For on behalf of Christ you have the favour of suffering no less than of believing in him,

Therefore God raised him high and conferred on him a Name above all names,

I have no one like him, for genuine interest in your welfare.

I hope to send him then, as soon as ever I see how it will go with me ??24 though I am confident in the Lord that I shall be coming myself before long.

As for Epaphroditus, however, my brother, my fellow-worker, my fellow-soldier, and your messenger to meet my wants, I think it necessary to send you him at once,

And he was ill, nearly dead with illness. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me, to save me from having one sorrow upon another.

So I am specially eager to send him, that you may be glad when you see him again, and thus my own anxiety may be lightened.

Give him a welcome in the Lord, then, with your hearts full of joy. Value men like that,

Though I could rely on outward privilege, if I chose. Whoever thinks he can rely on that, I can outdo him.

and be found at death in him, possessing no legal righteousness of my own but the righteousness of faith in Christ, the divine righteousness that rests on faith.

I would know him in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, with my nature transformed to die as he died,

who will transform the body that belongs to our low estate till it resembles the body of his Glory, by the same power that enables him to make everything subject to himself.

In him who strengthens me I am able for anything.