Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Philippians · About this commentary
You Shared with Me
Philippians 4:14-16
14 However you did well that you shared in my affliction. · WEB
Having said he did not need it, Paul immediately says they did well to send it — and produces the record.
However you did well that you shared in my affliction. The correction is instant. Verse 11 might have sounded like a refusal, and this verse forecloses it: the gift was right, and their sharing is commended.
The verb is from koinōnia, the letter's partnership word Philippians 1:5, and what they shared in was not his ministry in the abstract but his affliction.
Verse 15 opens the accounts: you yourselves also know that in the beginning of the Good News, when I departed from Macedonia , no assembly had fellowship with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you only.
That is a remarkable sentence. Of all the churches Paul founded, one supported him, and he says so plainly to that one. Elsewhere he defends his right to support while refusing to use it 1 Corinthians 9:14–15; here is the single exception he accepted.
And verse 16 makes it specific: even in Thessalonica you sent once and again to my need. Thessalonica was his very next stop after leaving Philippi, and the gifts followed him there twice — while he was also working nights with his hands so as not to burden that congregation 1 Thessalonians 2:9.
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