4. I wrote to you with a greatly troubled and distressed heart and with many tears; my purpose was not to make you sad, but to make you realize how much I love you all.
5. Now, if anyone has made somebody sad, he has not done it to me but to all of you — in part at least. (I say this because I do not want to be too hard on him.)
6. It is enough that this person has been punished in this way by most of you.
7. Now, however, you should forgive him and encourage him, in order to keep him from becoming so sad as to give up completely.
8. And so I beg you to let him know that you really do love him.
9. I wrote you that letter because I wanted to find out how well you had stood the test and whether you are always ready to obey my instructions.
10. When you forgive someone for what he or she has done, I forgive them too. For when I forgive — if, indeed, I need to forgive anything — I do it in Christ's presence because of you,
11. in order to keep Satan from getting the upper hand of us; for we know what his plans are.
12. When I arrived in Troas to preach the Good News about Christ, I found that the Lord had opened the way for the work there.
13. But I was deeply worried, because I could not find our brother Titus. So I said goodbye to the people there and went on to Macedonia.
14. But thanks be to God! For in union with Christ we are always led by God as prisoners in Christ's victory procession. God uses us to make the knowledge about Christ spread everywhere like a sweet fragrance.