For what I am writing you is nothing more than what you can read and understand, and I hope that you will understand it perfectly, just as some of you have come to understand me partially;

But if anyone has made anyone sad, it is not I, but you that he has made sad, at least, some of you, not to be severe on all of you.

Am I beginning to recommend myself again? I do not, like some people, do I, need letters of recommendation to you or from 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.

but through an equalizing of matters in the present crisis I do want your abundance to relieve their need, that some day their abundance may relieve your need, so that equality may exist --

to keep me -- not to mention you -- from being humiliated for having such confidence in you, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready.

I beg you not to make me too courageous in that confidence in which I think to take a daring stand against some people who try to think that I am acting from the lowest human motives.

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.