2 Corinthians
Chapters 2:10-16
St Paul from the Trenches 1916
10I forgive where you do so; for remember that that forgiveness was for your sake; in the Christ and with your own love set before me I forgave that sin,
11lest by its means Satan might wrestle me a fall. I know his readiness to lay hold of anything in that nature and to get my mind captive thereby.
12I reached Troas then on this intended journey,
13but arrived there I found no help, no one to work with me, for Titus my brother alone could have helped me. A great door was opened for me there, and I had come to proclaim the Christ, yet I could not stay, I was not able to endure without Titus, so I bade them farewell and crossed into Europe.
14Yet in my weakness God himself continually causes me to triumph. It is in the Christ that this happens.
15Through me the fragrance of the knowledge of God is filling the world, like the sweet savour of incense and sacrifice. It is the divine freshness of life in the Christ which forms this fragrance and which makes men whole, and continually points onward to an ever increasing measure of life, and all its infinite possibilities, when released from fate and death.
16But this same fragrance of the new life, alas, to those who know it not and who continue in the power of the flesh and its inevitable doom, this very fragrance shows up the stench of their corruption, so that I become to them the thing of all others that they hate, the index and characteristic sign of their own approaching dissolution. Now who is sufficient for these things? That one should be through the Christ that is present in me, both the life and the death of this material world.