For you have been given the privilege for the Messiah's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him.

For it is God who is producing in you both the desire and the ability to do what pleases him.

I do not have anyone else like him who takes a genuine interest in your welfare.

Therefore, I hope to send him as soon as I see how things are going to turn out for me.

Indeed, he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him, and not only on him but also on me, so that I would not have one sorrow on top of another.

Therefore, I am especially eager to send him so that you may have the joy of seeing him again, and so that I may feel relieved.

So joyfully welcome him in the Lord and make sure you honor such people highly,

What is more, I continue to consider all these things to be a loss for the sake of what is far more valuable, knowing the Messiah Jesus, my Lord. It is because of him that I have experienced the loss of all those things. Indeed, I consider them rubbish in order to gain the Messiah

and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but one that comes through the faithfulness of the Messiah, the righteousness that comes from God and that depends on faith.

I want to know the Messiah what his resurrection power is like and what it means to share in his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,

He will change our unassuming bodies and make them like his glorious body through the power that enables him to bring everything under his authority.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.