Philippians 1:5

(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.