Two Men Worth Sending

After the great hymn about Christ emptying himself, Paul does something practical. He introduces two men. This is not a change of subject. It is the hymn with faces on it.

Timothy first. Paul hopes to send him soon, and he explains why: he has no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for the Philippians' welfare. Then a sad sentence. Everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. Paul has just finished asking the Philippians to look to the interests of others, and now he admits how rare that is even among his own coworkers. Timothy is the exception, and Paul has watched him prove it, serving alongside him as a son with his father in the work of the gospel.

Then Epaphroditus. The Philippians had sent him to Paul with a gift and to look after him. Somewhere along the way he became ill, close to death. Paul says God had mercy on him, and on Paul too, to spare him sorrow upon sorrow. Now Paul is sending him home, and he asks the church to welcome him with great joy and to honor people like him, because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help they could not give in person.

The one idea is that the mind of Christ is not an abstraction. It looks like a younger man who genuinely cares about a church that is not his own. It looks like a courier who got sick doing an errand of love and kept going. Neither of them is famous. Both of them are named in Scripture forever because they looked to the interests of others.

The turn toward life is a question about who you honor. Paul tells the Philippians to honor people like Epaphroditus. Most churches honor the gifted, the visible, the ones who speak well. Paul points at the one who nearly died carrying a package. This week, notice who in your life is doing Epaphroditus work, the unglamorous tasks that keep others going, and find some way to say so. Grumbling and arguing, which Paul warns against in this same paragraph, tend to fade in a community that has learned to honor the right people.