1 If therefore there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any participation of the Spirit, 2 if any bowels of compassion, compleat ye my joy, be like-minded, maintaining the same love, with your souls united, in attending to the one thing needful. 3 Do nothing through strife or vain-glory, but in lowliness of mind each esteeming others better than themselves. 4 Look not every one to his own interests only, but every one also to the concerns of others.
5 Let the same mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be as God. 7 Yet He emptied himself, assuming the form of a servant, when made in the likeness of men: 8 and being in the human state, He humbled himself, and was obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross. 9 Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name above every name: 10 that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of celestial beings, as well as of those on earth, and of those under the earth; 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed the gospel, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence; be still working out your own salvation though with fear and trembling: 13 for it is God that worketh in you both to will, and to work, out of his own good-pleasure. 14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings: 15 that ye may be blameless and inoffensive, the children of God without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom ye shine as lights in the world, 16 exhibiting the word of life; to my rejoicing in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, nor laboured in vain. 17 But if I be even poured forth as a libation on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and congratulate with you all. 18 And for the same cause do ye also rejoice, and congratulate with me.
19 But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be refreshed, by knowing the state of your affairs. 20 For I have no one of a like spirit, who will with a kind of natural affection take care of your affairs. 21 For all seek their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus. 22 But ye know the proof I have had of him, that as son with a father he served with me in the gospel. 23 I hope therefore to send him as soon as I see the issue of my own affairs. 24 But I trust in the Lord, that I shall soon come myself too.
25 However, I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus my brother, and fellow-laborer, and fellow-soldier, but your messenger, who ministred to my wants: 26 for he much longed after you all, and was greatly concerned because ye had heard that he was sick. 27 For indeed he was sick and nigh unto 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 have sent him therefore the more desirously, that when ye see him again ye may rejoice, and I may be the less sorrowful. 29 Receive him therefore in the Lord with all joy, and have such in high esteem: 30 because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his own life, so that he might fill up what was wanting in your kind offices towards me.