2:29
In this verse Paul strongly exhorted the Philippians to accept Epaphroditus back happily. It is not clear why Paul had to encourage them to do this. It is possible that he thought that the Philippians might have been angry at Epaphroditus for returning so soon. They had expected him to stay and care for Paul. Thus Paul tried to assure them of how valuable Epaphroditus had been to him, and to convince them that the change of plans was truly what God wanted. Or Paul may simply have been encouraging them to joyfully accept Epaphroditus back, which he expected they would do, as 2:28b implies.
2:29a
Welcome him in the Lord with great joy: The Philippians should receive Epaphroditus back very happily as their Christian brother.
in the Lord: There are several ways to understand this phrase. The two main ones are:
(1) The Philippians should receive Epaphroditus as a brother in the Lord, because he too belonged to the Lord. (Good News Translation, Revised English Bible)
(2) They should welcome Epaphroditus as they should welcome another Christian, in an appropriate manner. (See SSA). (Contemporary English Version, New Living Translation (2004), God’s Word, Contemporary English Version)
Most English versions are ambiguous and it may be possible for you to leave this phrase ambiguous in your translation too. The Display illustrates interpretation (1). If you wish to follow the second interpretation (2), you could say:
Welcome him with great joy in the way you should welcome another believer.
2:29b
honor men like him: The phrase honor men like him means that they should honor him and other men also. Paul reminded the Philippians that they should respect Epaphroditus and other men who were like him.
men like him: This refers to Christians who were faithful to the Lord as Epaphroditus had been. The Greek phrase literally means “such ones.” So you could translate this so as to include women as well as men.
© 2002 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.