so that you may learn to recognize and treasure what is excellent [identifying the best, and distinguishing moral differences], and that you may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ [actually living lives that lead others away from sin];

as I heartily look for and hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed: but that with all confidence, as always in times past, even so now Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be through life, or else death.

I am constrained of two things. I desire to be loosed, and to be with Christ, which thing is best of all:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always been obedient in the past, so now work out your own Salvation with anxious care, not only when I am with you, but all the more now that I am absent.

holding forth the word of life, so as to be a boast for me in Christ's day, that I have not run in vain nor laboured in vain.

Meanwhile, I thought it best to send Epaphroditus my brother, fellow worker, and fellow soldier, but your messenger and minister to my need back to you.

For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and boast in Christ Jesus, and do not trust in flesh.

Brethren, I do not imagine that I have yet laid hold of it. But this one thing I do--forgetting everything which is past and stretching forward to what lies in front of me,

Their [ultimate] end is [spiritual] destruction; their god is their appetite; they boast of what they ought to be ashamed of, and they [constantly] think about worldly things.