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thankful for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
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It is right for me to feel thus about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
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For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.
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And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
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so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
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so that it has become known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ;
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the former proclaim Christ out of partisanship, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.
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What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice.
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as it is my eager expectation and hope that I shall not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.
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For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
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If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.
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I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
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But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.
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and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear omen to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God.
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For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake,
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engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine.
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Imitating Christ’s Humility
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,
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Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves.
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Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
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Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
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who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
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but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
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And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
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Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name,
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and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
