There is an instance of his following his own twice-given precept,
'Rejoice in the Lord always.' The Philippians' care of him was the
source of the joy, and yet it was joy in the Lord. So we learn the
perfect consistency of that joy in Christ with the full enjoyment of all
other sources of joy, and especially of the joy that arises from
Christian love and friendship. Union with Christ heightens and purifies
all earthly relations. Nobody should be so tender and so sweet in these
as a Christian. His faith should be like the sunshine blazing out over
the meadows making them greener. It should, and does in the measure of
its power, destroy selfishness and guard us against the evils which sap
love and the anxieties which torment it, against the dread that it may
end, and our hopeless desolation when it does. There is a false ascetic
idea of Christian devotion as if it were a regard to Christ which made
our hearts cold to others, which is clean against Paul's experience
here. His joy went out in fuller stream towards the Philippians because
it was 'joy in the Lord.'
We may just note in passing the tender metaphor by which the
Philippians' renewed thought of him is likened to a tree's putting forth
its buds in a gracious springtide, and may link with it the pretty fancy
of an old commentator whom some people call prosaic and puritanical
(Bengel), that the stormy winter had hindered communication, and that
Epaphroditus and the gifts came with the opening spring.
Paul's inborn delicacy and quick considerateness comes beautifully
forward in his addition, to remove any suspicion of his thinking that
his friends in Philippi had been negligent or cold. Therefore he adds
that he knew that they had always had the will. What had hindered them
we do not know. Perhaps they had no one to send. Perhaps they had not
heard that such help would be welcome, but whatever frost had kept the
tree from budding, he knew that the sap was in it all the same.
We may note that trait of true friendship, confidence in a love that did
not express itself. Many of us are too exacting in always wanting
manifestations of our friend's affection. What cries out for these is
not love so much as self-importance which has not had the attention
which it thinks its due. How often there have been breaches of intimacy
which have no better reason than 'He didn't come to see me often
enough'; 'He hasn't written to me for ever so long'; 'He does not pay me
the attention I expect.' It is a poor love which is always needing to be
assured of another's. It is better to err in believing that there is a
store of goodwill in our friends' hearts to us which only needs occasion
to be unfolded. One often hears people say that they were quite
surprised at the proofs of affection which came to them when they were
in trouble. They would have been happier and more nearly right if they
had believed in them when there was no need to show them.
II. Consciousness of Christ-given independence and of 'content' is
scarcely Paul's whole idea here, though that, no doubt, is included. We
have no word which exactly expresses the meaning. 'Self-sufficient' is a
translation, but then it has acquired a bad meaning as connoting a false
estimate of one's own worth and wisdom. What Paul means is that whatever
be his condition he has in himself enough to meet it. He does not depend
on circumstances, and he does not depend on other people for strength to
face them. Many words are not needed to insist that only the man of whom
these things are true is worth calling a man at all. It is a miserable
thing to be hanging on externals and so to be always exposed to the
possibility of having to say, 'They have taken away my Gods.' It is as
wretched to be hanging on people. 'The good man shall be satisfied for
himself.' The fortress that has a deep well in the yard and plenty of
provisions within, is the only one that can hold out.
This independence teaches the true use of all changing circumstances.
The consequence of 'learning' therewith to be content is further stated
by the Apostle in terms which perhaps bear some reference to the
mysteries of Greek religion, since the word rendered 'I have learned the
secret' means I have been initiated. He can bear either of the two
extremes of human experience, and can keep a calm and untroubled mind
whichever of them he has to front. He has the same equable spirit when
abased and when abounding. He is like a compensation pendulum which
corrects expansions and contractions and keeps time anywhere. I remember
hearing of a captain in an Arctic expedition who had been recalled from
the Tropics and sent straight away to the North Pole. Sometimes God
gives His children a similar experience.
It is possible for us not only to bear with equal minds both extremes,
but to get the good out of both. It is a hard lesson and takes much
conning, to learn to bear sorrow or suffering or want. They have great
lessons to teach us all, and a character that has not been schooled by
one of these dwellers in the dark is imperfect as celery is not in
season till frost has touched it. But it is not less difficult to learn
how to bear prosperity and abundance, though we think it a pleasanter
lesson. To carry a full cup without spilling is proverbially difficult,
and one sees instances enough of men who were far better men when they
were poor than they have ever been since they were rich, to give a
terrible significance to the assertion that it is still more difficult
to live a Christian life in prosperity than in sorrow. But while both
threaten, both may minister to our growth. Sorrow will drive, and joy
will draw, us nearer to God. If we are not tempted by abundance to
plunge our desires into it, nor tempted by sorrow to think ourselves
hopelessly harmed by it, both will knit us more closely to our true and
changeless good. The centrifugal and centripetal forces both keep the
earth in its orbit.
It is only when we are independent of circumstances that we are able to
get the full good of them. When there is a strong hand at the helm, the
wind, though it be almost blowing directly against us, helps us forward,
but otherwise the ship drifts and washes about in the trough. We all
need the exhortation to be their master, for we can do without them and
they serve us.
Paul here lets us catch a glimpse of the inmost secret of his power
without which all exhortations to independence are but waste words. He
is conscious of a living power flowing through him and making him fit
for anything, and he is not afraid that any one who studies him will
accuse him of exaggeration even when he makes the tremendous claim 'I
can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.' That great word is even
more emphatic in the original, not only because, as the Revised Version
shows, it literally is _in_ and not _through_, and so suggests again his
familiar thought of a vital union with Jesus, but also because he uses a
compound word which literally means 'strengthening within,' so then the
power communicated is breathed into the man, and in the most literal
sense he is 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.' This
inward impartation of strength is the true and only condition of that
self-sufficingness which Paul has just been claiming. Stoicism breaks
down because it tries to make men apart from God sufficient for
themselves, which no man is. To stand alone without Him is to be weak.
Circumstances will always be too strong for me, and sins will be too
strong. A Godless life has a weakness at the heart of its loneliness,
but Christ and I are always in the majority, and in the face of all
foes, be they ever so many and strong, we can confidently say, 'They
that be with us are more than they that be with them.' The old
experience will prove true in our lives, and though 'they compass us
about like bees,' the worst that they can do is only to buzz angrily
round our heads, and their end is in the name of the Lord to be
destroyed. In ourselves we are weak, but if we are 'rooted, grounded,
built' on Jesus, we partake of the security of the rock of ages to which
we are united, and cannot be swept away by the storm, so long as it
stands unmoved. I have seen a thin hair-stemmed flower growing on the
edge of a cataract and resisting the force of its plunge, and of the
wind that always lives in its depths, because its roots are in a cleft
of the cliff. The secret of strength for all men is to hold fast by the
'strong Son of God,' and they only are sufficient in whatsoever state
they are, to whom this loving and quickening voice has spoken the
charter 'My grace is sufficient for thee.'