For if I have boasted to him about anything concerning you, I have not been embarrassed by you, ¹  but just as everything we said to you was true, ²  so our boasting to Titus about you ³  has proved true as well.

For see what this very thing, this sadness ¹  as God intended, has produced in you: what eagerness, what defense of yourselves, ²  what indignation, ³  what alarm, what longing, what deep concern, ⁴  what punishment! ⁵  In everything you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

I am not saying this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love by comparison with the eagerness of others. ¹ 

And we are sending ¹  with them our brother whom we have tested many times and found eager in many matters, but who now is much more eager than ever because of the great confidence he has in you.

But I am sending ¹  these brothers so that our boasting about you may not be empty in this case, so that you may be ready ²  just as I kept telling them.

Through the evidence ¹  of this service ²  they will glorify God because of your obedience to your confession in the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your sharing ³  with them and with everyone.

Put yourselves to the test to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize regarding yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you – unless, indeed, you fail the test! ¹ 

by purity, by knowledge, by patience, by benevolence, by the Holy Spirit, ¹  by genuine ²  love,

Therefore show ¹  them openly before the churches the proof of your love and of our pride in you. ² 

And even if I am unskilled ¹  in speaking, yet I am certainly not so in knowledge. Indeed, we have made this plain to you in everything in every way.

I have become a fool. You yourselves forced me to do it, for I should have been commended by you. For I lack nothing in comparison ¹  to those “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing.