Philippians 1:1-11

Philippians 1

1Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,

To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:

2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

3I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

7It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. 8God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

9And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.



Dig Deeper

I enjoyed the nearly decade that I spent teaching high school and I loved all of my students, but I'm about to admit something that few teachers ever admit. Over the years, I had one particular group of students, who were all friends and most of whom happened to play basketball, that I had a special fondness for, not at the expense of the way I felt about or treated the other students, but over and above that. Because of my particular bond to them, though, I rode them harder than most other students. Watching them do well and succeed gave me a great deal of joy, but I also had a great interest in ensuring, to the best of my ability, that they did not fall into the traps and mistakes of so many of the other students. I was constantly warning them about the mistakes that so many before them had made and tried to help them fix small problems before they became big ones.

Paul had a great deal of love for all of the congregations of those who had entered into the life of Christ. Yet, he seems to have had a special place in his heart for the Philippians. The community in Philippi was the first place in Europe that had the gospel of Jesus Christ preached to them (see Acts 16), and they seemed to be the ones who brought the most joy. Paul seems to have a confidence in the Christians in Philippi that he doesn't demonstrate with the other churches that he loved so well. There didn't seem to be any of the major problems in Philippi that some of the other churches were going through, another fact that caused Paul much joy, but Paul does care for them so much that he simply does not want them to have to go through some of the mistakes that the other communities have. Throughout this letter, he will celebrate the joy that they have brought him, warn them of potential pitfalls, and demonstrate for them the aspects of the life of Christ in which they have yet to fully realize.

Paul begins his letter, as he usually does, in the standard form of a personal letter of his day, with a few significant changes. Two of the unusual changes that Paul makes are to include a descriptive phrase concerning himself and Timothy rather than just their names, and to mention the overseers and deacons specifically, something he only does in this letter. The question is, why does he make these two specific changes. In chapter 2, Paul will urge upon his spiritual children the need for humility and having concern for the interests of others. Before he calls them to that, however, he will model it for them in a small way. Paul was an apostle of God, set apart and called for that specific purpose (Rom. 1:2; Gal. 1:1, 15) and Timothy was an important co-worker (Phil. 2:22), but Paul does not list those lofty qualifications. Rather, he mentions only that they are slaves (rendered servant in the NIV, but Paul uses a word that clearly meant slave in Paul's day) of Jesus Christ (Paul is not attempting to either demean or glorify slaves and slavery but uses the slave as the metaphor which most clearly depicted the total claim of the life of Christ on a believer. The master's goals and mission, were the slaves goals and mission, and it was the responsibility of the slave to fulfill the call of the master). While Paul is diminishing his own role and title, he is careful to bestow upon the Philippian leaders titles that they quite possibly had given themselves within their congregation. (It is not clear that there was ever one official hierarchy or grouping of titles used in the Pauline churches, so it is quite possible that Paul just continued to use titles which each church was using. Whatever the case, it appears that the leadership structure in the first century was not nearly as uniform as we would like it to be. Thus, Paul has modeled showing concern and honor to others rather than himself. Something he would much rather have them be concerned with than with exalting themselves with titles (this is not to argue that leadership roles and titles are not important and do not serve an important function in the life of the church).

The fact is the Philippians do bring Paul a great deal of joy, a theme that will pop up throughout the letter (1:18; 22; 2:2, 17-18, 28-29; 3:1; 4:1, 4, 10). We get the sense that whenever Paul thought of the Philippians, he prayed for them. He was full of joy because of their partnership in the gospel, from the very first day that they had heard it. The word that Paul uses for partnership could also be translated fellowship, but in English, fellowship loses much of the meaning. Many have looked at Paul calling the Philippians partners in the gospel and concluded that he considered them as such because of the fact that they prayed for him often (1:19); they continued contact and fellowship with him through messengers (2:25-30); and they sent him gifts of support whenever they could (4:10-20), which thanking them for that was one of the reasons for writing this letter. To suppose that this is why Paul has called them partners, though would be to miss the point. The moment they responded to the gospel and had entered into the life of Christ, they became Paul's partners in the faith, his co-workers in spreading the life of the age to come. That they had demonstrated that partnership through their acts of service to Paul without interruption from the first day, is what brought Paul joy. In other words, he does not consider them partners because of what they did, what they did was the evidence that they had been partners all along.

Paul is confident that these acts that demonstrated their partnership in the life of Christ would continue on, without interruption until the day of Christ Jesus. Although Paul loves and favors them, and is sure that it is right for him to feel this way about them, his confidence does not stem from anything special about those in Philippi. His confidence flows from the fact that Christ is the one that has set about transforming them into the image of God (Col. 3:10). The day of Christ to which he refers, was the day when Christ would return and bring the great hope stored in heaven (Col. 1:5; 1 Pet. 1:4), the hope of resurrection and the age to come. That was the day when God would vindicate His people, completing the work of transformation, and put and end to all evil and injustice in God's world, restoring it to its original yet glorified state (Rev. 21). This is the day when the work of the body of Christ will be assessed and shown for what it is (1 Cor. 3:13). This is the day when all of God's people will realize that their labor in Christ has not been in vain (1 Cor. 15:58), as somehow God will weave each action done according to His will, into the age to come.

Because of his great affection for them (although Paul prayed for the same thing for all believers in Christ), Paul prays that their love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. Paul recognizes that any people in Christ need to continue to grow and abound in the love of Christ, but he also knows that the path to this true love and loyalty is through knowledge and discernment. It is true that knowledge without love puffs one up (1 Cor. 8:1), but love without knowledge is equally dangerous (Rom. 10:2), and can spiral into emotionalism. This is the danger of being drawn to and even motivated by constant emotionalism without understanding, as Paul has, that true Christian love comes from knowledge and the ability to discern (things which come from years of hard work, study, much prayer, and experience). It is not uncommon to find Christians who can only be moved by a sermon that appeals to them with a great deal of emotionalism, and although that is fine on occasion, if that is the only thing that moves one to action or conviction, it reveals a dangerous spiritual immaturity.

Those who have not put in the work to increase in their knowledge of love and the life of Christ, will not be able to truly grasp the difference between what is pure and blameless and what is not. In other words, they will not have the skills necessary to be able to tell the difference between the genuine life of Christ based on true love and loyalty and counterfeit versions based on other things. Those who are able to discern and remain in Christ (John 15:4-7) will be hidden in Christ (Col. 3:3), and so will be found to have the fruit of the righteousness (Paul calls it the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5), something that only comes through the life of Jesus Christ.



Devotional Thought

Paul mentions that he prayed regularly for the Philippians and will discuss later that they also pray for him on a regular basis. With whom have you partnered in Christ to pray for and with on a regular basis? What are the advantages of consistently praying for a group of Christians the way that Paul did?