As certainly as God is to be trusted, my message to you has not been a "Yes" that might mean "No."

But upon my soul I call God to witness that it was to spare you pain that I gave up my visit to Corinth.

For if I make you sad, who is there to make me glad but the very man who has been made sad by me?

To a man like that, this censure by the majority has been sufficient punishment,

In addition to my own comfort, I was made so glad that my cup ran over at the gladness Titus felt, because his spirit has been set at rest by 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.

Not only that, but he has been selected by the churches to travel with me for this gracious contribution which is being raised by me, so that it may turn out for the glory of the Lord and a proof of my readiness to serve.

for I know your readiness to help in it. I am boasting of you about it to the Macedonians, reminding them that Greece has been ready since last year, and your enthusiasm has stimulated the most of them.

three times I have been beaten by the Romans, once I was pelted with stones; three times I have been shipwrecked, and once I have spent a day and a night adrift at sea.

I have made a fool of myself, but you have forced me to do it, for I am the man who ought to have been constantly approved by you. For I am not a single bit inferior to your surpassingly superior apostles, though really I am "nobody."

It is now the third time that I have been ready to come to see you, and I will never ask you for financial support, for it is not your money but you yourselves that I want; for children are not by duty bound to lay up money for their parents, but parents for their children.