Do not be proud
1You belong to Christ and He makes your faith strong. You love the other believers and you help each other. You all have the Holy_Spirit in your hearts and that is why you belong to each other. You are worried about each other and you care for each other. 2That is why I rejoice. But you must make me even happier. You must think the same things, you must have the same love in your hearts, you must desire the same things and you must want to do the same things. 3When you do something, don't do it because you are selfish or because you want to be important. Do not be proud but be humble. Think of all the other believers as more important than yourselves. 4Each person must not only think about himself but must care for other believers.
Christ showed us what we must do
5You must think like Christ Jesus and do what He has done:
6He was the same as God,
and just as important as God,
but He did not try to keep on being as important as God.
7He humbled Himself
and became like a slave.
He became a Man like us.
When He became a Man,
8He humbled Himself even more.
He obeyed God so completely that He died.
Yes, He died on the cross.
9That is why God made Him very important.
God gave Him a name,
the most important name of all names.
God named Him ‘The Lord’.
10That is why everyone will worship Jesus,
everyone in heaven, everyone on earth
and everyone under the earth.
11Yes, all people will say
that Jesus Christ is the Lord
and they will glorify God the Father.
Children of God must listen to Him
12My dear friends, this is why you must do what I ask you. You have always done what I asked you when I was with you. But now I am not with you anymore. This is why you must listen to God even more. Don't be proud before God but respect and serve Him. God wants to save you and you must keep on serving Him 13because it is God who works in your hearts. Yes, He makes you want to do what He wants, and He makes you do the things that are important to Him.
14You must do everything that He wants. Do it and do not complain or argue about it. 15Then you will live in the right way and you will do nothing wrong. You live among bad people who sin a lot, but you are God's children. You must live in a right and holy way so that your lives will be like lights that shine in the dark world. 16You must keep on believing in the message that gives real_life to people. Then I will be proud of you on the day when Christ comes, because I will know that I have succeeded in my hard work among you.
17Your faith is a sacrifice that you give to serve God. If I should die, then my blood would be like a drink-offering that someone pours out with your sacrifice and I would be happy about it. Yes, I would rejoice with all of you. 18You must also rejoice. You must rejoice with me.
Paul wants to send Timothy to Philippi
19I want to send Timothy to you soon and I hope the Lord Jesus will be pleased with this. I want to find out how you are so that I can be encouraged. 20I don't have anyone else who is like Timothy. He will be pleased to take care of the things that you need. 21All the other people just think about the things that are important to themselves. They do not think about what is important to Jesus Christ. 22But you know that Timothy is a good man. You know that he has worked with me to preach the Good_News. He worked with me like a son works with his father. 23I will send Timothy to you immediately when I know what will happen to me here. 24I know that the Lord will also let me see you soon.
Paul sends Epaphroditus back
25My friend, Epaphroditus, has worked hard and has also defended the Good_News with me. You sent him to help me with everything but I think it is important that I send him back to you now, 26because he longs for you all and he is worried because he knows that someone has told you that he was sick. 27Epaphroditus was very sick, and he almost died. But God was good to him and he became better. Yes, God was good to Epaphroditus and to me, because if he should have died, it would have been very difficult for me and I would have suffered a lot.
28I will send him back to you soon so that you can see him and rejoice and I will not have to worry any longer. 29When Epaphroditus comes back to you, you must rejoice and welcome him because you all belong to the Lord. Yes, you must respect people like Epaphroditus. 30He almost died because he works for Christ. Epaphroditus knew that it was dangerous to help me, but he helped me because you could not.
