Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Philippians · About this commentary
Timothy, Genuinely Concerned
Philippians 2:19-21
19 But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered up when I know how you are doing. · WEB
Paul commends his colleague with a sentence that quietly indicts everyone else available.
I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered up when I know how you are doing. The motive named is his own encouragement — he wants news, and the man he sends is the one who will bring it back.
Verse 20 is the commendation: I have no one else like-minded, who will truly care about you. The adjective is built on psychē, so it describes someone of the same soul; and truly care is the language of genuine anxiety on another's behalf.
That is the fourth time this letter has used a compound of phronein or its family, and here it describes a person rather than a duty. Timothy is the hymn's mind embodied — a man who looks to the things of others Philippians 2:4.
Then verse 21, and it is bleak: they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.
The sentence is unqualified and Paul does not soften it. Whoever was around him in Rome , he judged that none of them could be trusted with this errand for the right reasons. It is the same complaint the letter opened with, where some preached from ambition Philippians 1:17, and it explains why a single reliable colleague is described in such terms.
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