[2:19] If it is the Lord's will, I hope that I will be able to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be encouraged by news about you.
[2:20] He is the only one who shares my feelings and who really cares about you.
[2:21] Everyone else is concerned only with their own affairs, not with the cause of Jesus Christ.
[2:22] And you yourselves know how he has proved his worth, how he and I, like a son and his father, have worked together for the sake of the gospel.
[2:23] So I hope to send him to you as soon as I know how things are going to turn out for me.
[2:24] And I trust in the Lord that I myself will be able to come to you soon.
[2:25] I have thought it necessary to send to you our brother Epaphroditus, who has worked and fought by my side and who has served as your messenger in helping me.
[2:26] He is anxious to see you all and is very upset because you had heard that he was sick.
[2:27] Indeed he was sick and almost died. But God had pity on him, and not only on him but on me, too, and spared me an even greater sorrow.
[2:28] I am all the more eager, then, to send him to you, so that you will be glad again when you see him, and my own sorrow will disappear.
[2:29] Receive him, then, with joy, as a believer in the Lord. Show respect to all such people as he,
[2:30] because he risked his life and nearly died for the sake of the work of Christ, in order to give me the help that you yourselves could not give.