The Daily Audio Bible

On Timothy

¹⁹ I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I in turn may be encouraged by getting news about you. ²⁰ I have nobody else of his quality: he will care quite genuinely about how you are. ²¹ Everybody else, you see, looks after their own interests, not those of Messiah Jesus. ²² But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a child with a father he has worked as a slave alongside me for the sake of the gospel. ²³ So I’m hoping to send him just as soon as I see how it will turn out with me. ²⁴ And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come very soon as well.

On Epaphroditus

²⁵ But I did think it was necessary to send Epaphroditus to you. He is my brother; he has worked alongside me and fought alongside me; and he’s served as your agent in tending to my needs. ²⁶ He was longing for you all, you see, and he was upset because you heard that he was sick. ²⁷ And he really was sick, too; he nearly died. But God took pity on him—yes, and on me as well, so that I wouldn’t have one sorrow piled on top of another.

²⁸ This has made me all the more eager to send him, so that you’ll see him again and be glad, and my own anxieties will be laid to rest. ²⁹ So give him a wonderfully happy welcome in the Lord, and hold people like him in special respect. ³⁰ He came close to death through risking his life for the Messiah’s work, so that he could complete the service to me that you hadn’t been able to perform.

Warning: don’t trust in the flesh

3 So then, my dear family, it comes down to this: celebrate in the Lord! It’s no trouble for me to write the same things to you, and it’s safe for you.

² Watch out for the dogs! Watch out for the “bad works” people! Watch out for the “incision” party, that is, the mutilators! ³ We are the “circumcision,” you see—we who worship God by the spirit, and boast in Messiah Jesus, and refuse to trust in the flesh.