Yes, and the confidence that our union with the Lord enables us to place in you leads us to believe that you are doing, and will do, what we direct you.
I am persuaded, my Brothers--yes, I Paul, with regard to you- that you are yourselves full of kindness, furnished with all Christian learning, and well able to give advice to one another.
If any one thinks that he has the gift of preaching or any other spiritual gift, let him recognize that what I am now saying to you is a command from the Lord.
So I wrote as I did, for fear that, if I had come, I should have been pained by those who ought to have made me glad; for I felt sure that it was true of you all that my joy was in every case yours also.
We are also sending with them another of our Brothers, whose earnestness we have many a time proved in many ways, and whom we now find made even more earnest by his great confidence in you.
I, through my union with the Lord, am persuaded that you will learn to think with me. But the man who is disturbing your minds will have to bear his punishment, whoever he may be.
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always been obedient in the past, so now work out your own Salvation with anxious care, not only when I am with you, but all the more now that I am absent.
We urge you, Brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to avoid any Brother who is living an ill-ordered life, which is not in agreement with the teaching that you received from us.