PHILIPPIANS CHAPTER 2 - CONTEMPORARY ALIGNED VERSION (SPIRITCODE)

1. If you care at all for one another as belonging together in Christ, and if you can lovingly encourage one another, sharing the Spirit’s feelings for you and one another, and feeling tenderness and compassion towards one another,

2. Make my joy complete by sharing together the same outlook on life, with an unselfish love, and with a cohesive sense of common purpose.

3. Don’t do anything that is motivated by competition or self promotion, but with a humble attitude put the other person before yourself.

4. Don’t be preoccupied only with what involves you, but think of the interests and capabilities of others.

5. Take upon yourselves the same attitude that Jesus had.

6. Even though he possessed full and entire divinity, as God, he was able to put this aside and not hang on to it

7. He yielded up all significance and entitlement and embraced servanthood, taking upon himself a full and entire possession and experience of human nature.

8. He accepted the reality of his human nature and humbly submitted to it, doing everything heaven asked of him to the point of his death on the cross.

9. Because of this God has paid him the highest of tributes by giving him the greatest name in all creation, as Lord over all.

10. This means that every other created being in heaven and earth will one day have to reverently bow the knee at the mention of his name.

11. And they will all willingly say that Jesus Christ is the Lord over all, to the glory of God the Father.

12. So I say to you my beloved friends, just as you have always done all that I have asked of you when I have been with you, now that I am not with you, continue to live out the gift of new life that now lives within you with an awesome respect for it.

13. Because it is God who delights to work in you to share his expression of life through you.

14. Don’t complain and argue against God because of what life brings your way.

15. Live clean upright lives so that no-one can point the finger at you, in this corrupt and deceitful world, where you can shine like beacons for those who are trying to find their way.

16. Make this message of life the core principal of your lives so that I will be proud of you on the day Jesus returns, knowing that my walk with you and my work amongst you was not a waste.

17. Even if my lifeblood has to be spilled to share with you in the service of sacrifice and faith, then I will be happy to share with you in the joy that it brings as well.

18. I want you to share in the joy I feel here too, no matter what I have to go through.

19. I have placed it in the hands of the Lord Jesus that I might send Timothy to you soon, so that he can bring some good news of you back to me, and cheer me up.

20. There is no one here that could compare to Timothy in having a genuine heart for you like I do.

21. The people here are too busy with their own agendas to know or care for what Jesus really wants of them.

22. But you know how trustworthy Timothy is, just like a faithful son to a father, committed to sharing my passion for the word of God to do its work in people.

23. So hopefully I can send him on his way, just as soon as I know how things are going to turn out for me here.

24. I have also placed it in the Lord’s hands that I can come to see you soon as well.

25. In the meantime I thinks it is right to send Epaphroditus back to you, who has been a good friend and brother to me, standing with me in the conflicts I have endured. He was your messenger to me when I needed him and now he is my messenger to you.

26. He has been greatly missing you and has been very upset because he knew that you had heard how sick he was.

27. He was so sick he nearly died, but God was good to him, and good to me as well, because I don’t know how I would have coped with the grief of losing him.

28. So I am sending him off without any further delay so that when you see him again soon, you will be all the more glad and I will be all the less sad.

29. So celebrate his homecoming and give him a hero’s welcome.

30. Because he served selflessly for Christ with no thought for his own life, almost dying to finish the work of caring for me begun by all of you.