Study Desk

We are not again commending ourselves to your favour, but are furnishing you with a ground of boasting on our behalf, so that you may have a reply ready for those with whom superficial appearances are everything and sincerity of heart counts for nothing.

For if we have been beside ourselves, it has been for God's glory; or if we are now in our right senses, it is in order to be of service to you.

For the love of Christ overmasters us, the conclusion at which we have arrived being this--that One having died for all, His death was their death,

and that He died for all in order that the living may no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.

Therefore for the future we know no one simply as a man. Even if we have known Christ as a man, yet now we do so no longer.

He has made Him who knew nothing of sin to be sin for us, in order that in Him we may become the righteousness of God.

For He says, "At a time of welcome I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have succoured you." Now is the time of loving welcome! Now is the day of salvation!

We endeavour to give people no cause for stumbling in anything, lest the work we are doing should fall into discredit.

Do not come into close association with unbelievers, like oxen yoked with asses. For what is there in common between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what partnership has light with darkness?

And what compact has the Temple of God with idols? For *we* are the Temple of the ever-living God; as God has said, "I will dwell among them, and walk about among them; and will be their God, and it is they who shall be My people."

Make room for us in your hearts. There is not one of you whom we have wronged, not one to whom we have done harm, not one over whom we have gained any selfish advantage.

I do not say this to imply blame, for, as I have already said, you have such a place in our hearts that we would die with you or live with you.

For even after our arrival in Macedonia we could get no relief such as human nature craves. We were greatly harassed; there were conflicts without and fears within.

For if I gave you pain by that letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it then. I see that that letter, even though for a time it gave you pain, had a salutary effect.

Now I rejoice, not in your grief, but because the grief led to repentance; for you sorrowed with a godly sorrow, which prevented you from receiving injury from us in any respect.

For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, a repentance not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world finally produces death.

For mark the effects of this very thing--your having sorrowed with a godly sorrow--what earnestness it has called forth in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing affection, what jealousy, what meting out of justice! You have completely wiped away reproach from yourselves in the matter.

Therefore, though I wrote to you, it was not to punish the offender, nor to secure justice for him who had suffered the wrong, but it was chiefly in order that your earnest feeling on our behalf might become manifest to yourselves in the sight of God.

For this reason we feel comforted; and--in addition to this our comfort--we have been filled with all the deeper joy at Titus's joy, because his spirit has been set at rest by you all.

For however I may have boasted to him about you, I have no reason to feel ashamed; but as we have in all respects spoken the truth to you, so also our boasting to Titus about you has turned out to be the truth.