toil in vain.
002:017 Nay, even if my life is to be poured as a libation upon
the sacrificial offering of your faith, I rejoice, and I
congratulate you all.
002:018 And I bid you also share my gladness, and congratulate me.
002:019 But, if the Lord permits it, I hope before long to send
Timothy to you, that I, in turn, may be cheered by getting
news of you.
002:020 For I have no one likeminded with him, who will cherish
a genuine care for you.
002:021 Everybody concerns himself about his own interests, not about
those of Jesus Christ.
002:022 But you know Timothy's approved worth--how, like a child
working with his father, he has served with me in furtherance
of the Good News.
002:023 So it is he that I hope to send as soon as ever I see how things
go with me;
002:024 but trusting, as I do, in the Lord, I believe that I shall
myself also come to you before long.
002:025 Yet I deem it important to send Epaphroditus to you now--
he is my brother and comrade both in labour and in arms,
and is your messenger who has ministered to my needs.
002:026 I send him because he is longing to see you all and is distressed
at your having heard of his illness.
002:027 For it is true that he has been ill, and was apparently at
the point of death; but God had pity on him, and not only on him,
but also on me, to save me from having sorrow upon sorrow.
002:028 I am therefore all the more eager to send him, in the hope
that when you see him again you may be glad and I may have
the less sorrow.