Philippians 2: Epaphroditus Was Sick and Hated That They Knew

Last January I had the flu badly enough that I spent two days on the couch in the front room with a mixing bowl nearby. Melissa mentioned it to her mother on the phone, which is what you do. By Wednesday night Diane had called twice from St. George. The fever didn't bother me much. What bothered me was picturing her at her kitchen table down there, worrying about something I'd be over by Friday. I told Melissa to tell her I was fine. Melissa said she had, and that this was the whole problem.

So when I got to Philippians 2:26 this week I stopped, which I hadn't done before. Epaphroditus has been sick and is better now, and Paul is sending him home with the letter. Then Paul gives the reason for his low spirits:

For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick.

Philippians 2:26

Not because he'd been sick. Because they'd heard. He's a recovered man in a prison city, and what weighs on him is a congregation a long way off fretting over him.

Who was Epaphroditus, and why does Paul spend six verses on him?

Verse 25 gives him five titles in one sentence: brother, companion in labour, fellowsoldier, messenger, and "he that ministered to my wants." The last two are the practical ones. Philippians 4:18 fills in the errand, where Paul says he has received "of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you." So the Philippians took up a gift, picked one of their own to carry it to a man in chains, and the man they picked stayed to look after him. Then he nearly died.

Verse 27 says it plainly, "he was sick nigh unto death," and Paul adds that God had mercy "not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow." I notice that Paul doesn't claim to have prayed Epaphroditus well or to have healed him, which you might expect from the apostle. He says God had mercy. For a man who is usually in command of the sentence, that's quiet.

Verse 30 has the line I'd have smoothed over if I'd been the editor. Epaphroditus came near to dying "to supply your lack of service toward me." That could sting. It reads like a reproach, as if the church hadn't done enough and one man had to cover. But go back to chapter 4 and verse 10, where Paul says of the same people that they were "careful, but ye lacked opportunity." The lack was distance. Paul says the harsher thing in chapter 2 and softens it in chapter 4, and verses 28 and 29 read to me like a man who sees how the line could land: receive him with all gladness, and "hold such in reputation."

The word "reputation" catches me as well, because twenty-two verses earlier Christ "made himself of no reputation." Epaphroditus gets the reverse, with a church told to give him reputation. I won't build a doctrine on the English word, since I can't say the two verses use the same Greek, but the pairing sits there in the King James text either way.

What does the hymn in verses 5 to 11 have to do with a sick messenger?

The usual way to read this chapter is hymn first, then the practical stuff, as though Paul climbed up to heaven and then came back down to talk about Timothy. I think the order runs the other way. Verse 5 is an instruction, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," and the hymn is the evidence for it. Verses 3 and 4 have already said what the mind looks like: esteem others better than yourselves, and look on "the things of others." Then Paul shows where that goes when taken all the way.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Philippians 2:8

I'd say the chapter's argument is carried by the verbs here more than by the nouns. Christ "made himself" of no reputation, he "took upon him" the form of a servant, he "humbled himself." Nobody does any of that to him in the sentence. Verse 9 turns on "Wherefore," and the exaltation follows because of the humbling, not as a separate event. The Book of Mormon has its own phrase for the direction of travel, the condescension of God (1 Nephi 11:16), though I'll leave that one for when we're in 1 Nephi 11.

Then Epaphroditus arrives, a small and specific version of the same movement. He went where he didn't have to go and did a servant's work for a prisoner, and he got sick doing it. Nobody writes a hymn about him.

Paul says to receive him gladly.

Does "work out your own salvation" mean you earn it?

Paul is brief about it and so will I be. Verse 12 says "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," and verse 13 says why you can: "it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." You don't get one without the other in the text. I read the first as the thing asked of you and the second as the reason it isn't hopeless. I've sat through lessons that kept only verse 12 and sent everybody home tired.

Where it sits matters to me, right after the exaltation and right before "murmurings and disputings." Paul's own picture of working it out is a church that doesn't grumble, and that shines in a crooked generation (verses 14 and 15). That's a community project more than a private one. And "not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence" tells you the letter is a prisoner's, written by a man who can't check on anyone.

Why is Timothy the only one Paul trusts?

Paul can't say when Timothy will be free to go, because that waits on a verdict. Verse 23 puts it as soon as "I shall see how it will go with me." His verbs through verses 19 to 24 are "I trust," "I hope," "I trust," the language of a man who isn't running his own calendar. Epaphroditus, meanwhile, goes now. I think that's why Paul says so much about him. He is the one Paul can actually send, and Paul wants him received well.

About Timothy, verse 20 says "I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state," and verse 22 says the Philippians know "the proof of him." I like that Paul points them at what they've seen. He doesn't make the case with adjectives. He says you know this man and watched him work, and that he served with me "as a son with the father." If you want to know how Paul reads someone's character, it's mostly by whether they showed up and stayed.

This is the same prisoner who spent chapter 1 sorting rival preachers and deciding to be glad anyway. I wrote about what he didn't yet know when he wrote it in Philippians 1, and about the same chains in Ephesians 6, where he calls himself an ambassador in them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Paul think Christ stopped being God in verse 7?

No, and I don't think the verse says it either. "Made himself of no reputation" and "took upon him the form of a servant" are both about what he took on, and verse 6 has him in the form of God before any of it. People have written thick books about this verse. I'd rather read it slowly than win an argument about it.

What does "fear and trembling" mean in verse 12?

I take it as seriousness, and I don't think it means dread. Verse 13 follows it with God working in you, which isn't how you'd talk to someone you're supposed to dread. Some days it still feels like both.

Was Epaphroditus the one who brought the Philippians' gift?

Yes, going by Philippians 4:18, which says Paul received "the things which were sent from you" by Epaphroditus. Chapter 2 only says he was a messenger and that he looked after Paul's needs. You need chapter 4 to see what the errand was.

Which part of the chapter gets skipped in Sunday School?

The last twelve verses, in my experience. The hymn gets the time and Timothy and Epaphroditus get a mention. I'd swap that if it were my class, since they're the part with names in it.

Verse 21 is the one I don't like, where Paul says of everybody except Timothy, "For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." All of them, in a letter to a church that has just sent him money. Philippians 4:15 says no other church shared with him in the beginning but this one. Either "all" in verse 21 means the handful of people in Rome who could have gone to Philippi, or Paul was tired and lumped them in. I'd lean toward tired. Eighteen verses earlier he was telling the church to esteem others better than themselves, and verse 21 is not that. I'm glad it's in the chapter anyway.

It's the one place Paul looks the way I'd look.

— D.