Philippians 2:19-30
Timothy and Epaphroditus
19Now I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I learn how you are doing.
20I have nobody else like him who will genuinely care for your needs.
21For all the others look after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.
22But you know Timothy’s proven worth, that as a child with his father he has served with me to advance the gospel.
23So I hope to send him as soon as I see what happens with me.
24And I trust in the Lord that I myself will come soon.
25But I thought it necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger and minister to my needs.
26For he has been longing for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill.
27He was sick indeed, nearly unto death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.
28Therefore I am all the more eager to send him, so that when you see him again you may rejoice, and I may be less anxious.
29Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor men like him,
30because he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for your deficit of service to me.
Berean Standard Bible
What he wrote about Christ is behind him, and what comes next is two men and their travel arrangements. It looks like the part of a letter you would skim. Paul wants to send Timothy down to Philippi, and the reason he gives is that he would like to hear how they are getting on and be cheered up by the news. That is a prisoner asking his friends for word from home, and he does not dress it up as strategy.
About Timothy himself he says there is nobody else like him, nobody else who will genuinely care what this church needs. Then he explains what he means by nobody else.
For all the others look after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.
Writing that down about the people you work with is a hard thing to do. Earlier in the same letter he had asked this church to look not only to their own interests but to the interests of others, and now he reports the men at his own elbow failing at exactly that. He names none of them. He does not soften it either.
Then Epaphroditus, and the letter stops sounding like a letter and starts sounding like a person. He is the man Philippi sent to Paul with their gift, and he became seriously ill. What Paul says was troubling him is not the illness. It was knowing that the news had reached home and that they were worried about him.
He came very close to dying. Then Paul adds a sentence he did not have to put in a letter of thanks.
But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.
He is in prison already, and he is telling a church that looks up to him what losing this friend would have cost. He does not claim he would have coped. A line later he says he is sending Epaphroditus back so that they can be glad to see him and so that he himself can be less anxious, which is not a word most people write about themselves in front of an audience.
The last instruction in this part is not about Paul at all.
Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor men like him, because he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for your deficit of service to me.
Honor is the surprising word. Epaphroditus carried a bag of money and caught something on the road, and Paul puts him in the same sentence as the work of Christ.
How We Know
This passage keeps several things that reflect badly on Paul's position, and they are a small point in favor of a letter written from inside the situation rather than about it. Verse 21 says that all the others around him look after their own interests rather than those of Jesus Christ, which concedes that his own circle is thin.
Verse 26 has Epaphroditus distressed because the church heard he was ill, and verse 27 says his death would have brought Paul sorrow upon sorrow. Verse 28 has Paul calling himself anxious.
A thin circle, a friend he was spared losing, and his own anxiety, all standing in the same short letter as the lines about Christ being exalted.
Questions
1 Why does Paul want to send Timothy down to Philippi?
AnswerSo that he can find out how they are doing and be cheered up by the news. He is in custody and he wants word from his friends, and he says that plainly instead of making the trip sound like a plan.
2 Paul writes something hard about the people around him. What is it, and where had this church heard it before?
AnswerThat all the others look after their own interests rather than the interests of Jesus Christ. It is the same failure he had asked them to avoid earlier in the letter, and he reports it happening among his own colleagues without naming a single one of them.
3 When you are ill, what is the worst part of it for you? Epaphroditus was sick nearly to death, and Paul says the thing troubling him was something else.
AnswerIt was knowing that the news had got home and that they were worried about him. He was the one nearly dying, and what was on his mind was what it was doing to the people who sent him.
4 What does Paul admit about himself while he is talking about his friend getting better?
AnswerThat losing him would have been sorrow upon sorrow, and that sending him home will leave Paul less anxious. He does not say he would have managed. He says God had mercy and spared him it, and he puts both admissions in the same short letter as the lines about Christ being exalted.
What This Means for Us
But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but also on me. Paul does not say he would have coped. He says mercy arrived, and that it spared him what he calls sorrow upon sorrow, so the sparing is God's doing rather than a reserve of his own he found in time.
That is what makes the admission cheap for him to make. A man who is being kept by mercy has no great stake in looking unshakeable, so he can write down that he was anxious, in the same few pages as to live is Christ, without deciding that one of them cancels the other.
So try one true sentence here about what you are carrying, at the size Paul used it. Not a confession, and not a report on how well you are holding up. Just the actual size of the thing, said in front of people who can take it to the God who had mercy on Epaphroditus and on Paul in the same breath.
Prayer
Father, thank you that your servants were allowed to be worried, and that you did not ask them to pretend. Give us the nerve to say the size of things out loud in this house. And thank you for the people who nearly spend themselves on our behalf. Teach us to make a fuss of them. Amen.