Partners in the Gospel (IV)

(I did not get to this Thursday or yesterday.  However, I decided that would much rather be guilty of too much research/reading than not enough… so I kep reading instead of writing.  Thank you for your understanding!)

I have decided that what I’m going to do in these installments on Philippians is to not to do a running commentary as much as to lay out (and tease out further in some cases) the things about each passage that have emerged as fresh truths for me.  As a result, some of the folowing will be related to delicate nuances of meaning that you might never run into anywhere else.  I do hope these comments will be edifying to each of you!

Using the Holman Christian Standard Bible as my text:

1:1a- “Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus…”  Although Timothy is effectively named as Paul’s co-author in several other letters (the earliest being 1 Thess. 1:1), this is the only letter of Paul in which Timothy’s name is placed alongside Paul’s by himself.  This may well be because of the key role Timothy plays in the body of the letter in 2:19 and Timothy’s soon journey to Philippi, representing Paul.

1:1b- “… To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons.”  Over and over–and in various ways–throughout the epistle, Paul will emphasize his affection and concern for “all” the Christians in Philippi.  It appears that he is very carefully seeking to avoid taking sides in the dispute between Euodia and Syntyche (4:2-3), which is previewed in principle in 2:2-4.  Also, this is the only letter in which the leaders of the church (“overseers and deacons”) are addressed at the beginning.  Two comments are worth offering here: 1) In keeping with his overall theme of “partnership in the gospel” (see 1:5), Paul does not place the leaders over the congregation, but alongside them; and 2) The likely reasons why Paul does address the leaders are because of their positive role in the gift Paul received from the church (see 4:10ff.) and their negative role in not taking care of the brewing problem between Euodia and Syntyche (4:2-3).

1:2- “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  This is a standard greeting from Paul.  However, it is worth noting that “grace” must be received by each person before they have “peace” with God.

1:3-4- “I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer…”  Again, Paul is at pains to make sure that the Philippian believers understand that he is constantly praying for “all” of them, not just those in the congregation who are hadling things correctly.  What a wonderful example of not “playing favorites” in a church!

1:5- “… because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”  The Greek koinonia could be translated “fellowship” or “participation,” but, given the way Paul develops the rest of the letter, “partnership” is definitely what he had in mind.  Interestingly, this is not a phenomenon that gradually came into being over the years the church had existed.  The “partnership” had been in place, according to Paul, from “the first day (i.e., of planting the church in Acts 16:11ff.) until now.”  Wow!  Brand new baby Christians being viewed as partners in the gospel!  That’ll get you to thinking!

1:6- “I am sure of this, that He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”  This is, of course, the ‘future’ part of the ‘past to present’ in 1:5.  Since that is the case, it is far more likely that the “good work” of 1:6 is the completion of the “partnership in the gospel” in 1:5 than that it is talking about bare sanctification.  As far as I can tell, that view comes more from using 1:6 as a theological prooftext, often taking it out of context.

1:7a- “It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I have you in my heart…”  One of the major sub-themes of Philippians is that “partnership in the gospel” is based in right thinking.  However, this is not just any old thinking.  It is closely related to a balanced emotional perspective (“I have you in my heart”).

1:7b- “… and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and establishment of the gospel.”  Because their “partnership” has continued until the present and will into the future, then Paul and the Philippians are “partners” in whatever happens that has to do with the spread of the gospel, including Paul’s imprisonments, whether in Philippi (Acts 16:23ff.) or in Rome, where Paul was when he wrote Philippians.

1:8- “For God is my witness, how I deeply miss all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.”  Paul is essentially saying here: “Honest to God, I miss all of you (i.e., not just some of you) as purely as if I were Jesus Himself.”  Wow!  That’s quite a claim!

1:9- “And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment…”  We all know how important love is to the Christian life.  But, what Paul is saying her is that we should be growing in love over the years, particularly through coming to the point where our love is much more knowledgeable and discerning than it was when we were immature believers.

1:10a- “… so that you can determine what really matters…”  If you have any kind of moral compass at all, it is not difficult to tell the difference between right and wrong.  But, as they say, “The biggest enemy of the best is the good.”  In other words, it is the discernment between what is good and what is the absolute best from God’s perspective that is crucial and distrubingly rare in a contemporary church filled with immature Christians.

1:10b- “… and can be pure and blameless in the day of Christ…”  The outcome of ultimate purity and blamelessness will only be ours on the day of judgment.  However, this also means that we should focus on being as close to purity and blamelessness as possible right now.

1:11- “… filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”  The only other use of the idea “fruit of righteousness” in the NT is in James 3:18, which grows out of 3:17: “But the wisdom from above is first, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without favoritism and hypocricy.”   It is difficult to see exactly how this fits the context in Philippians 1:11, though.  It seems to me more likely that this concept should be taken as a combination of the ideas of the filling of the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) and the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23).  The mention of love, which is the first listed fruit of the Spirit, in Philippians 1:9 backs this understanding.  This is the way that “the glory and praise of God” comes about: the Holy Spirit revolutionalizes the Christian’s life from the inside out… and God gets the glory!

Selah and Amen.

Coming Tuesday: My sermon outline for Philippians 1:12-26