So we have a cheerful confidence, and we anticipate with greater delight being banished from the body and going home to the Lord.

For although, as you say, I am absent from you in body, yet in spirit I am present with you and am delighted to witness your good discipline and the solid front presented by your faith in Christ.

"You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and yet I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I am.

For I am afraid that perhaps when I come I may not find you to be what I desire, and that you may find me to be what you do not desire; that perhaps there may be contention, jealousy, bitter feeling, party spirit, ill-natured talk, backbiting, undue eulogy, unrest;

I am convinced of this, and I know that I shall remain, and shall go on working side by side with you all, to promote your progress and joy in the faith;

But we, brethren, having been for a short time separated from you in bodily presence, though not in heart, endeavoured all the more earnestly, with intense longing, to see you face to face.

"Yet it is the truth that I am telling you--it is to your advantage that I go away. For unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.

I for my part, present with you in spirit although absent in body, have already, as though I were present, judged him who has so acted.

Therefore, my dearly-loved friends, as I have always found you obedient, labour earnestly with fear and trembling--not merely as though I were present with you, but much more now since I am absent from you--labour earnestly, I say, to make sure of your own salvation.

And for this reason also we make it our ambition, whether at home or in exile, to please Him perfectly.

Only let the lives you live be worthy of the Good News of the Christ, in order that, whether I come and see you or, being absent, only hear of you, I may know that you are standing fast in one spirit and with one mind, fighting shoulder to shoulder for the faith of the Good News.

But as for me Paul, I entreat you by the gentleness and self-forgetfulness of Christ--I who when among you have not an imposing personal presence, but when absent am fearlessly outspoken in dealing with you.

Let such people take this into their reckoning, that whatever we are in word by our letters when absent, the same are we also in act when present.