What does Philippians 1:15 mean?

Paul acknowledged that it's possible to preach Christ with wrong motivations. Some people were jealous of Paul's popularity among Christians, so they mimicked his message in order to become more popular themselves. Based on the persecution Paul and others suffered for their faith, this was clearly not a common motivator. Others saw Paul as a rival or as competition and sought to become more popular through their own preaching outreach. It's also possible that those who hated Paul's message were deliberately spreading it, in order to inflame his enemies (Philippians 1:17).

In verse 18, Paul notes that a person's motivations for spreading the gospel don't change the fact that the gospel is being spread. As long as what these envious, jealous people said was the truth, it made little difference why they said it.

In addition to these two inappropriate motivations, Paul noted that some who preached Christ in Rome did so "from good will." They had an appropriate, godly motivation to share Christ, and to help lost people be found in Jesus. By this time in the early AD 60s, many were apparently sharing Jesus in Rome. Before long, the city would be considered the capital of Western Christianity.