_PEACE AND JOY._
Dr. Lightfoot has observed that the passages in the Acts of the Apostles
which record the Macedonian experiences of Paul, have a good deal to say
about women (Acts xvi., xvii.). They convey the impression that in
Macedonia women had a position and exercised an influence, at least in
religious matters, that was not usual in the Greek world. And he has
appealed to the remains of ancient Macedonian inscriptions to support
the general idea that exceptional respect was accorded to women in that
country. Here, at any rate, we have two women of note in the Church at
Philippi. They might, very likely, possess social standing and
influence. They had been qualified to render, and in point of fact did
render, important help in setting forward the cause of Christ in that
city. We cannot doubt therefore that they were warm-hearted Christian
women, who had deeply felt the power of the gospel, so that, like many
of their sisters in later days, they gladly embarked in the service of
it. In those days such service on the part of women implied no small
effort of faith; and doubtless it had cost them something in the way of
cross-bearing. But now, disagreements and estrangement had fallen out
between them. Most likely the keen practical energies, which made them
serviceable Christians, had brought about collision on some points in
which their views differed. And then they had not managed the difference
well. Self came in, and coloured and deepened it. Now, one may think,
they were in danger of being always ready to differ, and to differ with
mutual distrust and dislike.
People cannot always think alike, not even Christians who share the same
service. But there is a Christian way of behaving about these inevitable
divergences. And, in particular, in such cases we might be expected to
show a superiority, in Christ our Lord, to minor differences, not
allowing them to trouble the great agreement and the dear affection in
which Christ has bound us. Whatever is to be said about a difference, as
to its merits, the main thing that has to be said about it often is,
"You should not have let it come between you. You should, both of you,
have been big enough and strong enough in Christ, to know how to drop it
and forget it. In making so much of it, in allowing it to make so much
of itself, you have been children, and naughty children."
What this difference was we do not know; and it is of no consequence.
Paul does not address himself to it. He holds both parties to be in the
wrong now, and, for his purpose, equally in the wrong; and he addresses
entreaty to both, in exactly the same terms, to agree in Christ and be
done with it: no longer to allow this thing to mar their own edification
and hinder the cause of Christ. Yet, while he is sure that this is the
right way, he does not conceal from himself how difficult human nature
finds it to come happily out of such a complication. So he appeals to
some old comrade at Philippi, whom he calls his "genuine yokefellow," to
lend a hand. A Christian bystander, a friend of both parties, might help
them out of the difficulty. In this connection the Apostle's mind goes
back to happy days of cordial effort at Philippi, in which these women,
and the "yokefellow," and Clement, and others had all been at work,
shoulder to shoulder, all rejoicing in the common salvation and the
joint service.
In difficulties between Christians, as between other people, wise and
loving friendship may perform the most important services. Selfishness
shrinks from rendering these; and on the other hand, meddlesomeness,
which is a form of egotism combined with coarseness, rushes in only to
do harm. Wisdom is needed, mainly the wisdom which consists in loving
thoughtfulness. The love which seeketh not her own, and is not easily
provoked, is much called for in this ministry of reconciliation.
These good women had little idea, probably, that their names should come
down the ages in connection with this disagreement of theirs; and they
might have deprecated it if they had thought of it. But let them be
remembered with all honour--two saints of God, who loved and laboured
for Christ, who bore the cross, and each of whom was so important to
the Church, that it was a matter of public interest to have this
difficulty removed out of the way of both. As to it, we of later times
have not succeeded in keeping Christian activity so free of personal
misunderstandings as to be entitled on this account to assume any
attitude of superiority. Let us think only with tenderness and affection
of those venerable and beloved, those long-remembered mothers in Christ,
Euodia and Syntyche.
The commentators have tried to divine something further about this "true
yokefellow"; but with no success. As to Clement, some have been willing
to identify him with the Clement known to have laboured in the first age
at Rome, and who is reported to have been the writer of a well-known
Epistle from the Church at Rome to that at Corinth. He, again, has been
by some identified with another Clement, also a Roman, a near relation
of the Emperor Domitian, whom we have reason to believe to have been a
Christian. Both identifications are probably mistaken; and the Clement
now before us was no doubt resident at Philippi, and belonged to a
somewhat earlier generation than his Roman namesake. The Roman world was
full of Clements, and there is nothing surprising in meeting several
Christians who bore the name.
With the "yokefellow" and with Clement, the Apostle recalls other
"labourers" who belonged to the fellowship of those gospel days at
Philippi. We are not to think that they were all gifted as teachers or
preachers; but they were zealous Christians who helped as they could to
gather and to confirm the Church. Paul will not give their names; but it
must not be thought that the names have ceased to be dear and honourable
to him. "They shall not be in my letter," he says, "but they are written
in even a better place, in the book of life. They are precious, not to
me only, but to my Master." Here, again, if any one had asked Paul how
he ventured to speak with so much assurance of the condition of persons
whose course was not yet ended, he would no doubt have replied, as in
ch. i. 7: "It is meet for me to think thus of them, because I have them
in my heart: because both in my bonds, and in the defence and
confirmation of the gospel, they all are partakers with me of grace."
These personal references indicate that the main burden of the Apostle's
thought in the Epistle has been disposed of, and that it is drawing to a
close. Yet he finds it natural to add some closing admonitions. They are
brief and pithy; they do not seem to labour with the weight of thought
and feeling which pours through the preceding chapter. Yet they are not
quite fragmentary. A definite conception of the case to be provided for
underlies them, and also a definite conception of the way in which its
necessities are to be met.
He had been pouring out his soul on the subject of the true Christian
life--the deep sources from which it springs, the great channels in
which it runs, the magnificent conditions of Christ's kingdom under
which it becomes possible and is accomplished. But yet, another order
of things crosses all this. It is the incessant detail of human life on
earth, with its pettiness and superficiality, and yet with its
inevitable hold upon us all. How much we are at the mercy of it! How
hard to keep quite true to the grand music of the gospel we believe,
amid the multifarious patter of the incidents of life, playing on the
surface only, but on the sensitive surface of our being. The case of
Euodia and Syntyche was itself but an illustration, of the commonest
kind, of the liability of believing lives to be swayed and marred in
this way. For all these little things claim attention; they assume a
magnitude that does not belong to them, and they take a place to which
they have no right. Can anything be said to help us to some prevailing
mood, in which we shall be likely to take the right attitude towards
these elements of life, and, at the same time, to keep due touch with
the springs of our spiritual welfare?
The Apostle reverts to the significant "good-bye" which was heard at the
beginning of the third chapter. "Rejoice," "Be of good cheer," was the
usual farewell salute. He had begun to use it, in the third chapter,
with an emphasis on the native signification of the word. Now he resumes
it more emphatically still, for here he finds the keynote which he
wants: "Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I will say it, Rejoice."
If joy be possible, it would seem to need no great persuasion to induce
men to embrace it. But, as a matter of fact, Christians fail greatly
here. In the Old Testament there are abundant exhortations to Israel to
rejoice in the Lord: the Lord being Jehovah, without further distinction
or limitation; and the ground of rejoicing being His revealed character,
especially His mercy and His truth, and the fact that He is Israel's
God. Here the Lord is our Lord Jesus, in whom the Father is both known
and found. Now, to rejoice in Him is, and should be recognised as being,
for believers, the most direct inference from their faith. For if this
Lord be what the believer holds Him to be, then there is more in Christ
to make him glad, than there can be in anything whatever to make him
sorry. This applies even to remembered sin; for where sin abounded,
grace doth much more abound. If indeed the joy be really in the Lord, it
will be found to agree well with humility and penitence, as well as with
diligence and patience; for all these things, and whatever should
accompany them, come naturally from faith in Christ. But not the less,
joy should have its place and its exercise.
If one will think of it, it will be plain that rejoicing in the Lord
just denotes this, viz., that the influence of the objects of faith has
free play through the soul. It is well that faith should bring our
intellective powers under its influence--that we should be brought to a
vivid sense of the reality of Christ, and that our minds should work in
reference to Him as they do in reference to things which are felt to be
real, and which claim to be understood. That is well, even if as yet
some malign force seems to impede cordial appreciation and personal
fellowship. It is well, again, if Christ is felt drawing out personal
trust, and with that, genuine affection, so that the heart beats with
desire and admiration, even though for the present that can only be
under the burden of a perplexed and sorrowful mind. But when the
conviction makes way through all the soul, first that Christ is most
real, and second that Christ is most good and desirable, and thirdly
that Christ is for me, and when the soul surrenders thoroughly to it
all, then gladness is the token that faith is playing freely through the
human soul, throughout all its provinces. It is the flag hoisted to
signify that Christ is believed and loved indeed. On the other hand,
wrong is done to the Lord, and an evil report is brought up upon Him,
when those who profess to believe in Him, fail to rejoice in Him.
You well may rejoice in the Lord; you ought surely to do it. You ought
to give yourselves time to think and feel so as to rejoice; you should
be ashamed to fail to rejoice. You do not apprehend aright your position
as a believer, you do not take the attitude that befits you, if the Lord
believed in, though perhaps He makes you diligent, and patient, and
penitent, and thankful, does not also make you heartily glad. Let the
elements of this gladness come warm home to your heart, and do their
work. Then you will realise, as, short of this, you never can, how the
believer rises above the things that threaten to entangle him, and can
do all things through Christ that strengtheneth him.
And, in particular, how influential this is to preserve men from being
unduly moved and swayed by the passing things of time! These sway us by
joy and grief, by hope and fear; and what an inordinate measure of those
affections they do beget in us! But let the great joy of the Lord have
its place, and then those lesser claimants will have to content
themselves with smaller room. A great grief shuts out lesser griefs.
When a woman has lost her son, will she grieve greatly for the loss of
her purse? So a great joy keeps down the excess of lesser joys. A man
that has just won the heart and hand of the woman he loves, will not be
greatly concerned about winning or losing at some game. He will be about
equally glad either way. So he whose heart thrills with the joy of
Christ will feel the pleasure and the pain of earthly things; but they
will not master him, nor run away with him.
According to the Apostle, a believer in the way of his duty, if he
cherishes this joy, may ordinarily have a great deal of it. And, as it
were, he urges us: "Now do not be moved away from it. Do not be so
foolish. Various things will come, all sorts of things, claiming to
preoccupy your mind, so that for the present this joy shall fall into
the background. They claim it--and far too often they are allowed to
succeed. Do not let them. 'Rejoice in the Lord _alway_; again I will
say, Rejoice.'"
Always: for many believers rejoice in the Lord sometimes; for example,
in hours of undisturbed meditation. But when they go out into the stir
of life, to meet experiences which either greatly gratify or greatly
grieve them, then it seems fit that the new passion should have its
turn, and the heart insists on this indulgence. So also when some great
hope absorbs the mind, or some great anxiety weighs upon it, the soul
seems fascinated with the coming good or ill, and hangs upon the
prospect as if nothing else for the present could be minded. Now the
Apostle does not say that insensibility is the duty of Christians in
these circumstances. Indeed it is because these experiences do interest
and impress, that they become an effective instrument of Divine
training. But Christ is fit to be rejoiced in, right through all
vicissitudes; and common experiences, duly dealt with, ought to throw
into relief the reasons why He must still be cause of gladness, whatever
may be felt about other things. This maintained joy of the Lord--a
rejoicing faith, a rejoicing love, a rejoicing obedience--this is the
temper in virtue of which all else of life will fall into its due place,
and will assume its just proportion. "Though the fig tree shall not
blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive
shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut
off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will
rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation" (Hab. iii.
17, 18).
So then, "Let your moderation (or forbearance) be known to all men."
The word here used expresses a state of mind opposed to the eagerness
that overrates the worth of our personal objects, and to the arrogance
that insists on our own will about them. Some would render it
"considerateness." It is a temper which dictates a gentle and forbearing
way of dealing with men. This is the appropriate evidence that the
impetuosity of the heart about earthly things has been assuaged by the
unseen presence and the influence of Christ. Christ seen, felt, and
rejoiced in, is the secret of this moderation. A great vision of faith,
and that not a vision which is dreaded, but a vision which is loved,
brings the movement of the soul into a happy order. Now, not only so:
not only does the love of Christ, unseen and absent, work in this way;
but Christ is coming and is near. The hopes connected with Him are soon
to be realised, the gladness of fellowship with Him is soon to be
complete. The Lord is at hand. "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the
coming of the Lord. Stablish your hearts. The coming of the Lord draweth
nigh" (James v. 7).
For believers, as we have already seen, the coming of the Lord is,
according to the New Testament, the great hope. Then the joy in the Lord
is to be complete and crowned. Those who apprehend that glad day as near
are not supposed to be capable of yielding up their hearts to the
uncontrolled sway of mere earthly interests.
Here, however, a question arises. Paul speaks of the day as near, and
calls on his disciples to live under the influence of that belief. He
does not merely say that it _may_ be near, but that it is. Yet we now
know that the day was then more than eighteen hundred years away. In the
light of this fact, one asks what we are to make of the statement before
us, and what we are to make of the view of Christian life which the
statement implies.
Our Lord expressly withheld from His disciples all definite statement of
times and seasons in this connection. Yet the Early Church with one
consent expected the Lord to come within comparatively few years (what
are commonly called few), and language shaped itself in accordance with
that impression. We have here, however, more than a mere mode of
phrasing. The nearness of Christ is emphasised as the ground on which
Christian experience ought to build. Was not this a mistake?
But one may ask in reply, Was it after all untrue that Christ's coming
was near then, or that it is near now? Even if anticipations in our own
day which bring it within a generation are to fail again, as they have
always done before, shall we think that the Lord is not near?
There is a nearness which pertains to all future events which are at
once very great and important, and also are absolutely certain. Being so
great, involving interests so great, and being contemplated in their
inevitable certainty, such events can loom large upon the eye, and they
can make their influence felt in the present, whatever tale of days may
interpose before they actually arrive. If, for instance, one were told
of a friend, whom he supposed he might meet at any time, "You shall
certainly see him six months hence," the reply might be, "Six months!
That is a long time to wait." But if he were told with infallible
authority, "Six months hence you shall die," would he then say, "It is a
long time"? Would he not feel that it was near? Would not an event so
momentous as death, so inclusive of all interests and all issues, prove
able to stretch, as it were, across six months, and to come into each
day, as part of that day's concern? So of the coming of Christ. It is
the great event for the individual, the Church, the world. All issues
run up to it; all developments are broken off by it; all earthly
histories await its decision. To it all earthly movement tends; from it
all that lies beyond is dated. It is the great gate of the world to
come. Let us think what it means: and suppose we could be assured that
it is still ten thousand years away, shall we say, "How far off it is"?
Not if we believe in its certainty, and realise what it means. If we do
so, our hearts will stir and thrill as we hearken how the surges of the
eternal world are beating on the thin barrier of ten thousand years.
Come when it may, it comes hasting to us, pressing before it all that
lies between, big with the decisions and the fulfilments of Eternity. If
we truly believe and rightly estimate it, we shall feel that it is
near--even at the door. We shall be aware whenever we look forward that
beyond all possible events of earthly history it rises high, catching
and holding our gaze, and hurrying toward our individual selves not one
whit the less because it aims at others too.
We are apt to ask why the words of warning and encouragement in
reference to the future are not connected with the prospect of death,
rather than with that of the Lord's return; for death certainly is the
topic generally selected for such purposes by moralists and preachers of
more recent days. The answer may partly be, that the possibility and
likelihood of the Lord's return, even in the lifetime of themselves and
their contemporaries, might render it more natural for the Apostles to
fix all but exclusively on that. Yet this will not suffice. For nobody
could overlook the fact that some believers were dying, and that death
before the Lord's return might well be the portion of more. Besides, in
particular circumstances, death does come into view in a perfectly easy
and natural way, as at ch. i. 23; and the bearing of it on what lies
nearer is considered. The true answer is that death is _not_ the great
expectation of the believer--not death, but victory over death,
consummated and conclusively manifested when the Lord comes. This
expectation certainly is associated with the solemn prospect of
judgment; but not so as to quench the gladness of the hope for those who
love the Lord and have trusted in Him. This is our expectation--"the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is our hope" (1 Tim. i. 1). Death is a great
event; but it is negative, privative, and, after all, provisional.
True, it seals us up for the coming of the Lord, and so, in many
respects, it may be, for many purposes, practically identified with that
coming. The sermons which are preached upon it, commonly from Old
Testament texts, are, no doubt, well grounded and edifying. But the New
Testament, speaking to believers, all but constantly passes on to the
day of the Lord as the true focus of the future; and it will be well for
us to conform our thinking and our feeling to this model. No one can
estimate, who has not made it a matter of personal study, how large and
how influential a place this topic takes in New Testament teaching.
Meanwhile, no doubt, the vicissitudes and the possibilities of earthly
life press upon us. Now the Apostle provides a special additional relief
for that. We are not merely prepossessed with a joy that should fortify
us against undue disturbance from this source, but we have access in all
things to the mind and heart of our Father. We can bring our thoughts
and wishes about them all into contact with the deep, true thoughts and
with the fatherly love of God. The incidents and the possibilities of
life exercise us: they tend to become anxieties, keen and wearing; and
anxieties are the materials of disturbance and temptation. "Be anxious
about nothing; but in all things by prayer and supplication, with
thankfulness, let your requests be made known unto God."
This is the practical way of getting continually to those springs of joy
which comfort and establish the heart. The way to be anxious about
nothing is to be prayerful about everything.
It is promised that when we pray in faith God hears us, and that he that
asketh receiveth. However, this does not mean that whatever appears to
us desirable shall certainly be brought to pass in answer to prayer.
That would be to sacrifice our own welfare, and also the order of God's
world, to our shortsightedness and vanity. There is great reason to
believe indeed that those who live by prayer find many a desire granted,
and many a burden lifted, in token of God's loving interest in them, and
the heed He gives to their prayers. But we are not to start from a
general principle that we are to get all our own way by praying. Two
things we may fix upon. First, the absolute promises of the gospel, the
blessings which pertain to eternal life, are given to us through prayer.
"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him." Secondly, concerning all
other things, we have access to God in prayer, as to One who grudges us
no good thing; we are to express our anxieties and our desires, and to
receive the assurance that they are lovingly considered by One who knows
our frame and understands our troubles. Often the answer comes, even in
small things. But, generally, we may in this point have an absolute
assurance that we shall either have what we ask, or else something which
God sees to be better for us than that.
It is this second article of the doctrine of prayer that is chiefly in
view here. The prayer of faith must be a prayer of thanksgiving, because
faith knows how much it owes to God. "Thou hast not dealt with us after
our sins." At the same time it has supplications and requests, over and
above the great petition for life eternal. For our daily human
experience is God's providence to us. It exercises our thoughts and
feelings, and sets agoing contemplations and desires, which may be
shortsighted and erring, but, so far, they are the best that we can make
of it; or, if not the best, they have the more need to be corrected.
Here, then, we are encouraged to pour out our hearts to God. We are to
do it with submission: that is one of the best parts of the privilege,
for our Father knows best. At the same time, we are to do it with
supplication; we not only may, but we should. Our desires should all be
made known in this quarter; nowhere will they have a kindlier hearing.
So, last of all, we come, not only touching eternal life, but touching
each day's concerns, into a blessed agreement with God our Father
through Christ. It is agreed, that He takes loving charge of our
anxieties and desires, as One who would withhold no good from us; and it
is agreed, that we put unreserved confidence in Him,--in which
confidence we say, "Abba, Father; not our will, but Thine be done."
The confidence we have that all this is most real and solid, and not
merely a deceptive piece of religious acting, comes to us in the channel
of the faith and experience which have been fulfilled in God's children
from the first; but it is most emphatically confirmed and made sure to
us by Christ. He has taught us to pray. His is the religion in which men
pray. Under His influence we come away from ceremonial utterances, and
also from the despairing experiments of supplication with which, in
other religions, men assail the heavens; and, hand in hand with that
loving Mediator, we pray. Prayer, when it is real, when it is "in the
Holy Spirit," is a wonderfully simple and a wonderfully great thing.
So it comes to pass that the peace of God which passeth all
understanding is found. For this great and deep agreement with God in
Christ, about all things great and small, is the very entrance into the
peace of God Himself, and is the participation of it. In this, as in
other aspects, things are daily realised in the history of believers,
that pass all understanding, because God in Christ is in the matter. The
infinite and eternal life is wedding itself to us and our affairs. It
may be understood, finally, that this peace, arising to Christians at
the throne of grace, guards their minds and hearts. It guards them
against being overcharged, outworn, surprised; it guards them against
being carried captive by earthly care. Yet this peace does not disable
them for earthly business. Rather, because their main interests are so
secure, it gives them calmness and clearness; it supplies them a moral
vantage ground from which to dispose of all earthly affairs.
_THE THINGS TO FIX UPON._
"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things
are honourable [venerable], whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things
are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise, think on these things. The things which ye both learned and
received and heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of
peace shall be with you."--PHIL. iv. 8, 9 (R.V.).