just as you also partially did understand us, that we are your reason to be proud as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.

For this reason we have been comforted.And besides our comfort, we rejoiced even much more for the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.

Therefore openly before the churches, show them the proof of your love and of our reason for boasting about you.

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself!

For this reason I am writing these things while absent, so that when present I need not use severity, in accordance with the authority which the Lord gave me for building up and not for tearing down.