<p>4:3- see on Mt. 11:29; Eph. 1:5.</p><p><i>Yes, I urge you also, true companion, help these women, for they laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also- </i>The women are Euodia and Syntyche (:2); although as noted on :2 they were not fully of the mind of Christ, yet they laboured with Paul in the work of the Gospel. As explained on 3:15 and :16, we do not fully have the mind of Christ and it is progressively revealed to us where we fail to have it. But this doesn't mean that we cannot work for the Lord or be accepted by Him as we are. We note that again &quot;the gospel&quot; is put for &quot;the work of the Gospel&quot;, because the Gospel of itself elicits labour for it. The &quot;help&quot; required from the undefined &quot;true companion&quot; was presumably to help these women to have the mind of Christ, so that they would be united. The anonymity may have been to avoid naming someone in a document for reasons of avoiding persecution; or it could be that <i>synzugos</i> should be read as proper noun, the name of a person, and it should just be transliterated as that. Or it could refer to Epaphroditus. Paul clearly saw those women as just as much his fellow workers as men like Clement; we see here an example of how Paul was so far ahead of his time in considering man and woman equal in Christ, and the work of the Gospel equally open to women as well as men.</p><p><i>And the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life- </i>Perhaps the idea is that these other fellow workers were already dead, asleep in Christ, and assured of salvation. Heb. 12:23 speak of those who had died faithful as &quot;written in heaven&quot;. Our names are written already in that book, but can be blotted out from it (Rev. 3:5; Ex. 32:32). Salvation is assured for each baptized believer, but we can lose it if we do not stand fast (:1). All Paul's fellow workers were written in the book of life. And so the feuding sisters of :2 were also written in the book of life, for they were also is fellow workers. Despite their division between each other and lack of the complete mind of Christ (see on :2). This is a comfort when we consider the immaturity of our brethren.</p>