For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

But you know of his proven worth, that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father.

Therefore I hope to send him immediately, as soon as I see how things go with me;

because he was longing for you all and was distressed because you had heard that he was sick.

For indeed he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, so that I would not have sorrow upon sorrow.

Receive him then in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard;

because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was deficient in your service to me.

who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.