17. And even if I am poured out as an offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.
18. For the same cause ye also have joy and rejoice with me.
19. But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy shortly unto you, that I also may be of good comfort when I know your state.
20. For I have no one likeminded, who will naturally care for your state.
21. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.
22. But ye know the proof of him, that as a son with the father, he has served with me in the gospel.
23. Therefore, I hope to send him presently, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me.
24. But I trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly.
25. Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and companion in labour and fellowsoldier, but your messenger and he that ministered to my needs.
26. For he longed after you all and was full of heaviness, because ye had heard that he had been sick
27. For indeed he was sick near unto death, but God had mercy on him and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.
28. I sent him, therefore, the more carefully, that when ye see him again, ye may rejoice and that I may be the less sorrowful.
29. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness and esteem such
30. because for the work of the Christ he was near unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me.