been on your account before Christ’s face,
11 in order that we may not be overreached by Satan; for we are not unacquainted with his contrivances.
12 But when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and had a door opened for me in the Lord,
13 I did not have any relief for my spirit owing to my not finding my brother Titus, but bade them farewell and went out to Macedonia.
14 * But thanks be to God who is always leading us about in his triumph and through us diffusing in every place the odor of the knowledge of him,
15 because we are Christ’s genial scent to God among those who are being saved and among those who are being lost—
16 to these an odor from death, to death, but to those an odor from life, to life. And for this who is adequate?
17 * For we are not like so many, peddling God’s word for a living; it is as in honor bound, it is as from God, in God’s presence, in Christ, that we speak.
Footnotes
^ 2:4 Lit. out of much
^ 2:7 Lit. should be engulfed
^ 2:14 Lit. through us making perceptible
^ 2:17 Lit. but as out of candor, but as out of God, in God’s presence, in Christ, we speak
