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because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
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Paul’s Chains Advance the Gospel
Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.
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The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.
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I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.
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If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!
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For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him,
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since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.
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Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,
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not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
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Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
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rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
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Do Everything Without Grumbling
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
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as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.
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I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare.
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For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.
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Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.
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because he almost died for the work of Christ. He risked his life to make up for the help you yourselves could not give me.
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No Confidence in the Flesh
Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.
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For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—
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But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
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and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
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Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
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Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
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For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
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Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
