Therefore show them openly before the churches the proof of your love and of our pride in you.

What I am saying with this boastful confidence I do not say the way the Lord would. Instead it is, as it were, foolishness.

I have great confidence in you; I take great pride on your behalf. I am filled with encouragement; I am overflowing with joy in the midst of all our suffering.

As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of Achaia.

For our reason for confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that with pure motives and sincerity which are from God – not by human wisdom but by the grace of God – we conducted ourselves in the world, and all the more toward you.

For if I have boasted to him about anything concerning you, I have not been embarrassed by you, but just as everything we said to you was true, so our boasting to Titus about you has proved true as well.