For my boast is this, to which my conscience testifies, that before the world, but especially before you, I have acted from pure motives and in sincerity before God, not depending on worldly wisdom but on God's unmerited favor.

For we must all appear before the judgment-bar of Christ, that each may get his pay for what he has done, whether it be good or bad.

I do not mean this for your condemnation, because, as I have said before, you have such a place in my heart that I would live with you or die with you.

Indeed, if I have been doing some boasting of you to him, I have never been ashamed of it; but just as all I said to him was true, so now my boasting before Titus has been shown to be true.

So you must furnish them, before all the churches, proof of your love and ground for my praising you so highly.

and that when I come back my God may humiliate me before you, and I may have to mourn over some of those who formerly have committed shocking sins, and have not repented for them -- their impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality, which once they practiced.