2 You see, I settled it in my mind that I wouldn’t make you another sad visit. ² After all, if I make you sad, who is there to cheer me up except the one who is sad because of me? ³ And I wrote what I did so that I wouldn’t come and find sadness where I should have found joy. I have this confidence about all of you, that my joy belongs to you all. ⁴ No: I wrote to you in floods of tears, out of great trouble and anguish in my heart, not so that I could make you sad but so that you would know just how much overflowing love I have towards you.

Time to forgive

⁵ But if anyone has caused sadness, it isn’t me that he has saddened, but, in a measure (I don’t want to emphasize this too much), all of you. ⁶ The punishment that the majority has imposed is quite enough; ⁷ what’s needed now is rather that you should forgive and console him, in case someone like that might be swallowed up by such abundant sorrow. ⁸ Let me urge you, then, to reaffirm your love for him.

⁹ The reason I wrote to you, you see, was in order to know whether you would pass the test and be obedient in everything. ¹⁰ If you forgive anyone anything, so do I; and whatever I have forgiven—if indeed I have forgiven anyone anything!—it’s all happened under the eyes of the Messiah, and for your own sake. ¹¹ The point is that we shouldn’t be outsmarted by the satan. We know what he’s up to!

The smell of life, the smell of death

¹² However, when I came to Troas to announce the Messiah’s gospel, and found an open door waiting for me in the Lord, ¹³ I couldn’t get any quietness in my spirit because I didn’t find my brother Titus there. So I left them and went off to Macedonia.

¹⁴ But thanks be to God—the God who always leads us in his triumphal procession in the Messiah, and through us reveals everywhere the sweet smell of knowing him. ¹⁵ We are the Messiah’s fragrance before God, you see, to those who are being saved and to those who are being lost. ¹⁶ To the latter, it’s a smell which comes from death and leads to death; but to the former it’s the smell of life which leads to life.

Who can rise to this challenge? ¹⁷ We aren’t mere peddlers of God’s word, as so many people are. We speak with sincerity; we speak from God; we speak in God’s presence; we speak in the Messiah.