Honor People
Like Him

Paul gives the Philippians a direct instruction here, and it’s one that churches consistently forget to obey.

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Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor people like him.

Notice Paul doesn’t simply say to honor Epaphroditus. He says to honor people like him, which turns a single homecoming into a permanent category. Paul wants this church to become the kind of community that reliably notices and celebrates a particular type of person.

So what type is it? Verse 30 tells us exactly. He almost died for the work of Christ, and he risked his life to make up for the help the Philippians themselves couldn’t give.

The word behind risked is a gambling term. It means to stake everything on a single throw. Epaphroditus had looked at the cost of carrying a gift to an imprisoned friend across hundreds of miles, understood that it might kill him, and went anyway.

Here’s what we tend to get wrong. Churches are usually good at honoring visible people, the ones on a platform or with a title. Paul is pointing at a man whose entire contribution was carrying a package and nearly dying of it.

His résumé for honor is that he took a risk for someone else and didn’t make a point of it.

Notice Paul doesn’t honor him for succeeding either, because the gift was simply delivered and the man nearly died doing it.

Look around your church and think about who’s actually in that category. The person who quietly covers a gap. The one who serves in a room no one visits. The volunteer who has been doing the unglamorous thing for eleven years without being asked once how they’re doing.

Paul’s instruction isn’t to feel appreciation for them. It’s to give it. Honor is a thing you say out loud, in front of other people, in a way the person can actually hear.

Someone in your life is an Epaphroditus. They almost certainly don’t know that you noticed. Telling them will cost you one sentence and may carry them for a year.