Timothy, Genuinely Concerned
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. 20 For I have no one else like-minded, who will truly care about you. 21 For they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.
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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