Philippians 1.1-11.
1.1 Paul and Timothy, slaves of Messiah Jesus, to everyone in Philippi made holy in Messiah Jesus, together with the masters and servants: 2 Grace to you, and peace, from our Father God and Master Jesus the Messiah.
1.3 I praise my God every time I remember you, 4 every time, in every one of my prayer requests, for all of you. I make my requests with joy 5 over the relationship you’ve had with the gospel from the first day to now. 6 I’m convinced of this: that the Beginner of the good work among you will work on it right up to the day Messiah Jesus returns. 7 It’s appropriate of me to think so: I have you in my heart, and in my chains, in the defense and establishment of the gospel, you share a relationship with me in every grace. 8 God is my witness how much I want all of you in Messiah Jesus’s heart.
1.9 I pray for this: that your love may be more and more overabundant in everything you know and perceive. 10 As you go through life, when you’re tested for impurities, may none be found—nothing offensive on the Messiah’s day, 11 for you’ve been made full of right fruit through Messiah Jesus. Praise and glory to God.
Philippians, among other letters, are called “prison epistles,” but penitentiaries didn’t exist in the Roman Empire. Jails kept prisoners only until their trial, where they would either be freed, beaten, maimed, or executed. For those with money or sponsors, like Paul, they were under guard—and usually chained to a guard—at home. The idea of Paul sitting in a cell writing this stuff is a modern invention.
Whenever I write preachy stuff, largely I’m preaching to myself too. This entire blog is a good example. I think the best preachers do that: They never forget that they, too, need to learn from the scriptures. Only Jesus knows it all; the rest of us are always working on it.
Paul too. As enlightened as he was, he wasn’t the Light. He needed to remind himself, particularly due to his discouraging house arrest (v7) is because he needed to buck up his own attitude. The reason he wrote such stuff as “The Beginner of the good work among you will work on it right up to the day Messiah Jesus returns” (v6) is because he needed to hear it and feel it as much as the Philippians.
The Philippians were a faithful bunch. Their church’s leaders had gone after Paul back when he and his team—including Silas, Timothy, and Luke—left the city following a snafu where Paul had exorcised a fortune teller, and without a trial, he and Silas got caned and tossed in prison for it. (Ac 16.16-40) The city leaders wanted them gone. It wasn’t a Christian-friendly environment. Regardless, and Paul had nothing but fond memories of the Philippian Christians (v3) and their enthusiasm for the gospel. (v5) He had joyous prayer requests to make for them. (v4) Their fortitude kept his hopes up.
Thus we get to the popular verse, which a popular worship song renders, “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.” It’s taken out of context by folks who apply it to specific works—say, a ministry, where they say of it, “God wants your ministry to succeed, because ‘He who began a good work in you…’ ” blah blah blah.
In context, the people are the good work. What God’s doing among them is the good work. Not the ministry. We know this because the work is completed at the Day of the Lord—the last day, the judgment day, the Resurrection—which Paul calls the Day of Messiah Jesus (v6) because Jesus is the judge.
Ministries come and go. (Or should; too often, for the sake of the ministers’ job security, they’re handled in a way that creates a perpetual problem instead of a solved one. But I leave that to Jesus’s judgment.) The only ministry that never really can end is the one where people are brought to Jesus and transformed into proper dwellers in the Kingdom, Until we’re definitely and finally saved at the End, we’re getting saved now. That ministry continues.
That’s why Paul wanted the Philippians to concentrate on following Jesus as rightly as they could: to know God, to grow in love, to know how to love better, to perceive everything through God’s filter of love, and to filter the impurities out of their lives so that at the End there won’t be any.
This idea of getting pure in preparation for the End is called sanctification, and annoyingly there are a lot of churches that actively discourage this sort of thing. That’s because they confuse sanctification with salvation. We don’t clean up our lives in order to be saved. We clean them up because we are saved, and know it—and God expects better of His followers. Yet whenever we try to follow God better, anti-sanctification folks accuse us of “works righteousness”—of trying to earn God’s favor, or trying to earn heaven.
In my experience they’re a bit schizophrenic about this. They preach against the very same sins we do. What triggers all the complaints of “works righteousness” is when we start trying to follow commands that they’ve declared irrelevant. If we teach that murder is bad, they’re on board; they teach the very same thing. But if we teach that the poor need feeding, suddenly we’re practicing “works righteousness”—because they don’t feed the poor. Not only that: many actually teach that the reason those folks are poor is due to sin (which is actually a principle of Objectivism and social Darwinism, not Christianity). What it nearly always comes to is the commands they’ve rationalized away. The instant any Christian says, “I believe God really meant this when He said it,” their reply is, “No; Jesus’s sacrifice abolished that one, and your insistence on following it means you don’t really trust Jesus’s sacrifice.” Somehow our pursuit of God’s will is turned into a defiance of God’s will.
But if you take their idea to its logical conclusion, then no commands should be followed, because after all, the Law doesn’t save. I can violate any of them and be instantly forgiven. Fine. I’ll go worship Uranus. Now, does that make logical sense?—trusting in Yahweh to save me through Jesus, yet disregarding the very first of the Ten Commands, turning my back on the one who’s supposedly saving me, and embracing another god? And if worshiping Uranus sounds ridiculous (probably due to the usual puns, “your anus”) οὐράνος/urános is Greek for “universe,” which more than a few pagans truly do worship. But it’s ridiculous no matter what you name it.
Point this out to the anti-sanctification sort and he’ll say, “No of course you don’t violate the Ten Commands. Those you follow. Others you don’t.” And he’ll give you his reasons why some commands were abolished and others aren’t. Some reasons are sorta valid—the animal sacrifices, fr’instance—and some are completely arbitrary, like forgiving debts every seven years. (After all, isn’t forgiving debts part of the Lord’s Prayer?) What this inevitably boils down to that is he’s arguing with his conscience because he doesn’t want to strain the impurities out of his life; (v10) it’s much easier to justify them to himself, and he hopes he’ll be successful in justifying them to our Lord.
I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell, but fortunately he is saved by grace. So there’s that.
Pp 1.1: Παῦλος καὶ Τιμόθεος δοῦλοι Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ Paul and Timothy, slaves [or servants] of Christ Jesus πᾶσιν τοῖς ἁγίοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ to all the holy [ones] in Christ Jesus, τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Φιλίπποις σὺν ἐπισκόποις καὶ διακόνοις, to the [ones] being in Philippi with overseers [or bishops] and servers [or deacons]. 1.2: χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ grace to you, and peace from God πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. father of us, and master Jesus Christ.
1.3: Εὐχαριστῶ τῷ θεῷ μου I give thanks to the God of me ἐπὶ πάσῃ τῇ μνείᾳ ὑμῶν upon the every memory of you all. 1.4: πάντοτε ἐν πάσῃ δεήσει μου always in every request of me ὑπὲρ πάντων ὑμῶν above every[thing] of you all μετὰ χαρᾶς τὴν δέησιν ποιούμενος, in the midst of joy of the request [I am] making for myself. 1.5: ἐπὶ τῇ κοινωνίᾳ ὑμῶν εἰς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον upon the relationship of you all into the evangel ἀπὸ τῆς πρώτης ἡμέρας ἄχρι τοῦ νῦν, from the first day until the now. 1.6: πεποιθὼς αὐτὸ τοῦτο, [I] having been persuaded of this itself, ὅτι ὁ ἐναρξάμενος ἐν ὑμῖν ἔργον ἀγαθὸν that the [one] beginning for himself in you all [a] good work ἐπιτελέσει ἄχρι ἡμέρας Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ· will perform [it] to the full until [the] day of Christ Jesus:
1.7: Καθώς ἐστιν δίκαιον ἐμοὶ how it is right of me, τοῦτο φρονεῖν ὑπὲρ πάντων ὑμῶν this being wise above every[thing] of you all διὰ τὸ ἔχειν με ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ ὑμᾶς, through the havings [of] me in the heart of you all, ἔν τε τοῖς δεσμοῖς μου καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀπολογίᾳ in both the bonds of me and in the apology καὶ βεβαιώσει τοῦ εὐαγγελίου and establishment of the evangel συγκοινωνούς μου τῆς χάριτος πάντας ὑμᾶς ὄντας. with [a] relationship of me of grace being all [of] you all. 1.8: μάρτυς γάρ μου ὁ θεός for witness God [is] of me, ὡς ἐπιποθῶ πάντας ὑμᾶς ἐν σπλάγχνοις Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. how I greatly desire all of you all, in [the] innards of Christ Jesus.
1.9: Καὶ τοῦτο προσεύχομαι, and this I pray for myself ἵνα ἡ ἀγάπη ὑμῶν ἔτι μᾶλλον καὶ μᾶλλον that the love of you all still more and more περισσεύῃ might be over and above ἐν ἐπιγνώσει καὶ πάσῃ αἰσθήσει in full knowledge and to every esthetic, 1.10: εἰς τὸ δοκιμάζειν ὑμᾶς τὰ διαφέροντα, in the assaying of you all, the [ones] going through life, ἵνα ἦτε εἰλικρινεῖς that you all might be without mixture καὶ ἀπρόσκοποι εἰς ἡμέραν Χριστοῦ, and not having offense in [the] day of Christ, 1.11: πεπληρωμένοι καρπὸν δικαιοσύνης having been made full [of the] fruit of rightness, τὸν διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ the [thing] through Jesus Messiah εἰς δόξαν καὶ ἔπαινον θεοῦ. in the high opinion and good word of God.
