New Testament Plan

¹Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons:

²Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,

⁴always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all,

⁵in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

⁶For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus.

⁷For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.

⁸For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

⁹And this I pray, that your love may overflow still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,

¹⁰so that you may discover the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and blameless for the day of Christ;

¹¹having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God.

¹²Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel,

¹³so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the praetorian guard and to everyone else,

¹⁴and that most of the brothers and sisters, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.

¹⁵Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from goodwill;

¹⁶the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel;

¹⁷the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking that they are causing me distress in my imprisonment.

¹⁸What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. But not only that, I also will rejoice,

¹⁹for I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,

²⁰according to my eager expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

²¹For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

²²But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose.

²³But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better;

²⁴yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sakes.

²⁵Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith,

²⁶so that your pride in Christ Jesus may be abundant because of me by my coming to you again.

²⁷Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

²⁸and in no way alarmed by your opponents—which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and this too, from God.

²⁹For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer on His behalf,

³⁰experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me.

¹Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion,

²make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

³Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves;

⁴do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

⁵Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,

⁶who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

⁷but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men.

⁸And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross.

⁹For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,

¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

¹¹and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

¹²So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;

¹³for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire and to work for His good pleasure.

¹⁴Do all things without complaining or arguments;

¹⁵so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world,

¹⁶holding firmly the word of life, so that on the day of Christ I can take pride because I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.

¹⁷But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all.

¹⁸You too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me.

¹⁹But I hope, in the Lord Jesus, to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition.

²⁰For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare.

²¹For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus.

²²But you know of his proven character, that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father.

²³Therefore I hope to send him immediately, as soon as I see how things go with me;

²⁴and I trust in the Lord that I myself will also be coming shortly.

²⁵But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger and minister to my need,

²⁶because he was longing for you all and was distressed because you had heard that he was sick.

²⁷For indeed he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him, and not only on him but also on me, so that I would not have sorrow upon sorrow.

²⁸Therefore I have sent him all the more eagerly, so that when you see him again you may rejoice and I may be less concerned about you.

²⁹Receive him then in the Lord with all joy, and hold people like him in high regard,

³⁰because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to compensate for your absence in your service to me.

¹Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble for me, and it is a safeguard for you.

²Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision;

³for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and take pride in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh,

⁴although I myself could boast as having confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he is confident in the flesh, I have more reason:

⁵circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee;

⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

⁷But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ.

⁸More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ,

⁹and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

¹⁰that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

¹¹if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

¹²Not that I have already grasped it all or have already become perfect, but I press on if I may also take hold of that for which I was even taken hold of by Christ Jesus.

¹³Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,

¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

¹⁵Therefore, all who are mature, let’s have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that to you as well;

¹⁶however, let’s keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

¹⁷Brothers and sisters, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.

¹⁸For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even as I weep, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ,

¹⁹whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who have their minds on earthly things.

²⁰For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;

²¹who will transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with His glorious body, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.