2So I made up my mind not to come to you again to make you sad. ²For if I were to make you sad, who would be left to cheer me up? Only the very persons I had made sad. ³That is why I wrote that letter to you—I did not want to come to you and be made sad by the very people who should make me glad. For I am convinced that when I am happy, then all of you are happy too. ⁴I wrote to you with a greatly troubled and distressed heart and with many tears; my purpose was not to make you sad, but to make you realize how much I love you all.

Forgiveness for the Offender

⁵Now, if anyone has made somebody sad, he has not done it to me but to all of you—in part at least. (I say this because I do not want to be too hard on him.) ⁶It is enough that this person has been punished in this way by most of you. ⁷Now, however, you should forgive him and encourage him, in order to keep him from becoming so sad as to give up completely. ⁸And so I beg you to let him know that you really do love him. ⁹I wrote you that letter because I wanted to find out how well you had stood the test and whether you are always ready to obey my instructions. ¹⁰When you forgive someone for what he or she has done, I forgive them too. For when I forgive—if, indeed, I need to forgive anything—I do it in Christ’s presence because of you, ¹¹in order to keep Satan from getting the upper hand of us; for we know what his plans are.

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