1 If there is, therefore, any consolation in Christ, if any encouragement of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender affections and compassions,
2 fill ye up my joy, that ye think the same thing; having the same love; united in soul; minding the one thing;
3 doing nothing through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind, each esteeming others better than himself;
4 not looking each to his own things, but each also to the things of others.
6 Who, existing originally in the form of God, accounted it not a prize to he equal with God.
7 but emptied Himself, taking a slave's form, coming to be in the likeness of men;
8 and, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
9 Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed upon Him the name which is above every name;
10 that, in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of beings in Heaven, and on earth, and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
12 So then, my beloved, as ye always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God Who is working in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings;
15 that ye may become blameless and harmless, children of God, irreproachable in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye appear as luminaries in the world,
16 holding forth the word of life, for an occasion of glorying to me at the day of Christ, that I ran not in vain, neither labored in vain.
17 But even if I am offered as a libation upon the sacrifice and ministry of your faith, I rejoice, and I rejoice with you all;
18 and in the same thing do ye also rejoice, and rejoice with me.
19 But I am hoping in the Lord Jesus shortly to send Timothy to you, that I also may be cheerful, when having known the things concerning you.
20 For I have no one like-minded, who, indeed, will sincerely care for your interests;
21 for all are seeking their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.
22 But ye know the proof of him, that, as a child with a father, he served with me in furtherance of the Gospel.
23 Him, indeed, therefore, I hope to send immediately, as soon as I may look away from the things which concern me:
24 but I trust in the Lord that I myself also shall come shortly.
25 Yet I deemed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and fellow-worker, and fellow-soldier, but your messenger and minister to my need;
26 since he was longing after you all, and was in great distress, because ye heard that he was sick.
27 For, in fact, he was sick, near to death; but God had mercy on him, and not on him only, but on me also, that I might not have sorrow upon sorrow.
28 I sent him, therefore, the more urgently, that, seeing him again, ye may rejoice, and I may be the less sorrowful.
29 Receive him, therefore, in the Lord with all joy, and hold such in honor;
30 because, for the work of Christ, he came near to death; imperiling his soul, that he might fill up your lack of ministry toward me.