15. so that you may be innocent and pure as God's perfect children, who live in a world of corrupt and sinful people. You must shine among them like stars lighting up the sky,
16. as you offer them the message of life. If you do so, I shall have reason to be proud of you on the Day of Christ, because it will show that all my effort and work have not been wasted.
17. Perhaps my life's blood is to be poured out like an offering on the sacrifice that your faith offers to God. If that is so, I am glad and share my joy with you all.
18. In the same way, you too must be glad and share your joy with me.
19. If it is the Lord's will, I hope that I will be able to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be encouraged by news about you.
20. He is the only one who shares my feelings and who really cares about you.
21. All the others are concerned only with their own affairs, not with the cause of Jesus Christ.
22. And you yourselves know how he has proved his worth, how he and I, like a son and his father, have worked together for the sake of the gospel.
23. So I hope to send him to you as soon as I know how things are going to turn out for me.
24. And I trust in the Lord that I myself will be able to come to you soon.
25. I have thought it necessary to send you our brother Epaphroditus, who has worked and fought by my side and who has served as your messenger in helping me.
26. He is anxious to see you all and is very upset because you had heard that he was ill.
27. Indeed he was ill and almost died. But God had pity on him, and not only on him but on me, too, and spared me an even greater sorrow.
28. I am all the more eager, then, to send him to you, so that you will be glad again when you see him, and my own sorrow will disappear.
29. Receive him, then, with joy, as a brother in the Lord. Show respect to all such people as he,