Philippians 1:5

For your fellowship in the gospel. — More properly, towards the gospel, or, as affecting the gospel. The construction is illustrated by the more limited use of the same Greek word (as in Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 9:13) in the sense of “contribution”; in which case the word “towards” introduces the objects of the almsgiving there specified. Accordingly St. Paul must be taken here to mean the fellow-working of the Philippians in the ministry of the gospel, of which he speaks still more distinctly in Philippians 1:7. That fellow-working had been shown (see Philippians 4:15) even “in the beginning of the gospel,” by a contribution to St. Paul’s needs — not perhaps his personal needs only — which from them, and (so far as we know) from them only, he consented to accept.