⁶ So always be cheerful!  As long as we are in these bodies, we are away from the Lord. ⁷ But we live by faith, not by what we see. ⁸ We should be cheerful, because we would rather leave these bodies and be at home with the Lord. ⁹ But whether we are at home with the Lord or away from him, we still try our best to please him. ¹⁰ After all, Christ will judge each of us for the good or the bad that we do while living in these bodies.

¹⁴ We are ruled by Christ’s love for us. We are certain that if one person died for everyone else, then all of us have died. ¹⁵ And Christ did die for all of us. He died so we would no longer live for ourselves, but for the one who died and was raised to life for us.

¹⁶ We are careful not to judge people by what they seem to be, though we once judged Christ in that way. ¹⁷ Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.

Contemporary English Version (CEV) - for other versions see BibleGateway.com