JOY IN THE LORD AND ITS PRESERVING POWER "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM"
PHILIPPIANS iii. 1-11
Doctrinal perils at Philippi--"Be glad in the Lord"--The true
Israel--An ideal legalist--Position and experience--The spiritual power
of holy joy--Acceptance and holiness--Atoning Cross and Risen Life
With the section just closed the Epistle reaches its middle point and
already looks towards its end. We may lawfully think of St Paul as
pausing here in his dictation; he returns to it after some considerable
interval, with new topics, or rather with one important new topic, in
his mind. Hitherto, if we have read him aright, we have seen him
occupied, from one side or another, with the thought of Christian Unity
at Philippi. That thought has been either explicitly developed, as in
the close of the first chapter, and in the opening of the second, and
again in the passage embracing ii. 14-16; or it has been rather implied
than expounded. The Apostle's assurances of love and prayer have been
often worded so as to suggest it. The grand passage of doctrine, ii.
5-11, has been occasioned directly by it, and is made to bear
immediately upon it; the Lord's wonderful self-abnegation (if the word
may be tolerated) is revealed and asserted there, not in an isolated
way, but as it speaks to the believer of the spirit which should
animate _him_, and which will preclude jealousies and separations as
nothing else can. And even the paragraph where Timotheus and
Epaphroditus are before us is tinged with the same feeling; what the
Apostle says about both these dear friends is so said as _to unite_ the
sympathies of the Philippians.
But he has more to speak of than this sacred call to union of spirit
and of life in Christ. We gather that Epaphroditus, talking over the
condition of the Mission with his leader, had alluded to the presence
there of serious doctrinal perils, which must ultimately affect
Christian holiness. That ubiquitous difficulty, the propaganda of
anti-Pauline Christian Judaism, had come on the scene, or was just
coming. The teachers who affirmed, or insinuated, that Jesus Christ
could be reached only through the ceremonial law, were now to be
reckoned with. The converts were disturbed, or soon might be
disturbed, by being told that proselytism to Moses, sealed by
circumcision, was a _sine qua non_ in order to a valid hope of
salvation through the Gospel; that the man awakened from his paganism
must be at least something of a Jew to be anything of a Christian; that
the door was _not_ absolutely open between the sinner's soul and the
Saviour, to be passed through by the one step of a living trust in the
Promise.
Let us remember that assertions like these, which to Christians now may
seem obviously futile, by no means necessarily seemed so then. Then,
much more than now, pagan enquirers after JESUS would be sure to be
conscious that the true salvation offered was, in one sense,
emphatically a Jewish salvation. It was the message which told of the
life and death, the person and work, of One who _was_, "after the
flesh," a Jew. It was the announcement that the long hope of _Israel_
was fulfilled in Him. Its terminology was full of words and ideas
altogether Jewish. And its messengers--above all, for the Philippians,
St Paul--were Jews, of unmistakable nationality, training, and
(doubtless) appearance. On a first view, on a hasty and shallow view
certainly, it may have seemed a quite natural incident in such a
message when some of its propagandists asserted that to reach this
Hebrew Deliverer and King the enquirer must form a connexion in
religion which should be definitely Hebrew.
It is conceivable that even yet, in the history of the Church, this
phase of error may in some form assert itself again. We look in the
future, it may be in the near future, for the keeping to the old Israel
of promises which have never been revoked. We believe that Rom. xi.
shall yet find its fulfilment, and that the "receiving of them again
shall be life from the dead" to the world. In that great period of
blessing, the work of missions may (shall we not say, probably will?)
be very largely taken up by Hebrew Christians. And if any of these,
like some of their predecessors of the first age, should have only a
distorted view of the Gospel of Christ, their intense national
character may tell not a little on the form of their message. But this
is by the way. All that is really before us here is the fact that--not
the open hostility of unconverted Jews but--the sidelong counter-action
of Judaistic Christians was threatening Philippi, and must be met by
the Apostle.
Nor was this, if we explain rightly the close of ch. iii., the only
such danger in the air. The antinomian traitor was also within the
gates. There were those who could assert that the Gospel, the Pauline
Gospel, the wonderful message of Justification by Faith only, and of a
life lived in the Spirit as its sequel, was the very truth they held
and rejoiced in; but they taught it so as to reason from it that
practical holiness did not matter; the justified, the accepted, the man
of the Spirit, lived in a transcendental religious region; he was not
to be bound in conduct by common rules. Was he not in grace? And was
not grace the antithesis of works? Was not grace, before everything
else, the condonation of sin? And the more it did that work, was it
not the more glorious? "Shall we not continue in sin then, that grace
may abound?" What does it signify, though the perishable and
burthensome body defiles itself? The emancipated spirit of the
"spiritual" man lives on another plane; the sensual and the mystical
elements may approach, may run parallel, but can never meet. The body
may sin; the spirit must be pure--if only the man is in grace.
Such assuredly were some of the conditions of error and evil to be
considered when on that far-off day, in his Roman chamber, St Paul
turned his soul again to Philippi, and asked his scribe to write.
There is a solemn comfort in the thought. In our days of trial, when
again and again it is as it "the foundations were destroyed," it is
something to remember the awful mental and moral trials of the
apostolic age. It was indeed an "age of faith"; but, as the other side
of that very fact, it was an age of clouds and darkness, from the point
not of "faith" but of "sight." It had a glorious answer to the
tremendous questions that beset it. But that answer was not human
reasoning, or material successes; it was the Lord Jesus Christ. And so
it is for us to-day.
But now St Paul is at work; let us listen, and we shall hear how
promptly he brings that answer to bear in his letter to Philippi.[1]
Ver. 1. For the rest (_to loipon_), my brethren, to turn now to
another topic, as I draw towards an end, let me give you this
comprehensive watchword +Be glad in the Lord+.[2] +To write the same
things to you+, to reiterate that one thought, that CHRIST is our glory
and our joy, "+to me not irksome, it is safe for you+."[3] Safe,
because there are spiritual dangers around you from which this will be
the best preservative; false teachings which can only be fully met with
the gladness of the truth of Christ. +Beware of+,
Ver. 2. keep your eyes open upon (_blepete_), +the "dogs,"+ the men
who would _excommunicate_ all who hold not with their half-Christian
Pharisaism and its legal burthens, but who are themselves thus
self-excluded from the covenant blessing. +Beware of the evil
workmen+, the teachers whose watchword is "works, works, works," a
weary round of observances and would-be merits, but who are sorry
_work-men_ indeed, spoiling the whole structure of "Heaven's easy,
artless, unencumber'd plan." +Beware of the concision+, the apostles
of a mere physical wounding, which, as enjoined according to their
principles, is nothing better than a mutilation (_katatome_), a parody
of what circumcision was meant to be, as the sacrament of a preparatory
dispensation now terminated in its
Ver. 3. fulfilment. +For+ not they but +we are the circumcision+, the
true Israel of the true covenant, sealed and purified by our God; +we
who by God's Spirit worship+,[4] doing priestly service in a spiritual
temple[5] in a life, love, and power, which is ours by the presence in
us of the Holy Ghost, the promise of the Father; +and who exult+, not
in tribal, national, ceremonial prerogatives, but +in Christ Jesus+,
our refuge and our crown, our righteousness and glory, with an
exultation infinitely warmer than the legalist's can be, and meanwhile
pure, for its source is altogether not ourselves; +and who+, in Him,
+not in the flesh+,[6] not in self and its workings, +are confident+
(for confident we are, but it is a "confidence in self-despair," the
confidence of those who have been driven by self-discovery to Christ
alone).[7] I speak with a general reference, of all true disciples;
but let me instance myself as a case peculiarly in point. I speak thus,
Ver. 4. +though having+ (_echon_), I, myself (_ego_), from _their_
view-point, +confidence even in flesh+. +Whoever else thinks of
confiding in flesh+, of building a legal standing-place on his
privilege and merit, +I+ may do so +more+ than he; for I have reached
the _ne plus ultra_ in that
Ver. 5. direction. +As for circumcision+,[8] I was an +eight-day+
child; no proselyte, operated upon in later life, but a son of the
Covenant; descended +from Israel's race+, one of the progeny of him who
was a prince with God (Gen. xxxii. 28); +of Benjamin's tribe+, the
tribe which gave the first God-chosen king to the nation, and which
remained "faithful among the faithless" to the house of David at a
later day; +Hebrew+ offspring +of Hebrew ancestors+,[9] child of a home
in which, immemorially, the old manners and the old speech were
cherished; _in respect of the law,[10] a Pharisee_--the votary of
religious precision, elaborate devotion, exclusive privilege, and
energetic prose-
Ver. 6, lytism; +in respect of zeal+, intense and perfectly sincere,
+persecuting the Church; in respect of the righteousness which+ resides
+in the Law+, as its terms are understood by the Pharisee, +found+
(_genomenos_) +blameless+.[11] Such was my position. I possessed an
ideal pedigree; full sacramental position from the first; domestic
traditions pure and strict; an absolute personal devotion to the cause
of my creed; the most rigorous observance of its rules; the most
energetic
Ver. 7. efforts to maintain and extend its power. +But the kind of
things which+ (_hatina_) +I felt+ (_moi en_) so many _gains,[12] these
things I have come to consider_ (_hegemai_, perfect), +because of our+
(_ton_) +Christ+ (discovered at last in His glory, as the slain and
risen Jesus), just one +loss+, one +deprivation+; not merely a
worthless thing, but a ruinous one; a robbery of the true Blessing
Ver. 8. from my soul. +Aye more, I actually+ (_kai_) now +consider
all things+, from all points of view, all possessions, all ambitions,
+to be+ similarly +loss+, deprivation, +because of the surpassingness
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord+, because of the immeasurable
betterness of a spirit-sight of what HE is, in Himself, and as my own;
+because of whom+--on account of what He now was to me--+I suffered
deprivation+ (_exemiothen_) +of my all+ (_ta panta_), in the crisis of
my change; +and I consider it+ only +refuse+,[13] rubbish, that +I may
gain+[14] (in a blessed exchange of profit against loss, the loss of
what I thought my "gains") +Christ+, nothing less than HIM, my
boundless Wealth (_ploutos_
Ver. 9. _anexichniaston_, Eph. iii. 8), +and be found+, at any and
every "time of finding" (Ps. xxxii. 7, Heb.) by the Holy One, +in Him+,
one with Him, in His precious merits and in His risen life, but now
especially in His merits; +not having a righteousness of my own, that
derived from the Law+, a title to acceptance drawn from my own supposed
perfect correspondence to the Law, +but that which+ comes +through
faith in[15] Christ+, through reliance wholly reposed in Him, +the
righteousness which is derived+ not from the Law but +from God+, coming
wholly out of His uncaused and sacred mercy, +on terms of our (_te_)
faith+, conditioned[15]
Ver. 10. to us by simply our accepting reliance; +in order to know
Him+, HIM, my Lord, with an intuition possible only to the soul which
accepts Him for its All; +and the power of His Resurrection+, as that
Resurrection assures His people of their justification (Rom. iv. 24,
25), and of their coming glory (1 Cor. xv. 20), and yet more as He, by
His life-giving Spirit, shed forth from Him the risen Head, lives His
"indissoluble life" (Heb. vii. 16) in His members; and +the partnership
of His sufferings+, that deep experience of union with Him which comes
through daily "taking up the cross," in His steps, for His sake, and in
His strength; growing into conformity (_summorthi-xomenos_, a present
participle) +with His Death+, drawn evermore into spiritual harmony
with Him who wrought my salvation out by an ineffable surrender
Ver. 11. of Himself to suffer; if +somehow I may arrive+, along the
appointed path of the believer's obedience, +at the resurrection which
is out from the dead+ (_ten exanastasin ten ex nekron_: so read); "that
blessed hope" for all who sleep in Him, when their whole existence,
redeemed and perfected, shall leave the world of "the dead" behind for
ever.
Here is a piece of consecutive rendering and paraphrase longer than
usual. And meanwhile the passage before us is one of extraordinary
fulness and richness, alike in its record of experience and its
teaching of eternal truths. But it seemed impossible to break into
fragments the glorious wholeness of the Apostle's thought and
utterance. And then, the utterance is so rich, so detailed, so
explanatory of itself, that I could not but feel that, for very much of
it at least, my best commentary was the closest rendering I could
offer, with a few brief suggestions by the way.
Drawing now to a close, I can only indicate, under one or two headings,
some main messages to the mind and soul.
i. I gather from the connexion of the passage, as we have traced it,
the supreme importance of a true joy in the Lord, a true personal sight
of "the King in His beauty," in order to our spiritual orthodoxy. Let
me quote again from the Prayer Book of the Moravians, from which I gave
one short extract in the last chapter. In their "Church Litany," among
the first suffrages, occur these petitions: "_From coldness to Thy
merits and death. From error and misunderstanding, From the loss of
our glory in Thee, Preserve us, gracious Lord and God._" The words are
the very soul of St Paul, as it conveys the Spirit's oracle to us here.
St Paul dreads exceedingly for the Philippians the incursion of "error
and misunderstanding"; the advent of a mechanical rigorism of rule and
ordinance, and (as we shall see in later pages) the subtle poison also
of the specious antinomian lie. How does he apply the antidote? In
the form of an appeal to them to be sure to not to "lose their glory in
the Lord"; and then he writes a record of his own experience in which
he shews them how his own Pharisaic treasures had all been cast away,
or willingly given up to the spoiler; and why? Not for abstract
reasons, but "because of the surpassingness of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord"; because of the irresistible and infinite _betterness_
of His discovered glory, seen in the atoning Cross and the Resurrection
power.
Let us "arm ourselves likewise with the same mind." We have countless
perils about us in our modern Christendom, things which only too easily
can trouble the reason and sway the will away from the one "hope set
before us." Let us meet them, whatever else we do, with the Moravians'
prayer. Let us meet them with obedience to the Apostle's positive
injunction, "Rejoice in the Lord."
ii. The passage bids us remember the profound connexion between a true
"knowledge" of the Lord Jesus as our Atonement and a true "knowledge"
of Him as our Life and Power. Both are here. In ver. 9, so it seems
to me, any unprejudiced reader of St Paul's writings must see language
akin to those great passages of Romans and Galatians which put before
us the supreme question of our Justification, and which send us for our
whole hope of Acceptance before the eternal Judge, whose law we have
broken, to the Atoning Death of our Lord Jesus Christ. In those
passages, demonstrably as I venture to think, the word "Righteousness"
is largely used as a short term for the Holy One's righteous way of
accepting us sinners for the sake of the Sinless One, who, in our
nature, was "made a curse for us," "made sin for us," "delivered for
our offences," "set forth for a propitiation," that we might be
"justified from all things" in our union with Him by faith. If so,
this is the purport of similar phrases here also. St Paul is thinking
here first of the discovered glory of Christ as the propitiation for
his sins, his peace with God, his refuge and his rest for ever against
the accuser and the curse. That comes first, profoundly first.
But then we have also here the sequel truth, the glorious complement.
Here is Acceptance, wholly for Jesus Christ's most blessed sake. But
this is but the divine condition to another divine and transcendent
blessing; it is revealed as the way in to a knowledge of this Lord of
Peace, a deep and unspeakable knowledge of Him, such as shall infuse
into His disciple the power of His Risen Life, and the secret of an
inward assimilation of the soul to the very principle of His Death, and
shall be the path whose end shall be His glory.
St Paul here bids us never put asunder what God hath joined together.
"Never further than the Cross, never higher than Thy feet"; there may
we be "found," "in Him"; unshaken by surrounding mysteries, and meekly
resolute against fashions of opinion. Let us be recognized for those
who truly know for themselves, and truly commend to others, that
blessed "Justification by Faith" which is still, as ever, the Beautiful
Gate of the Gospel.
"'Tis joy enough, my All in All,
Before Thy feet to lie;
Thou wilt not let me lower fall,
And who can higher fly?"
But then let us be known as those who, accepting Christ Jesus as our
All for peace, (whatever we may have to "consider to be loss" that we
may do so,) have clasped Him also as our Hidden Life, our Risen Power,
our King within.
"O Jesus Christ, grow Thou in me,
And all things else recede;
My heart be daily nearer Thee,
From sin be daily freed." [17]
Always at the atoning Cross;--yes, every day and hour; "knowing no
other stand" before the face of the Holy One. Always receiving there
the Risen Life, the presence inwardly of the Risen One, the secret
power to suffer and to serve in peace;--yes, for ever yes; "to the
praise of the glory of His grace."
So, and only so, shall we live the life of real sinners really saved;
"worshipping by the Spirit of God, exulting in Christ Jesus, and
confident, but not in the flesh."
[1] The reader may be aware that Bishop Lightfoot's theory of the
connexion of thought at the beginning of ch. iii. is different from
that advocated here. He thinks that St Paul dictated on continuously
_till the close of_ iii. 1, and was interrupted there, and then began
_de novo_ with iii. 2, entirely on another line. In this view, the
words about "writing _the same things_ unto you" refer still to
_Christian unity_, on which St Paul was going to dilate further, but a
sudden pause occurred, and the theme was dropped. With reverence for
the great expositor, I cannot but think this unlikely. It assumes that
St Paul was curiously indifferent to the sequence of thought in an
important apostolic message, which assuredly he would _read over again_
before it was actually sent. A theory which fairly explains the
passage, and meanwhile avoids the thought of such indifference, seems
to me far preferable.
[2] The words obviously may be rendered, "_Farewell_ in the Lord"; and
so some take them, explaining that St Paul was intending to close
immediately, and so wrote his "Adieu" here; but then changed his plan.
This is very unlikely however. See below, iv. 4: _Chairete en Kurio
pantote_. The "always" there scarcely suits a formula _of farewell_,
while it perfectly suits an injunction _to be glad_. And that passage
is the obvious echo of this.--A.V. and R.V. both render "rejoice,"
though R.V. writes "or, _farewell_" in the margin. St Chrysostom in
his comments here explains the passage as referring to the Christian's
joy (_chara_). The ancient Latin versions render _Gaudete_ (not
_valete_) in _Domino_.
[3] I thus render _rhythmically_ the rhythmical Greek (it is an iambic
trimeter): _emoi men ouk okneron, humin d asphales_. It is probable
that the words are a quotation from a Greek poet, perhaps a "comic"
poet; the "comedies" being full of neatly expressed reflexions. For
such a quotation, probably from the "comedian" Menander, see 1 Cor. xv.
33: _phtheirousin ethe chresth homiliai kakai_: "_Ill converse cankers
fair morality._"
[4] The reading _pneumati Theou_ (not _Theo_) _latreuontes_ is to be
preferred.
[5] _Datreuien_ means first to do servants' work, then to do religious
"service" (so almost always in LXX. and N.T.) and sometimes specially
_priestly_ duty (see e.g. Heb. xiii. 10). This latter may be in view
here: we Christians, born anew of the Spirit, are the true _priests_,
and we little need to be made Jewish proselytes first.
[6] The _sarx_ in St Paul is very fairly represented by the word "self"
as used popularly in religious language. It is man taken as apart from
God, and so man _versus_ God; then by transition it may mean, as here,
the products of such a source, the labours of the self-life to
construct a self-righteousness. It is hardly necessary to say that, in
such contexts as this, where it stands more or less distinguished from
the _pneuma_, it is not a synonym for "the body." Sins of "the flesh"
may be sins purely of the mind, as e.g. "emulation" (Gal. v. 20).
[7] I thus attempt to convey the emphasis of the words _ouk en sarki
pepoithotes_, which is not precisely as if he had written _en sarki_.
[8] _Peritoue_: a dative of reference, a frequent construction with St
Paul. See Rom. xii. 10-12 for several examples together.
[9] See Trench, _Synonyms_, Sec. xxxix., for the special meanings of
_Israelites_, the member of the Covenant-people; _Ebraios_, the Jew who
was true to his inmost national traditions; and _Ioudaios_, the Jew
merely as other than the Gentile.
[10] The article is absent; but context leaves no doubt of the special
reference here.
[11] In solemn contrast but with perfect consistency, from another
point of view--that not of the Pharisee but of GOD--he can point out
elsewhere that "no flesh" can possibly claim "righteousness" on the
ground of fulfilment of code and precept. See especially Rom. iii. 19,
20. But his business here is to meet the legalist on the legalist's
own ground.
[12] Notice the _plural_; as if, miser-like, he had counted his bags of
treasure. And then see the contrasted _singular_, _Xemian_: he finds
them all _one mass of loss_.
[13] _Skubala_: the Greek etymologists derived the word from _kusi
balein_, "to cast to dogs." Otherwise it is traced to a connexion with
_skor_, "excrement."
[14] Practically, he means "that I _might_ gain," in the past
transaction of conversion and surrender. He thinks the past over again.
[15] Lit., "faith of," _pisteos Christou_. This use of the genitive
with _pistis_, to denote its object, is frequent. Cp. e.g. Mark xi.
22; Gal. ii. 16, 20.
[16] Even as the benefit of food is conditioned to us by our (not
buying but) eating it.
[17] See the whole hymn (rendered from Lavater's _O Jesu Christe, wachs
in mir_) in _Hymns of Consecration_, 295.
"We will dwell on Calvary's mountain
Where the flocks of Zion feed,
Oft resorting to that fountain
Open'd when our Lord did bleed;
Thence deriving
Grace, and life, and holiness."
_From the Moravian Hymn-book_.
_CHRISTIAN STANDING AND CHRISTIAN PROGRESS_
"I want that adorning divine
Thou only, my God, can'st bestow;
I want in those beautiful garments to shine
Which distinguish Thy household below.
"I want, as a traveller, to haste
Straight onward, nor pause on my way,
Nor forethought nor anxious contrivance to waste
On the tent only pitch'd for a day.
"I want--and this sums up my prayer--
To glorify Thee till I die,
Then calmly to yield up my soul to Thy care,
And breathe out, in faith, my last sigh."
CHARLOTTE ELLIOTT.