Philippians 1
1 Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons:
Paul includes Timothy as an author of this letter. But Paul was writing this letter from prison, and Timothy was not in prison with Paul. Yet Paul is gracious to include Timothy as the author. Further, near the end of the second chapter, Paul says some very positive things about Timothy. It was as if Paul was preparing the Philippians to accept Timothy’s leadership too in case Paul never made it out of prison.
As a side note, Timothy is one of the few people whom Paul trusted and had a very high opinion of. That is why it is worthwhile carefully studying Paul’s letters to Timothy.
This letter is not just to the saints, but also to the overseers and the deacons. Leaders tend to get comfortable in their leadership positions, and are unwilling to do anything that will risk their leadership getting revoked. Such an attitude can make them compromisers and useless to God. As we will see in Chapter 2, Jesus abandoned His equality with God in order to bring salvation to all men. Further, as we will see in Chapter 3, Paul threw away his leadership position among the Jews in favor of the truth of Christianity. Paul asks the leaders to join in following his example, as he follows Jesus, to do the same thing when necessary.
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
To be at peace with God is to not have God fighting against you.
What can be better than not having God against you? Having God for you, of course!
Grace is ‘help in time of need’ (Heb 4:16). To have God’s grace is to have God on your side helping you.
Grace from God and peace with God are two critical things we need to have in our Christian walk, and Paul, recognizing this, wishes that his audience has these two things. Without these, all hope is lost.
We need to recognize and internalize the importance of having these things too. That is, like King David, before we do or think anything unusual we need to ask whether doing that thing, or thinking that thought, will cause God to stop being on our side, or even worse, cause God to be against us.
People often seek peace with their spouse or friend or fellow believer. That is good, but not if it causes God to leave our side or to be against us. Samson made peace with Delilah, but as a result, the Holy Spirit left him. Some of the kings of Israel and Judah made peace with their neighbors, but as a result, put God against them.
Are you willing to stand against every human being just so that God is on your side? Sometimes, that is what it may take to keep God on your side. But if God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8:31).
Note also that God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, are both on the same team. If you are at peace with one you are also at peace with the other. And conversely, if one of them is against you, then so is the other.
3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,
4 always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all,
5 in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.
6 {For I am} confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Paul was very thankful for the Philippians. Every time he thought of the Philippians, he experienced joy. And he let them know how he felt about them. I think the Philippians were very happy to hear how Paul felt about them, and were encouraged to know that Paul was fond of them.
Sometimes, we know Christians like the Philippians, and we are very fond of them, but we tend to not tell them how fond of them we are.
The Philippians were fond of Paul too. They were among the few churches who helped Paul financially, and were responding well to Paul’s teachings as he didn’t have to correct anything in their doctrine.
7 For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.
8 For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.
The Philippians felt Paul’s pain while he was in prison. When Paul preached and defended the gospel, the Philippians were beside him, helping him out. The bond of fellowship and friendship between Paul and the Philippians was strong.
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;
11 having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which {comes} through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Paul’s prayer for the Philippians was that they use discernment and knowledge when they showed love (and approval) towards others. As Christians, we are not to show approval to all for all things. Rather, we are to approve that which is excellent. If something is not excellent, we shouldn’t approve it as if it were.
For example, if a pastor is not doing a good job in the church, we should not tell him that he is wonderful just because we don’t want to sound negative. We have to be able to discern between good and bad pastoring, and we have to know when a pastor is doing a good or a bad job, and we have to know how and when to provide appropriate feedback to the pastor.
Similarly, if a church member is behaving badly, the leadership of the church should not ignore it, but address it.
12 Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel,
13 so that my imprisonment in {the cause of} Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else,
14 and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.
15 Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will;
16 the latter {do it} out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel;
17 the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.
When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he told them that he was appointed to preach the gospel to the Gentiles (Eph 3:1-7). So he went here and there, doing exactly that. But now, before his job was done, he was put in prison. This was probably the first time he was in prison for an extended period of time, and he didn’t quite know how to handle it.
Paul must have been very frustrated to be in prison. Hadn’t God called him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles? Why then would God allow Paul to stay in prison? When Peter was in prison, God sent an angel to let him out. But no angel came to let Paul out.
Being in prison, Paul’s reach was limited. He could preach to the guards, and he did that, but that was just so small compared to what he was tasked to do. What’s more, there were others who began preaching the message he was supposed to preach. That must have frustrated Paul even more because he felt as if some of these other preachers were envious of him, and now that he was in prison they were able to preach without competition from him. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Have you ever felt like Paul? Have you been in a difficult situation, where God placed a burden on your heart and then put a block on you just as things were going quite well?
David faced a similar situation. Samuel had anointed him as king, and he (David) became famous throughout Israel for killing Goliath, but for many years after that Saul was still on the throne, and shortly after David’s anointing and fame, Saul began to hunt David down to kill him.
Joseph faced something similar too. He had this wonderful dream of how he would rule, and when he made that known, his brothers got jealous of him and sold him as a slave. A little later, Potiphar’s wife framed him even though he did nothing wrong, and he got sent to prison. In Joseph’s mind, this wasn’t how things were supposed to go!
Moses also faced something along the same lines. He was in Pharaoh’s palace, doing well. He thought he would be delivering the Jews, but when he tried, things backfired, and suddenly, his life was in danger. Then later, he ended up working for his father-in-law for 40 years. Think about that – 40 years!
How does one handle such situations? That what we can learn from the book of Philippians.
18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,
19 for I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,
20 according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but {that} with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.
Paul didn’t understand why God wound him up and then tied him up. But he decided to trust God, and to rejoice in his situation. Further, making the most of his situation, he preached to the guards, and he wrote to the Philippians, and to some other people too. And later, when he got imprisoned again, he wrote more letters, to other people. Paul decided to rejoice, no matter what.
What Paul didn’t realize was that his letters would become Scripture (imagine that!), and would be used by Gentiles long after he was gone. God was using Paul to preach to Gentiles in a magnitude that was above and beyond what Paul could imagine.
God did that to Moses too. When Moses tried, he was able to temporarily deliver just one Jew. But – when the time was right – God put Moses to work, and he delivered the entire Jewish nation!
God did that for Joseph too – when Joseph was in prison, he made acquaintance with the king’s cupbearer, and through that Joseph made acquaintance with the Pharaoh, and God put the Pharaoh in a situation that only Joseph could unravel, after which Joseph ended as second in command over all of Egypt!
Similarly, at the right time, God made David king.
There is an important lesson for each of us in all this. Sometimes, God gives us a gift and then ties our hand. He does this so that the gift will be used in just the way he wants it to be used.
In such a situation, if we grumble and complain against God, or against the people God used to tie our hands, we will make it difficult for God to use us to the maximum. We must trust that God knows what He is doing, and that He is at work in us. That is why, in the next chapter, Paul tells us not to grumble and complain.
21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
22 But if {I am} to live {on} in the flesh, this {will mean} fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose.
23 But I am hard-pressed from both {directions,} having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for {that} is very much better;
24 yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.
25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith,
26 so that your proud confidence in me may abound in Christ Jesus through my coming to you again.
As long as Paul was alive, he wanted to do what God wanted him to do – to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. But, stuck in prison, and therefore unable to do that, he felt that it would be better if he died and went to be with Christ. Yet, he realized that God was keeping him alive because God had a plan, and even if Paul couldn’t fathom what that plan was, he was willing to trust God to take care of things.
Sometimes, we too, when we see no end out, are tempted to just give up, and seek to depart from this earth. But, like Paul, we should trust that God has a reason for keeping us alive, even though we are severely constrained, and allow God to play out His plan for us.
27 Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;
28 in no way alarmed by {your} opponents – which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and that {too,} from God.
29 For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake,
30 experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear {to be} in me.
Paul genuinely cared for the welfare of the Philippians, and therefore encouraged them to stay firm, irrespective of what happened to him. He didn’t want their faith to be shaken even if he were in prison or taken to be with the Lord.
|