6 [1:23]But I call God to witness on my soul, that to spare you I have not yet come to Corinth. [1:24]Not that we are lords of your faith, but co-laborers of your joy; for you stand firm by the faith. [2:1]But I determined this with myself, not to come again to you in sorrow; [2:2]for if I grieve you, who is he that gladdens me, but he that is grieved by me? [2:3]And I wrote the same to you that coming I might not have sorrow for those in whom I ought to have joy, having trusted in you all that my joy is the joy of you all. [2:4]For I wrote to you in much affliction and distress of mind with many tears, not that you should be grieved, but that you might know the love which I have abundantly for you. 7 [2:5]But if any one has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but in part, that I may not be hard upon you, [has grieved you] all, [2:6]Sufficient for such a one is this rebuke by many; [2:7]so that on the other hand you ought to forgive and comfort him, that he may not be overwhelmed with excessive sorrow. [2:8]I exhort you, therefore, to confirm your love to him; [2:9]for I wrote for this purpose, that I might know the proof of you, whether you are obedient in all things. [2:10]But whom you favor I also will favor; for what favor I have shown, if I have shown any favor, has been for your sakes, in the presence of Christ, [2:11]that we may not be circumvented by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices. 8 [2:12]But when I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ, and a door was opened to me by the Lord, [2:13]I had no rest in my spirit from not finding Titus my brother; but leaving them I went to Macedonia. [2:14]But thanks be to God, who always triumphs over us in Christ and reveals the odor of his knowledge by us in every place; [2:15]for we are a sweet odor of Christ to God, in the saved and in the lost, [2:16]in one an odor of death to death, and in the other an odor of life to life. And who is sufficient for these things? [2:17]For we are not as many, who adulterate the word of God, [for gain]; but as of sincerity, but as of God, we speak before God in Christ. 9 [3:1]Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some, commendatory epistles to you or from you? [3:2]You are our epistle, written by our hearts, known and read by all men, [3:3]for you are manifestly an epistle of Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of hearts of flesh. [3:4]And we have such confidence through Jesus Christ in God; [3:5]not that we are sufficient of ourselves to reason out any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, [3:6]who also has made us able ministers of the new covenant, not of the writing but of the spirit; for the writing kills, but the spirit makes alive.