7 My dear people, since God has promised us these things, we should make ourselves clean. We should clean out everything that makes our lives or our spirits dirty. We should try to be altogether holy because we respect God with fear.

² I do not say this to bring something against you. I have already told you that we love you very much. If we live or if we die, we will be together with you.

³ I really trust you. I am very proud of you. I have received much comfort. Even in all of our troubles I am very glad.

⁴ When we came to the country of Macedonia, we had no rest for our bodies. We had all kinds of trouble everywhere. There was fighting around us and our hearts were full of fear.

⁵ But God comforts those who are in trouble, and when Titus came, we were comforted.

⁶ You comforted him, and that comforted us. He told us that you wanted very much to see us. He told us that you were very sorry for what you had done. He told us that you want to stand with me. So now I am even more happy. 8 ,

⁷ I know that what I wrote in my letter made you sad. But I am not sorry I wrote it. Perhaps I was sorry at first, but now I am glad I sent it. I see the letter made you sad for a while.

⁸ I do not like to make you sad, but I am glad that it made you sad and made you turn from your wrong ways. You took it all as from God. So then, we did not really hurt you.

⁹ When we are sad the way God wants us to be, we turn from our wrong ways. Then we are saved and we can never be sorry about that. But the sorrow of the world brings death.

¹⁰ See what happened. When you were sad, the way God wanted you to be, then you tried to do the right thing. You wanted to free yourself from wrong. You hated what is wrong. You were afraid. You wanted very much to do what is right. You stood for the right. You punished wrong doing. In every way you showed that you did right in this matter.

¹¹ So, even though I did write to you, it was not for the sake of the man who did wrong. And it was not for the sake of the man who had the wrong done to him. But I wrote so that you would see for yourselves, in the sight of God, how much we care for you.

¹² And so we have been comforted. Besides this, we were even more happy to see how happy Titus was. All of you really made his heart glad.

¹³ I told him how proud I was of you. And really, I had nothing to be ashamed of. Everything we have said to you has been true. So also, what we told Titus about you proved true.

¹⁴ He loves you even more when he remembers how you all obeyed him. You feared and trembled.

¹⁵ I am glad that I can always trust you.