012:014 See, I am now for the third time prepared to visit you, but I will not be a dead weight to you. I desire not your money, but yourselves; for children ought not to put by for their parents, but parents for their children.
012:015 And as for me, most gladly will I spend all I have and be utterly spent for your salvation.
012:016 If I love you so intensely, am I the less to be loved? Be that as it may: I was not a burden to you. But being by no means scrupulous, I entrapped you, they say!
012:017 Have I gained any selfish advantage over you through any one of the messengers I have sent to you?
012:018 I begged Titus to visit you, and sent our other brother
with him. Did Titus gain any selfish advantage over you?
Were not he and I guided by one and the same Spirit, and did
we not walk in the same steps?
012:019 You are imagining, all this time, that we are making our
defense at your bar. In reality it is as in God's presence
and in communion with Christ that we speak; but, dear friends,
it is all with a view to your progress in goodness.
012:020 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;
012:021 and that upon re-visiting you I may be humbled by my God in your presence, and may have to mourn over many whose hearts still cling to their old sins, and who have not repented of the impurity, fornication, and gross sensuality, of which they have been guilty.
013:001 This intended visit of mine is my third visit to you. "On the evidence of two or three witnesses every charge shall be sustained."
013:002 Those who cling to their old sins, and indeed all of you, I have forewarned and still forewarn (as I did on my second visit when present, so I do now, though absent) that, when I come again, I shall not spare you;