just as it is right for me to think this about all of you, because I have you in my heart, [since] both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel all of you are sharers of grace with me.

Now I want you to know, brothers, that {my circumstances} have happened instead for the progress of the gospel,

Therefore my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For I have no one like-minded who [will] sincerely be concerned about {your circumstances}.

For indeed he was sick, coming near to death, but God had mercy on him and not [on] him only, but also [on] me, so that I would not have grief upon grief.

although I [could] have confidence even in the flesh.

But whatever [things] were gain to me, these [things] I have considered loss because of Christ.

{More than that}, even consider all [things] to be loss because of the surpassing greatness of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for the sake of whom I have suffered the loss of all [things], and consider [them] dung, in order that I may gain Christ

Not that I have already received [this], or [have] already been made perfect, but I press on if indeed I may lay hold of [that] for which also I was laid hold of by Christ.

Brothers, I do not consider myself to have laid hold of [it]. But [I do] one [thing], forgetting the things behind and straining toward the things ahead,

Only to what we have attained, to the same hold on.

Become fellow imitators of me, brothers, and observe those who walk in this way, just as you have us [as] an example.

And [the things] which you have learned and received and heard about and seen in me, practice these [things], and the God of peace will be with you.

But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last {you have renewed your concern for me}, for whom also you were thinking, but you had no opportunity [to express it].

Not that I speak from need, for I have learned to be content in whatever [circumstances] I am.

I know [how] both {to make do with little} and I know [how] {to have an abundance}. In everything and in all [things] I have learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both {to have an abundance} and to go without.

Nevertheless you have done well by sharing with me in my affliction.

But I have received everything [in full] and have an abundance; {I am well supplied} [because] I received from Epaphroditus {what you had sent}, a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God.