'Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to
all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at
Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: 2. Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. 3. I thank my God upon all my
remembrance of you, 4. Always in every
supplication of mine on behalf of you all making
my supplication with joy, 5. For your fellowship
in furtherance of the gospel from the first day
until now; 6. Being confident of this very thing
that He which began a good work in you will
perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ: 7. Even
as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf
of you all, because I have you in my heart,
inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence
and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are
partakers with me of grace. 8. For God is my
witness, how I long after you all in the tender
mercies of Christ Jesus.'--PHIL. i. 1-8 (R.V.).
The bond between Paul and the church at Philippi was peculiarly close.
It had been founded by himself, as is narrated at unusual length in the
book of Acts. It was the first church established in Europe. Ten years
had elapsed since then, possibly more. Paul is now a prisoner in Rome,
not suffering the extremest rigour of imprisonment, but still a prisoner
in his own hired house, accessible to his friends and able to do work
for God, but still in the custody of soldiers, chained and waiting till
the tardy steps of Roman law should come up to him, or perhaps till the
caprice of Nero should deign to hear his cause. In that imprisonment we
have his letters to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and
Philemon, which latter three are closely connected in time, the two
former in subject, and the two latter in destination. This letter stands
apart from those to the great Asiatic churches.
Its tone and general cast are unlike those of most of his letters. It
contains no doctrinal discussions and no rebukes of evil, but is an
outpouring of happy love and confidence. Like all Paul's epistles it
begins with salutations, and like most of them with prayer, but from the
very beginning is a long gush of love. These early verses seem to me
very beautiful if we regard them either as a revelation of the personal
character of the Apostle, or as a picture of the relation between
teacher and taught in its most blessed and undisturbed form, or as a
lovely ideal of friendship and love in any relation, hallowed and
solemnised by Christian feeling.
Verses one and two contain the apostolic greeting. In it we note the
senders. Timothy is associated with Paul, according to his custom in all
his letters even when he goes on immediately to speak in the singular.
He ever sought to hide his own supremacy and to bring his friends into
prominence. He was a great, lowly soul, who had no pride in the dignity
of his position but felt the weight of its responsibility and would fain
have had it shared. He calls Timothy and himself the slaves of Christ.
He regarded it as his highest honour to be Christ's born servant, bound
to absolute submission to the all-worthy Lord who had died to win him.
It is to be noted that there is no reference here to apostolic
authority, and the contrast is very remarkable in this respect with the
Epistle to the Galatians, where with scornful emphasis he asserts it as
bestowed 'not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ
and God the Father.' In this designation of himself, we have already the
first trace of the intimate and loving relationship in which Paul stood
to the Philippians. There was no need for him to assert what was not
denied, and he did not wish to deal with them officially, but rather
personally. There is a similar omission in Philemon and a pathetic
substitution there of the 'prisoner of Jesus Christ' for the 'slave of
Christ Jesus.'
The persons addressed are 'all the saints in Christ Jesus.' As he had
not called himself an apostle, so he does not call them a church. He
will not lose in an abstraction the personal bond which unites them.
They are saints, which is not primarily a designation of moral purity,
but of consecration to God, from whom indeed purity flows. The primitive
meaning of the word is _separation_; the secondary meaning is
_holiness_, and the connection between these two meanings contains a
whole ethical philosophy. They are saints in Christ Jesus; union with
Him is the condition both of consecration and of purity.
The Philippian community had an organisation primitive but sufficient.
We do not enter on the discussion of its two offices further than to
note that the bishops are evidently identical with the elders, in the
account in Acts xx. of Paul's parting with the Ephesian Christians,
where the same persons are designated by both titles, as is also the
case in Titus i. 5 and 7; the one name (elder) coming from the Hebrew
and designating the office on the side of dignity, the other (bishop)
being of Greek origin and representing it in terms of function. We note
that there were several elders then in the Philippian church, and that
their place in the salutation negatives the idea of hierarchical
supremacy.
The benediction or prayer for grace and peace is couched in the form
which it assumes in all Paul's letters. It blends Eastern and Western
forms of greeting. 'Grace' being the Greek and 'Peace' the Hebrew form
of salutation. So Christ fuses and fulfils the world's desires. The
grace which He gives is the self-imparting love of God, the peace which
He gives is its consequence, and the salutation is an unmistakable
evidence of Paul's belief in Christ's divinity.
This salutation is followed by a great burst of thankful love, for the
full apprehension of which we must look briefly at the details of these
verses. We have first Paul's thankfulness in all his remembrance of the
Philippians, then he further defines the times of his thankfulness as
'always in every supplication of mind on behalf of you all making my
supplication with joy.' His gratitude for them is expressed in all his
prayers which are all thank-offerings. He never thinks of them nor prays
for them without thanking God for them. Then comes the reason for his
gratitude--their fellowship in furtherance of the gospel, from the first
day when Lydia constrained him to come into her house, until this moment
when now at the last their care of him had flourished again. The Revised
Version's rendering 'fellowship in furtherance of' instead of
'fellowship in' conveys the great lesson which the other rendering
obscures--that the true fellowship is not in enjoyment but in service,
and refers not so much to a common participation in the blessedness as
in the toils and trials of Christian work. This is apparent in an
immediately following verse where the Philippians' fellowship with
Christ is again spoken of as consisting in sharing both in His bonds and
in the double work of defending the gospel from gainsayers and in
positively proclaiming it. Very beautifully in this connection does he
designate that work and toil as 'my grace.'
The fellowship which thus is the basis of his thanksgiving leads on to a
confidence which he cherishes for them and which helps to make his
prayers joyful thanksgivings. And such confidence becomes him because
he has them in his heart, and 'love hopeth all things' and delights to
believe in and anticipate all good concerning its object. He has them in
his heart because they faithfully share with him his honourable, blessed
burdens. But that is not all, it is 'in the tender mercies' of Christ
that he loved them. His love is the love of Christ in him; his being is
so united to Jesus that his heart beats with the same emotion as throbs
in Christ's, and all that is merely natural and of self in his love is
changed into a solemn participation in the great love which Christ has
to them. This, then, being the general exposition of the words, let us
now dwell for a little while on the broad principles suggested by them.
I. Participation in the work of Christ is the noblest basis for love and
friendship.
Paul had tremendous courage and yet hungered for sympathy. He had no
outlets for his love but his fellow Christians. There had, no doubt,
been a wrenching of the ties of kindred when he became a Christian, and
his love, dammed back and restrained, had to pour itself on his
brethren.
The Church is a workshop, not a dormitory, and every Christian man and
woman is bound to help in the common cause. These Philippians help Paul
by sympathy and gifts, indeed, but by their own direct work as well, and
things are not right with us unless leaders can say, 'Ye all are
partakers of my grace.' There are other real and sweet bonds of love and
friendship, but the most real and sweetest is to be found in our common
relation to Jesus Christ and in our co-operation in the work which is
ours because it is His and we are His.