Goodspeed(i)
11 I have been making a fool of myself, but you forced me to do it, when you ought to have been expressing your approval of me. For I am not a bit inferior to your superfine apostles, even if I am nobody!
12 The signs that mark a true apostle were most patiently shown when I was among you, in signs, wonders, and marvels.
13 For what is there in which the other churches had the better of you, except in the fact that I would not permit myself to be a burden to you? You must forgive me that wrong!
14 Here it is the third time that I have been ready to come to see you, and I do not intend to be a burden to you now; for it is not your money but yourselves that I want; for children are not expected to lay up money for their parents, but parents for their children.
15 And I will be glad to spend all I have and all I am for your sake. Are you going to love me the less for loving you so intensely?
16 But granting that I did not burden you myself, I was clever about it, you say, and took you in by a trick.
17 Yet did I make anything out of you by anybody that I sent to you?
18 I asked Titus to go and I sent his brother with him. Did Titus make anything out of you? Did not he and I act in the same spirit, and take the very same steps?
19 Have you been supposing all along that it is before you I have been defending myself? It is in the sight of God and as a follower of Christ that I have been speaking. But it is all to do you good, dear friends,
20 for I am afraid that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I want to find you, and that you may find me not as you want to find me. I am afraid that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, bad feeling, rivalry, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder,
21 and that when I come back my God may humiliate me before you, and I may have to mourn over many who have kept on in their old sins and have never repented of the impurity, immorality, and sensuality in which they have indulged.