Biblestudy: Philippians (Part One)
Background and Philippians 1:1-6
#BS-PH01
John W. Ritenbaugh
Given 18-Jul-89; 81 minutes
description: Paul systematically planned his travels to specific cities for specific reasons, choosing Philippi for its strategic location as the only autonomous Roman colony in the region having historical cultural, military, and commercial significance. As an autonomous outpost of Roman culture, more Roman than Rome, it provides a metaphor of a Christian's status of occupying an outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven, ardently maintaining a loyalty to the customs and laws of the home country. From Philippi, God called people from several nationalities and social strata, galvanizing them into one family. Paul expresses joy and camaraderie more with this congregation than any other, appreciating their selflessness, generosity, and sacrifice. Paul, from his vantage point of a prisoner, offers both abundant encouragement (God will complete what He has begun) as well as a plaintive appeal for unity to this congregation.
transcript:
I am going to devote the beginning of this Bible study to some background material on Philippi itself and a little bit of background material on the book as well. But from time to time we need to consider why the apostle Paul chose to go to certain places.
Now I say that he chose to go to certain places because I think that God follows patterns in the way that he does things from age to age. I do not mean that those patterns are irreversible and unchangeable. I think He works within the abilities and limits of the people that He calls out of this world. I do not think there is any doubt about that. But I think that many of us have been in the work long enough that we have been able to see the way Mr. Armstrong did things and now the way Mr. Tkach is doing them that there is a systematic approach to the way the gospel is preached.
(Recently there was a regional director's conference in in Pasadena and the opening address by Mr. Tkach was on this very subject. It was in turn followed by a presentation given by Mr. Salyer, who is Mr. Tkach's assistant in regard to the international aspects of the work. And at least quite pointedly in Mr. Salyer's address to the ministers he was showing the criteria that are used for determining where the work is going to go next and what it is going to do with the areas that it is already in. And so things are not done in a haphazard way. There is of course the leadership of God through Mr. Armstrong and now Mr. Tkach, but there is an awful lot of material that is given to Mr. Tkach (and of course before him Mr. Armstrong) by those who are out in the field, you see, the regional directors. They are giving him information that is, let us say, more subjective than what Pasadena has to work with where they are working with raw data. There are so many people, there are so many radio stations, there are so many television stations, there are so many outlets that The Plain Truth can be put out through. There are means of doing that, and they have raw data, but there are people who are on the scene, such as in Paris or in Antwerp or in Bonndorf or in Italy or in England, and they are giving information to Mr. Tkach based upon things that they have available at their fingertips. And so from that assortment of information then Mr. Tkach makes a judgment as to the direction that we are going to go.)
Well, sometimes we think that God's work is done by hocus pocus, and we look in, let us say, Acts 16, and we find that Paul had a dream in which he saw a man of Macedonia saying, "Come on over and help us." and that everything was done in that way, kind of magic-like. Well, undoubtedly, because there were, as far as we are able to see, it was not the systems developed in the New Testament church that we have today because we have the equipment to be able to do such a thing, that there was more of that.
However, if you follow the apostle Paul's life as it is presented in the book of Acts, he systematically went from one city to another, and there is very little indication that there were the kinds of things that we see there in Acts 16 where he is given a dream which he interprets that he is supposed to go over into Macedonia.
Now let us say that you had a dream that said, "Come on over to Europe," and you see this Macedonian man which you are able to tell maybe by the way he is dressed, the way that he looked, that he was a Macedonian and you are presented then with this idea when you wake up, well, I ought to go over into into Europe and I specifically ought to go into Macedonia. But what city should I go into? Now he could have gone into Thessalonica which was the capital of the province. He could have gone to Amphipolis, which was the capital of the district. But instead he chose to go to Philippi. Now why? There is no indication that the dream said he had to go there. That is where he chose to go though, which indicates that Paul was thinking about the direction that he was going to go. First I will go to the Philippi, and then I will go to Amphipolis, and then I will go to Thessalonica, and then I will go down to Corinth and on to Athens. And that is exactly the way he went.
Why did he go to Philippi? Well, there was probably some pretty good reasons why he went there rather than go to Athens, which we would think of as being the place I want to go first, that is the big urban center in Greece and this is the center of culture and education and science in that part of the world, and we ought to go there first. But instead it seems as though he went to what might appear to you and me by comparison is a backwater city. But it was not a backwater city at all, which I will explain in just a minute.
Philippi was located in Macedonia. It was about 10 miles from the Aegean Sea. It is not a seaport city even. And Philippi was not its original name. The original name was Krenides. Krenides means fountains or springs. Now evidently it was named such because there was an abundant supply of water in the area. It just came bubbling right out of the surface, and there were springs all around. Also it was, in its history, especially in the time that it was called Krenides, it was the center of gold and silver mining and as a result, it became a reasonably large commercial area because it would attract miners and the gold mines employed quite a number of people. They had money to spend and they spent it there in the nearest city of any size, and that happened to be Krenides.
Now Krenides became Philippi in 356 BC and it did so at the order of King Philip II of Macedon. And one of his main claims to fame was that he was the father of Alexander the Great. Philip was a pretty good king, administrator, or whatever on his own, and he enlarged the city considerably through a number of construction projects, and those construction projects increased the number of inhabitants within the city. Philip looked at the city, I think, with the eye of of a true visionary. But he saw things about it that might have escaped somebody who was not in the position that he was in. He had to be concerned about the military aspects and the political aspects, as well as the commercial aspects. Especially when you consider that he named the city after himself, he had some pretty big ideas about Philippi.
But why this particular city? Well, in 42 BC, which is quite a number of years later, almost 300 years later, there was a battle of major proportions that took place just to the west of Philippi between the forces of Octavian and Marc Antony on one side and Brutus and Cassius on the other. Now you might wonder why did this battle take place here, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. Well, it had something to do with Philip's choice of this particular city as being his namesake. When Philip looked over the area, he saw that this place was going to be of quite a bit of strategic value. It sits in an area in which it commands a very important valley, a valley that leads from the Aegean Sea north to where the city of Philippi was located and then bends to the west before opening up onto a plain. Philippi thus was in a position to command all of the traffic that moved through that valley.
Now the reason it became of such importance had to do with the Roman Empire. Because when Rome began expanding its might and its influence over the Mediterranean area, they began to build roads. Everybody who has gone to school in America knows about the Roman roads. Well, it might be said that about this period of time, 42 BC and for quite a period before and after that, that Philippi had become what we would call today the crossroads of the world. Because virtually all land traffic that moved between Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, Babylon, all that Mesopotamia area, and Rome had to pass through Philippi.
The road that the Romans built was named the Via Ignatia. Now that battle in 42 BC was largely over the control of that road and access to the immense commercial wealth, its military and political value, and whoever controlled that road was very likely to control the Roman Empire. And indeed that is what happened because Octavian and Marc Antony were victorious over Brutus and Cassius, and that battle pretty much sealed the fate of the direction that the Roman Empire was going to go in politically. Because until that time, there was sufficient reason to believe that perhaps Rome would continue with a more or less republican form of government, which is the kind that we have here in the United States. Or it would become an empire worshipping dictatorship, which is what occurred.
Now, shortly after the battle which Octavian and Marc Antony won, as a gesture to the city and to his soldiers, Octavian made the city a Roman military colony.
By 31 AD Octavian and Mark Antony had a falling out. And in the Battle of Actium Octavian defeated Marc Antony. And now Octavian, who became the man that you know as Augustus Caesar, then changed Philippi's status from just being a Roman military colony, he changed the name to Colony of Julia Philippensis. And then in 27 BC, he changed it to Colonia Augusta Julia Philippensis.
Now, the change in name marks a change in status. It is very important that you understand this because it has something to do with some of the things that Paul wrote in the book of Philippians. It makes it more understandable if you know this. Now this was not something that at that time was very lightly considered by the Romans. In other words, it was a step that was very seriously taken, that is, to name a city a Roman colony. Because it conferred upon that city a very great dignity.
Just to give you an example of Philippi's importance, Athens was not a Roman colony. Thessalonica was not a Roman colony. Amphipolis was not a Roman colony. They were very few and far between. They had to meet certain criteria in order to be named a Roman colony. Philippi was the only city in that area so designated by the emperor. Now normally these began in the way that Philippi began, that is, that they began as a military outpost. However, to you and me, a military outpost means something like Fort Kearney in Nebraska, or some fort that was way out in the wild west somewhere, an outpost on the frontiers of civilization, and there was nobody around but wild hooligans who attacked the fort every once in a while. They did not confer it on places like that.
Now as I mentioned, they usually began as places of military significance and they had a very well established pattern for doing it. If they decided to do that to a city, then what they would do is that they would send out Roman soldiers who were veterans whose enlistment was over. And usually it consisted of a party of about 300 men plus their wives and plus their children.
The first criteria would be that it was, first of all, a place that was of military significance. Now, concomitant to that, that is, something that was also part and parcel of that, was that it had to sit astride one of the main roads. Now I believe that Tarsus, which was the city that Paul came from, was also a Roman colony and it too sat astride the same road, the Villa Ignatia. Now the first responsibility of these 300 men sent out there with their wives and children, was to keep the peace.
Wherever there was a colony, there was Rome. Roman citizenship was a colony's dominating characteristic. Now as a result of being named a colony their government was autonomous. That is, it was not under the thumb of Rome, as were conquered cities. In other words, they pretty much operated independent of Rome. They were Romans and they were expected to behave like Romans. And so Rome pretty much left them alone.
Secondly, they had immunity from tribute. If a city like Philippi was named as a colony, not only did the Romans who were there not have to pay tribute to Rome, neither did the other citizens in the colony have to pay Rome. So they had autonomous government. They had immunity from tribute. And there was treatment as if they were actually living in Italy. The Roman language was spoken, Roman clothing and dress was worn, Roman customs were observed. The magistrates and all government officials had Roman titles. They carried out exactly the same ceremonies as if they were in Rome itself. They were stubbornly and unalterably Roman, and they would never dream of ever becoming assimilated within the culture they were surrounded by.
Please turn to Acts 16, verse 20. Here we have the story of Paul evangelizing Philippi and this is part and parcel of the story of the slave girl who was demon possessed and she went around shouting throughout the city that Paul was proclaiming the great God, and Paul did not like that disturbance being created by her ranting and raving, so he cast the demon out of her.
Acts 16:19-20 But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities. [Now, listen to what the charge is going to be.] And they brought them to the magistrates and said, "These men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city; and they teach customs which are not lawful for us, being Romans."
You see, they were not about to let somebody bring something strange into their city. The customs and practices and religion and language and everything had to be Roman. One time when I was in Columbia, I had an associate who was from Barbados. And he spoke with a rather clipped British accent. When he first came there, I asked him about it, because I did not know a great deal about Barbados. But he said, "Yes. We have the reputation of being more English than England." Well, that is kind of what happened here in these Roman colonies. They bent over backwards to make sure that they maintained the very highest standards of Rome that they possibly could. And so they probably outdid Rome in being Roman.
And so whenever the apostle came in there with something that was different from what they would normally expect in a Roman city, a Roman colony, why they reacted to it and it became the charge against the apostle Paul.
Let us go back to Philippians again, this time in Philippians 3, verse 20. All we have to do is interpret this just a very little bit, paraphrase it, and you will understand this verse a great deal more when we go through it. You will see what Paul was aiming at.
Philippians 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
What Paul was saying to the Christians was that they were colonists from heaven. Now a Roman colonist in a city like Philippi, never forgot in any environment that he was in that he was a Roman and what Paul was saying here is that neither should we Christians ever forget that we are Christians regardless of where we are. We have been sent out, as it were, to establish an outpost from heaven. And that is where our citizenship is, even as the Roman colonists' citizenship was in Rome.
Acts 16:12 [Luke says] And from there to Philippi, . . .
They went from Troas, which was where Paul had the vision. Troas is in the northwestern corner of what is today Turkey, and they shipped out from Troas after Paul had the vision, and they went to Neapolis, which was the port city for Philippi. Remember I said that Philippi was 10 miles inland and so its port city was Neapolis. But then they went to Philippi, and it says in verse 12,
Acts 16:12 . . . which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony.
Now you did not know that all that story was behind that little word. But you see, to Luke, it meant something. The first place that they went to in Europe was a colony. And because it was a colony, even though it was not the largest city in the area (the largest city in the area was Thessalonica and the largest city in Greece was Athens. Even Corinth was more important than Philippi), but God sent Paul to the city that was the crossroads of the world as far as where at that time east met west. West meaning Europe and east meaning Asia, or as we would say today, Asia Minor. And so because of its strategic, political, and military location, because it sat astride of the Via Ignatia and because it was a commercial center, even though it was not a super large one, it was the chief city in the area.
Acts 16:9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us."
There is some interesting, or at least one interesting speculation regarding this. How would Paul recognize that it was a Macedonian? Did they look so much different from others? Well, it is possible that that they did look enough different that he could tell that the man was a Macedonian. Maybe they wore some distinctive clothing that kind of set them apart from others. That is a possibility. But some have speculated that maybe this Macedonian was Luke. And that Luke was already known to Paul and it was already known to Paul that Luke was a Macedonian even though Luke was around Paul at this time already. I believe that Paul met him in Ephesus or somewhere even before that. But it would be somebody that would be immediately recognizable as a Macedonian, and if it was Luke (this is just a speculation), it would really give him impetus to recognize that this thing was from God and this is the direction that God wanted him to go in. Just a thought.
Acts 16:10 Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.
Notice it says "concluding." Paul thought it through and he decided that the vision that he had there was from God, and so he decided that that was the direction that he was to go in. Now there were a couple of other things that led up to that. In verses 6 and 7 it indicates that somehow or another Paul got a pretty clear indications that God was pointing him into a direction other than the one that he was traveling in. And then when God gave him the dream, Paul then knew that was the direction that he was to go in.
This was on Paul's second journey and the time was about 52 AD. Now, what kind of people did God call into His church out of Philippi? It is kind of interesting to look at the first several conversions that are mentioned here.
Acts 16:13 And on the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made; and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there.
That verse tells us something. Paul's normal modus operandi was to go to the local synagogue, and there he would normally be asked to speak. And when he spoke, he gave witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now he did not go to a synagogue here, and so the conclusion is there was no synagogue, and there was no synagogue because there were very few Jews. If there had been enough Jews, there would have been a synagogue.
That is the conclusion that was reached and so they went, then, to a place where prayer was wont to be made. He probably inquired around the city, was there any place where Jews tended to meet on the Sabbath? And people undoubtedly gave him directions, and he was taken to this place, which was probably a very pleasant location that afforded a bit of privacy and those people there could meet and pray and maybe talk some things over.
Acts 16:14 [There he met] a certain woman named Lydia. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God.
That phrase means that she was not necessarily a proselyte of the Jews, but certainly she sympathized with them and she was on her way to becoming a Jew, at least in religion. Paul spoke to her and she was converted and baptized.
There is more information there. First of all, her name Lydia. Now nobody is all that sure that is her real name. The reason why is because that is where she was from. Thyatira was a city in the province of Lydia. And it is highly likely that she was simply called the Lydian. Just as today we say, he is a Pennsylvanian or he is a Hoosier or he is a Corn Husker, it is very likely that she was called a Lydian. And it is not at all hard to extrapolate from that that Lydia became her name, at least in the city of Philippi.
In addition to that, "she was a seller of purple," it says. Now this indicates that she was a merchant and that she was a seller or a dealer in a material good that apparently, verse 14, she opened her house to them which indicates that she was of reasonable wealth. Enough for a woman to own a house and to have a household and apparently a number of servants. And so the indication is that she was very well off. In fact, in one commentary they called her very likely a merchant prince. Or should we say merchant princess? They said prince, but we will say merchant princess.
It is interesting as far as can we see that chronologically she was the first one baptized.
Now the next one is the slave girl. It does not say that she was converted and baptized but the implication is there that it was a strong possibility. At least she was brought in contact with the true church with Paul. And so we have the other end of the social and economic scale. A slave girl who had apparently no property of her own, being a slave she was completely at the beck and call of who whomever her owner was.
The third category begins in verse 25 where they were put in prison and they were brought into contact with the jailer. Now in a Roman colony, that man would have been a Roman and it is highly likely that he was a soldier. He was on a government stipend. That is, he was receiving a pension for his service in the army. And it is very likely that he would be what we would consider part of the solid, stable middle class.
So it is interesting, then, that we are dealing here not only with different nationalities, we have got Lydia who was a Thyatiran, she was a Lydian. We have the Roman in the jailer, and it is very likely that the slave girl was a Greek. So we have different nationalities and different social statuses, and I am sure that God put that in there. These were not the only early converts, but it showed that in the crossroads of the world, God was calling people out of all nations, and He was going to do something in the congregation there that men have never been able to do, and that is He was going to unify all these people into a loving family that was also a part of a nation. That is, the Kingdom of God.
Now also from the book itself, from Philippians, it is pretty easily seen that there was a bond, a friendship of loving concern, feelings of intimacy that existed between Paul and the Philippian church that was greater than any other congregation. There are some people that you just relate to better than others and there there is nothing wrong with that. The apostle John was pointed out as being the disciple whom Jesus loved. He loved the other ones, but there was a special bond of friendship and closeness, of intimacy, of feeling between them that was different from what He had for the others.
And so it was with the apostle Paul. There was something about his relationship with the Philippian congregation that was different from the relationships that he had with the others. Do you know that the words my joy or joy or rejoice appear in the book of Philippians more times than all of Paul's other writings combined? He just felt so good about that congregation. Now why? We will get to that in a little bit.
Why was this written? Number one, is that it was a letter of thanks for the many times that they helped him despite their persecutions and poorness. We could find out from other places that the Philippian church was not a church that was well off. And yet despite their poverty, they came to Paul's aid financially more than anybody. And it seemed as though they were always sending him gifts of one kind or another. Gifts of money, gifts of manpower to assist him and to serve him in the preaching of the gospel.
A second reason is a man named Epaphroditus. Now Epaphroditus carried their latest gift and he himself was a gift to Paul, that the congregation sent to Paul, apparently to be a personal servant to Paul. However, Epaphroditus became sick and there was fear, maybe in Epaphroditus' mind, perhaps also in Paul's mind, that because Epaphroditus was unable to carry out the responsibility that they sent him to Paul for that somehow or another those people might be offended at Epaphroditus, and think of him maybe as being a quitter. But he was not in any way and Paul hopes to get that across to those people.
A third reason was to give those people encouragement. That is, to support them in their trials. And they had a great number of trials.
A fourth reason (this will not come out until probably about the third chapter), and you might say that it might be the only negative thing in the entire book, and that is that there is an appeal for unity. There are two reasons for that. One, we are going to find that they were being bothered by Jews. Paul calls them a, I will not call it a foul name, but it is a very derogatory name. He calls them the concision, meaning the mutilated ones. And then the second reason, there was apparently a disagreement between two ladies in the congregation. And that those two ladies had managed somehow or another to cause people in the congregation to take up sides, one for the other. And although it was not a a bad split in any way, what there was of a split there was enough for Paul to encourage these people to get back together again and be unified.
Now, all in all, it is a very encouraging personal letter. I want to emphasize the word personal. It is a personal letter from a friend to his friend, and it was written from Rome. Now there are three possibilities regarding the location it was written from. But the strongest seems to be Rome.
There is a possibility that it was written about 59 AD whenever Paul was in prison in Caesarea. That is the least strong of the three. Remember, he went to Jerusalem and there he appealed to Rome. It was not from Jerusalem specifically that he appealed, but there was an uproar about him being in the city. He was taken by Lysias up to Caesarea and presented before Festus and Felix, and it was while he was before Felix that he appealed to Caesar and he was held there by Festus and Felix for two years.
What did he do during those two years? Some have speculated and looked at some of the information in the book as well as some of the information that is in the book of Acts, and they have concluded that there is a possibility that he wrote it from Caesarea while he was in prison. There is no doubt that Paul wrote it from prison. The matter is where.
The second possibility is that Paul was in Ephesus for three years, and he mentions in a couple of different places the difficulties that he had while he was there. In the letter to the Corinthians, he mentions how that he was before wild beasts in Ephesus. He undoubtedly had a great deal of trouble there. There is no solid indication though that he was ever in prison, but there is enough that is implied to make some think that during that three year period there is a possibility that is reasonably strong that he was.
Now the strongest of all, of course, is that he wrote it from his first imprisonment in Rome which would mean that he wrote it sometime between 60 and 62 AD. Nobody knows the exact date.
There are no theological arguments in the book of Philippians. That is why I say that it is a very encouraging personal letter from a friend to his friends. There are no theological arguments. There are no moral precepts that are stated. However, Paul does deal a great deal with attitudes which we shall see.
Philippians 1:1 Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and the deacons.
Just to set the record straight, Timothy is not a co-author with Paul. That is made clear in verse 3 where the first person singular is used.
Philippians 1:3 I thank my God, . . .
If Timothy was co-author, it would be we. In every context in which something like this appears, Paul always uses first person singular. And so Timothy was not co-author. But he is mentioned undoubtedly because 1), he was a well-known leader in the Christian church at that time. 2), he was present at the founding of the Philippian church. The apostle Paul took him with him from Troas over to Philippi when he began preaching there. You can see that in Acts 16:1-12. And Paul included him, very probably also because Timothy actually wrote the letter. That is, he was Paul's scribe. They call it his amanuensis. Paul dictated it and then Timothy put it into actual writing.
So Paul and Timothy, servants. Now this also is very important because it sets the tone for the rest of the letter. Here we are, only four words into the letter, and Paul is already setting the tone for the letter. He is not stressing his authority. If you go to other letters such as:
I Corinthians 1:1 Paul, called to be an apostle. . . .
See, right away he states his authority. Now, why do you think he did that? Anybody who knows anything about the book of I Corinthians knows that Paul was going to deal with problems. In Philippians, he is not dealing with problems, at least nothing that is very great. So what he is doing here in Philippians 1:1 is he is stating an equality with those to whom he is writing. He is making a personal appeal and emphasizing his submission and dependence to Jesus Christ. You see, that he is on the same level as they are in regard to this. They are all servants of Jesus Christ. And so he is showing himself there to be, then, in willing service to his master.
The rest of that, "to all the saints in Christ." The word saint is not a very good expression of the Greek word that it is translating. The Greek word there is hagios. It is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew kadosh or kadash and it is normally translated holy. Now the basic meaning of both words, virtually identical, it was translated holy but its basic meaning is "different." I mean, that is what it means in English, literally it means different or it means to be set apart. Now, this water is different because it is set apart for me. [the water on the podium] So it is holy in that sense, set apart for me.
I am going to show you a couple of places in the Old Testament where this word is used to illustrate what this word means, and then we will come back to the word saint. Now go back with me to Leviticus 21, verse 6, In my Bible (the New King James), it says at the top of chapter 21 as a subheading, the regulations for conduct of priests. So the subject here is the priesthood.
Leviticus 21:6 They shall be holy to their God.
What he was saying here he is that the priests were to be different from other men because of their special function they were going to perform for God. Now this water is special because it has a function that other glasses of water do not have. It functions as something for me. That is the way the priest is. He is different from other men in that he is in a special category, a function that he performs for God.
In chapter 20, verse 26 he is talking about the whole nation of Israel.
Leviticus 20:26 "And you shall be holy to Me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine."
That is what the word holy means, to be separated, different, set apart, separated you from the peoples, meaning the Gentiles, from the other nations. Now we see why the other nations were called Gentiles. They were not in the same category as the Israelites. The Israelites had a special function to perform, to be the example nation for God. They, just like the priesthood, had a special function within the nation to perform for God.
Chapter 27, verse 30. The subject here is the tithe.
Leviticus 27:30 And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or the fruit of the trees, is the Lord's. It is holy to the Lord.
Leviticus 27:32 And concerning the tithe of the herd or the flock, or whatever passes under the rod, the tenth one shall be holy to the Lord.
Here is a certain portion of money, one-tenth, that is different from other money. It is put into a separate category, set apart from the other monies that a person might earn. It is devoted to God.
Now back to Philippians 1. A saint then merely means someone who is different from other people. Even different from those who are part of the nation of Israel, which in itself is different, see, in the same way that the priesthood was different from other Israelites. But these people are different in Christ. You see, that is the basis of their difference. Now, what does that mean?
Well, here is a way to explain it. Being in Christ in this kind of a context is very similar to the way a bird is in the air or a fish is in the sea or roots of a tree are in the ground. That is, they are completely surrounded within that in which they move and have their being, in which they have their life.
Now what makes a Christian different is that he is always and in every situation, in every environment, he is conscious of the encircling presence of Christ. God puts it in other ways. We are part of His Body. We are within it, within this spiritual organism. And what that does is it gives us a special relationship to Jesus Christ. That is our difference. Our difference is the relationship. And because of that relationship, it then issues forth in a life that is supposed to be lived the way Christ lived His.
Now, what you need to ask yourself at this time would be, are you always aware of God being a part of your life? I mean, do you attribute what happens in your life to God? Not that He necessarily caused it but He certainly did permit it. Now it could be either. He certainly permits it. He may have caused it. Do you therefore then look to God as to what His will is? What is He trying to produce? What is He trying to teach you? See, what is He trying to tell you? What is He trying to correct? What is He trying to accomplish? Where am I to go from here? What is my reaction supposed to be? Am I looking for spiritual answers to the things that are occurring in my life?
If we are, maybe then we really are in Christ. And if we are, you see, then it is going to produce a life that is different from other people who are even in Israel. Now from that then issues the witness that God wants to be made before the world and from that issues the character that is going to enable us to be in the Kingdom of God. So it is very important.
"To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and the deacons." Now that indicates that in recognizing their authority, it indicates to you and me that the church was organized. It was not something that was just going along in confusion but rather something that was pretty highly organized. There were officers within the church, the bishops, meaning overseers or elders and the deacons, including deaconesses, who were responsible for much of the physical responsibilities.
Philippians 1:2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace and peace. This is a salutation that Paul uses very frequently. In fact, I believe that he used it in all in seven different epistles. Both of these are Greek words as they were written. Grace be to you was a typical Greek greeting to one another. On the other hand, whenever Jews came upon one another, they would say, peace. We say hello. Hi, how are you doing? Now, the Jew would not use necessarily, the Greek word. He would use the Hebrew word shalom.
What Paul did is, in the usage of this greeting he encompassed both the Greek approach and the Jewish approach in the same greeting. Charis, which is the Greek word that is used here, and shalom, only he wrote it in the Greek. The Greek word is eiríni. Now, with charis, the basic idea is joy, pleasure, beauty, charm, favor. Any one of those synonyms could have been used depending on the context in which the word was appearing.
Now, the Bible kind of put a little twist on the word charis, emphasizing the favor aspect, although one would have to understand that the other aspects of joy, pleasure, beauty, charm would also have to be included within that. But in one sense, what Paul was saying here is that since he was writing to saints was that God's calling had added a dimension to their life that was not humanly available. This grace was something that was not humanly available. This was something that came from God.
Eiríni can literally be translated into the English peace. However, it does not adequately describe what the word means. Because eiríini does not necessarily mean the absence of hostility. But rather, it indicates an inner assurance and tranquility regardless of the circumstances. In other words, you might be in the midst of a very difficult trial that might even be somewhat tumultuous, and you can still have eiríni. However, I have to add one more aspect to that, and that is that the word does carry with it the idea that its basis is in reconciliation. In other words, there is peace because of reconciliation.
Now what we have to interpret is with whom is the reconciliation? Well, the reconciliation has been made with God regardless of the kind of physical circumstance that one finds himself in. Because one is reconciled to God, he can therefore have tranquility and an inner peace and assurance that lets him know that things are going to work out all right. All things work together for good.
Philippians 1:3 I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.
Isn't that nice? I have been to enough congregations around the United States that I have warm memories of every one of them. But if I think a little bit, I can think about some things that are not so warm. And there have been disappointments as well. But we have to give Paul the benefit of the doubt here. He was not lying. He says, "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you." He had nothing but good feelings about that congregation. That is really something. He really felt as though he had a warm relationship with them and then what he is saying is that the cause of that was God. He had no regrets about anybody in that congregation.
Philippians 1:4-5 Always in every prayer of mine making requests for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.
These happy memories that he had of this congregation were reflected in his prayers. Now he tells us here what he was happy about. I do not mean this is everything that he was happy about, but certainly they were good things. The first thing that he mentions is "for your fellowship in the gospel." Remember a couple of months ago, we went through two sermons on the word communion or fellowship or participation. The word can be translated any one of those. So they were participating in the gospel. See, the word fellowship there indicates a two-sided relationship. If you have fellowship, it is not just with yourself, it indicates that it is with somebody else.
Let us chase this out just a little bit. Turn with me back to I Corinthians 1, verse 9, Here is one aspect of that participation or that fellowship or that communion.
I Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
That is one side of the relationship. Now as a result of that, then, we are brought into a fellowship, a communion, a participation in a spiritual family relationship. And the focus of that is Jesus Christ. He is the vortex around which the Family operates. So this relationship, then, is with other people, but it is through Jesus Christ.
The second aspect is in II Corinthians chapter 8.
II Corinthians 8:3 For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing, . . .
Guess who he is talking about here? Look at verse 1. The churches of Macedonia.
II Corinthians 8:2 That in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality.
They have given Paul another gift. And this is very interesting to go into this because Paul was very subtly, I mean a master psychologist, comparing the wealthy Corinthian church with the poor Philippians. And he was giving it to them in the ribs, you know. Look, there is that poor church up there, and they are giving me this rich gift. And here you folks are down here with all this money, and you have not come through with anything yet. Now the gift was not for him, it was part of that gift that he eventually took to the poor saints in Jerusalem.
Let us go on here. Imploring us, verse 3 again,
II Corinthians 8:3-4 For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing, imploring us with much urgency that we should receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints.
Now there is another aspect of our communion, of our fellowship, of our participation. We are sharing a common work or a labor, or a responsibility that in this context (the one in II Corinthians 8) was providing for the poor saints in Jerusalem. Now, at other times, that same principle is used in regard to the gospel, that we have a participation in the preaching of the gospel. In Galatians 2, verse 9, Paul had just met with Peter and James and John.
Galatians 2:9 And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
So there is fellowship or participation or communion in a work.
You see, there were two aspects then to this back in Philippians. He had a good feeling about them because of their fellowship in the gospel. 1), their relationship to Christ and the other brethren in a spiritual family relationship, and 2), their participation or their fellowship or their communion in the doing of a work, some of which had to do with preaching in the gospel, others of which had to do what we would call today the feeding of, or the taking care of, or providing for the flock.
Back to Philippians 1. We will go into verse 6 and maybe we will stop here at verse 6.
Philippians 1:6 Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Now if that is not encouraging, there is not an encouraging verse in the Bible. God finishes what He starts and He is able, as another verse says, to save us to the uttermost. Regardless of the difficulties of our situation, regardless of how weak we think we are, He is able to do the job.
The circumstance from which Paul drew this metaphor is really interesting. Believe it or not, this comes out of pagan animal sacrifices. You see the word "begun" is a technical word. Now we have all kinds of technical words that we use in our various professions. The medical profession is full of technical words. Engineering has technical words. There are even technical words that are associated with, let us say, craft type jobs. Whether a man is a carpenter or a welder or a machinist there are terms that those men use that are rarely used in any other kind of a circumstance except their job.
Now religion has its share of technical words too. And whenever anybody hears one of those words, they immediately apply it to religion. Like the word sacrament, or like the word communion. They may have other applications, but when you hear that word, it is a word that applies to religion. I can say to you the Days of Unleavened Bread. It is a technical term that applies to God's way of life, or Passover or Pentecost does not mean a thing anywhere else except to religion and to this way of life.
That word begun comes from a Greek word anarxasthai. Now what it describes is this. At the beginning of the pagan animal sacrifice all the participants were gathered together. The person who was making the sacrifice, the priest, any other onlookers, the animal that was going to be sacrificed, the fire, everything was there. And they had a set formula for beginning the ceremony and that is that there was always present a bowl of water. I guess what we would consider to be ordinary tap water, something that maybe for them came out of a spring or a well. There was ordinary tap water. And they had a torch, something that would burn. And they had, of course, the fire of the altar. But what the priest would do to begin the ceremony, he would take the torch and he would stick it into the fire of the altar. And then after it was burning quite well, he would take it down and he would plunge it into the water.
Of course that put the torch out, but the symbolism was that the fire of the altar purified the torch and then in turn the water was purified as the holy fire was put into the water. And the priest would take some of it in his hands and he would sprinkle it, first of all, on the victim, you see, the animal that was going to be sacrificed, and then also on the the person who was making the sacrifice, and those who were the onlookers.
So now they, because they had been touched by the holy water, they also were now in a special category. And the thought was that because they were now pure and holy, set apart, that they were now able to be heard by the gods. So then following the sprinkling of the water, there was a fairly long period of silence in which those who were at the altar were to make their petitions, their prayers before their god.
Well then, after that was done, there was a bowl of barley. And then the priest would take a handful of the barley berries and he would sprinkle them on the people again and also on the sacrifice, and then the animal was sacrificed. Well, they went through that ritual, and you see that was the beginning of the sacrifice.
I am going to tie this together with something else. This verse ties very closely with Romans 12, verses 1 and 2 where Paul is drawing on the same metaphor. The only difference is the application that he makes, or let us say, the emphasis. In Romans 12, verses 1 and 2 Paul appeals to us to be a living sacrifice before God. The only difference is that the emphasis there is on the person who is offering himself. In Philippians 1, verse 6 the emphasis is on what God does.
Philippians 1, verse 6—he is telling us that our responsibility (it is a reminder) in this whole process of salvation is to offer ourselves as a sacrifice, but God begins the process, and God will end the process. See, what He has begun by His calling, which in turn leads us into a life of sacrifice, He then supplies whatever we need through that and somehow pulls us through the offering of the sacrifice and we will complete it.
Now Paul does not go into the same detail with the completion as he does with the beginning of it. But the verb there where it says, "He who has begun a good work," that is, the starting of the offering of the sacrifice, "will complete it." Now when is it going to be completed? It will not be completed until the day of Jesus Christ. God will finish the sacrifice that He started. Now our part is to be a willing sacrifice. What God started, God will complete. But He wants us to be a willing sacrifice, and if we are, we will enable Him to complete it. Nothing will hold Him back. However, we do have to continue to offer ourselves.
There is a verse that I thought of here back in Isaiah chapter 1. We will finish with this.
Isaiah 1:16-20 [God says to] "Wash yourselves [that is part of our sacrifice], make yourselves clean [God gives us His truth, and He expects us to turn in His way.]; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together," says the Lord. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword"; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
What God has begun, He will complete if we are a willing living sacrifice. Nobody can hold back God except us. And the thing that will stop Him will be our unwillingness to yield to Him. We hold the trump card. But if we are willing, we will yield, He will finish what He began.
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