Philippians 4:10-23 – The Secret of Being Content in Any and Every Situation

Paul wraps up this letter to the beloved Philippians with thanksgiving for the generous gifts they’ve provided while he’s been in prison. He rejoices that they have an opportunity to help him, not because he needs their help, but for their sake. For Paul, he’s learned to be content in whatever the circumstances, something I’m still trying to learn. But he does share “the secret” of how we might do that:

¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

In a moment at his conversion, Paul went from being part of the most well respected and wealthy profession of his day, to an outcast, a wanted man who gave up all the benefits that could have been his by birth. Almost immediately he started proclaiming a risen Jewish Messiah that would cause him suffering most of us could not comprehend. Yet he is content regardless of the circumstance because as he said previously, for him to live is Christ and to die is gain. That is the secret! Which is, of course, no secret at all. If our contentment, our happiness, fulfillment, purpose, hope, meaning, identity, whatever, is ultimately in anything else at all, well, good luck with that! Christ relativizes all earthly pursuits because they are all a mist and fade away before we can blink, and he is forever. Plus he came back from the dead to tell us it’s all true! And he himself is our strength to do something that seems humanly impossible because we naturally want to make our circumstances the defining feature of our existence. They are not! He is!

Paul then writes about why he has such a special relationship with the Philippians. They alone among those early churches shared with him “in the matter of giving and receiving.” They sent him “aid again and again when he was in need.” And he was in need a lot. He’s now even receiving gifts maybe 10 years on in their relationship, having received gifts they sent delivered to Paul in prison from a brother named Epaphroditus. He tells them, “They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.” Our giving is always an important part of our relationship to God, and as he told us back in I Corinthians, God loves a cheerful giver. Our generosity is an indication that we don’t hold too tightly to the things of this world because, as he told us just a few verses back, our citizenship is in heaven. We can confidently and joyfully give because we give out of the bounty of God from whom we receive all things:

¹⁹ And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

Remember, it is our needs he supplies, not necessarily our wants. He often fulfills those as well, and according to Jesus he delights to do that as a father does for his child, but he will never leave us destitute and without hope as he meets our worldly needs.

He then gives his typical final greetings, and says something very interesting, a sign of incredible things to come for the spread of the Christian faith in the Empire and the world:

²² All the saints greet you, but especially those from Caesar’s household.

Even at that early date, despite all of the persecution and struggles, Christianity was making inroads into the greatest center of power in the ancient world. Less than 300 years later it would become the official religion of the Empire, something I think may have surprised the early Christians, or maybe not. If the gates of hell shall not prevail against Christ’s church, what’s a Roman empire.

 

Philippians 4:1-9 – Do Not Be Anxious About Anything . . . .

Paul has just stated that because the Lord Jesus Christ has the power to bring all things under his control, he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body. Then we get another one of his many therefores, this time affirming his affection for them he says, “that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.” We can stand firm in this life if we are rooted firmly in the certainty of the next. He then mentions two women, Euodia and Syntyche, and pleads with them to “agree with each other in the Lord.” What’s remarkable is not that he has to encourage two sinful people to get along, but that these women “have contended” at his side “in the cause of the gospel.” He also mentions a Clement, but Paul continued what Jesus started, letting women have a significant role in the ministry of the gospel, something absolutely unique in the ancient world. As we see elsewhere in his letters, men and women had distinct roles, but women were in no way second class citizens as they typically were at the time.

He then offers several commands and exhortations. The first command is the focus of our existence:

⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

The Greek for rejoice, chairó-χαίρω, means properly, to delight in God’s grace (“rejoice”) – literally, to experience God’s grace (favor), be conscious (glad) for His grace. The Christian life, and the Christian’s attitude, is not to be controlled by the demands of God’s law, the oughts and the shoulds, but the fact that God’s favor toward us is utterly unmerited, that is our gladness. Our rejoicing is in the Lord! Not in what we do for him, but what he has done for us, not law but gospel. Then we do what he tells us to do next, let our “gentleness be evident to all.” As much as we are to work and strive press on toward “the goal to win the prize,” he mentioned previously, we can live in the calm confidence toward others that we are right with God. Living in his grace toward us, we can live in grace toward others. It’s such a beautiful, life transforming reality that in fact does transform everything, something completely unique in a fallen world. Which is why 2,000 years later it continues to transform wherever it goes.

He then declares that, “The Lord is near.” Does he mean his return is immanent, or that he’s spiritually near to us as he always is? Maybe both? The first Christians thought Jesus was coming back at any time, but as we’ve seen throughout redemptive history, God is never in a hurry. In the last days, the church age, he is again taking his time so he can populate heaven, and the new heavens and earth. But one way or another, the Lord is always near, which leads to his next command/exhortation:

⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

This is one of the passages of Scripture I’ve memorized and known the longest, and one of the most elusive. It seems I’m always anxious about everything, not in the sense that I’m a wreck, but I’m far from having this peace of God Paul speaks of. The reason has to do with the nature of the word anxious Paul uses, merimnaó-μεριμνάω,  properly, drawn in opposite directions; “divided into parts” (A. T. Robertson); (figuratively) “to go to pieces” because pulled apart (in different directions), like the force exerted by sinful anxiety (worry). The solution to being pulled in all these different directions by life and it’s circumstances? He’s already told us: Rejoice in the Lord, always!

The most powerful thing about human beings is our imagination. As soon as we think or see a thing in our minds, our bodies react with powerful hormones, and our physiology is entirely changed. The challenge is not to allow our minds to be pulled in the opposite direction of the Lord, but to stay focused on him in prayer and thanksgiving. That is not easy in a fallen world among fallen people in a fallen body, which is why Paul commands us to do it! If it was easy he wouldn’t need to tell us to do it! First, since it is a command of God through the apostle, whenever we are anxious we should confess it for what it is, sin. Isaiah tells us that God will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is focused on God because he trusts in God. It’s simple: we have anxiety, we don’t trust in God, we trust in God, we don’t have anxiety. I’ve found as I get older my most often confessed sin is my lack of trust in God. Which tells me I have to work very much harder on giving thanks for everything, and then mind-blowing as it is, realize that God really does care about what I care about, and wants to be involved in every aspect of my little life. I don’t know about you, but I really want to know and experience this peace of God that is the only anecdote to anxiety, because it alone can guard my heart and mind, and only in Christ Jesus and all that means.

Then Paul gives us a recipe for achieving such peace in Christ:

⁸ Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Again, we have to be commanded or exhorted to think on such things because, sinners that we are, we tend to think the opposite! Fortunately, we live in an God created objective world where excellent and praiseworthy things exist, and it’s our job to logizomai-λογίζομαι them. I love the implications of this word, properly, compute, “take into account”; reckon (come to a “bottom-line”), i.e. reason to a logical conclusion (decision). We can see we get our word logic from it, and Paul is encouraging a rational thinking through all that is good in life which God has provided. Christianity is first a religion of the mind, of the understanding and comprehension. We need to seek out, focus on, and contemplate what Plato called The Good. I’m determined to get a whole lot better at it! And one day because of that I’d love to say with Paul how he ends this passage:

⁹ Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Quite a statement, that, and one worthy of every Christian aspiring to.

Philippians 3:12-21 – Our Citizenship is in Heaven, So We Press on Toward the Goal

Paul has told us that he considered everything from his previous life under the law as a Jewish Pharisee loss, mere loss for the sake of knowing Christ, sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so attain somehow the resurrection of the dead. He relates this specifically to the gospel, or a righteousness that comes by faith and not by law. He wants them to understand that this is a process, and not something we just receive; it’s an active faith:

¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Dying to self and living for Christ is not easy! It takes work, it takes striving to live out what we already are in him. The goal is attaining the resurrection of the dead, and on this side of eternity, of course, we haven’t attained it yet. The goal, however is already ours, by faith, a done deal as we are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, Paul says in Ephesians 1, guaranteeing what is to come. So what do we do? We diókó-διώκω, aggressively chase, like a hunter pursuing a catch (prize), we pursue with all haste (“chasing” after), earnestly desiring to overtake (apprehend). Too many Christians, needless to say, don’t διώκω, don’t strive in a manner worthy of the goal of their faith. For them, salvation is almost a one time thing, they believe in and trust Jesus, and they are saved, and, they think, me and God we’re good, now I can relax. Paul knows nothing of faith as intellectual assent to some offer of salvation, but a dynamic, striving, struggling faith that is a magnificent obsession. It should be what we think about all the time, inform all we do because as Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

But all of this striving and struggling, this pressing on, is not to earn anything. It’s an odd concept that we would seek to win a prize which is already ours, but that’s exactly what Paul declares. We strive to take hold of that for which Christ has already taken hold of us. When Jesus said, “It is finished” on the cross, that’s what he meant. His elect, his people, were at that moment already saved–signed, sealed, and delivered! This is what allows us, makes it possible, to forget what is behind, to not even remember it! All our failures, struggles, problems, none of it matters to Christ because he’s saved us from all of it. Remember what Paul said earlier, verse 9, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. You can’t get any more righteous than that! It also tells us something about the orientation of our Christian lives that it is heavenward, in Greek literally upward implying heaven. We are not to get stuck with our eyes in a downward position, on this world, this life, as if this was it, was what really mattered. It does, but only in relation to forever, to the heavenly, all of it about Christ!

He then says that all of those who are mature should have such a view of things, and live up to what they’ve already attained. A good picture of the mature Christian life is a constant fighting against the effects of the fall, pushing against the gravitational pull of sin. We strive up because the natural order of thing is down. He wants the Philippians to follow his example (another indication that serious Christian commitment is not just for the professionals), and live according to the pattern they were given. He then warns them in this context (it won’t be easy) that “many live as enemies of the cross of Christ,” and gives them a picture of the nature of such people:

¹⁹ Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.

I once heard a preacher who said this applied to Christians who are a little too fond of food, but that’s ridiculous. These people are enemies of Christ and his cross, they hate him, so they are destined for destruction. There is nothing Christian about them. They are proud of their shame (Romans 1 type sinners), and all about this life. The contrast to the followers of Christ could not be more stark:

²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

This raises some questions: Do we live like our citizenship is actually in heaven? It that where our mind is set, on heavenly things? Are we eagerly awaiting our Savior from there? To Paul that is the most logical and reasonable way to live because our Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s Messiah, has the power to “bring everything under his control.” In other words as I’ve said over and over again, Paul declares him to be Almighty God! And we can trust that will will take this rotting body we now inhabit, and transform it to be like his resurrected body, with flesh and bone, but spiritual, imperishable, immortal. That hope is indeed worth our all, our every effort, to live in a manner worthy of such a great salvation.

Philippians 2:19-3:11 – I Want to Know Christ . . . .

Paul switches gears a bit, and talks about his valuable co-workers in Christ, Timothy and Epaphroditus, before he gets back to exhortations and teaching. Timothy is like a son to Paul in his service of the gospel, and he wants send him to the Philippian church. He also wants to send Epaphrditus “back” to them, so he must have come from Philippi to be with Paul in Rome, and bring him their support. Paul is also confident that he himself “will come soon,” which possibly refers to chapter one when he’s talking about life and death, and remaining alive so he can be with them again. It is references like these in Paul’s letters that lead historians to believe that Paul was released after a couple years in prison before he was captured again after a period of time, and finally executed.

Paul then starts chapter 3 with the word “finally,” or literally, something that remains, and that is to “rejoice in the Lord.” This is the preface to a warning to

² Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. ³ For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh

To call someone a dog in the ancient world was most definitely not a compliment. Dogs were annoying and often dangerous scavengers, not cute, cuddly pets, and certainly not “man’s best friend.” In this context, they refer to those who are not God’s people because Jews often referred to Gentiles as dogs. He is referring to those Jewish Christians who insist that believers must be circumcised, or become Jews, to be true Christians. He wrote Galatians to address that directly and fully. The phrase translated “mutilators of the flesh” in Greek is literally “false circumcision,” the point being that circumcision no longer has an spiritual value so it is basically destroying the flesh. The true circumcision is of the Spirit, internal by the power of God, not external through obedience to the law, which is why he says we put no confidence in the flesh. Salvation is not something that can be earned, which is why he contrasts this with “Rejoice in the Lord.” It is the Lord alone who is our confidence, our joy, our exaltation, not what we do.

Speaking of confidence, Paul then says if anyone has reasons for such fleshly, external confidence, he certainly does. He then lists his Jewish bona fides, and says he now considers whatever might have been gains or benefits of that life loss for the sake of Christ. The contrast is law and gospel, and this is how he sums it all up:

⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

Paul’s gospel, the good news Christ picked him to bring to the Gentiles and to the world, cannot be stated any more clearly or succinctly. The reference to “lost all things” is specifically to that which supposedly earned him a right standing with God. Those things are refuse to him, and knowing Christ through the righteousness that comes from faith is now everything to him, and to us. Anytime we’re tempted to think God will accept us more based on what we do or don’t do, we need to think of this passage. We can’t be any more righteous before God than having the very righteousness of God which can only be had by trust in Christ! Then he pens these words familiar to many serious Christians:

¹⁰ I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

This ain’t no Sunday morning Christianity! And for Paul, this kind of passionate obsession for Christ wasn’t just for the religious professionals, the full-timers like him, but for every Christian. There also doesn’t appear to be much here (nor in any of Paul’s writings) about Christianity being about “our best life now.” This does not mean we don’t try to build the best life we can, only that that doesn’t define us. What does are these two verses, and that means participating in Christ’s sufferings, death, and resurrection. On the outside, the lives of the Christian and non-Christian may not appear to the casual observer all that different, but for the serious Christian everything they do is seen through the lens of these verses.

Reading this passage over and over again, I keep asking myself, what does this actually mean for my life, how I live, what I do and think, what’s important to me, and what is not. It’s hard to grasp as a mere human being what “the power of his resurrection” feels like, or what participating in his suffering and death looks like in my daily living. I know it has something to do with Christ telling his followers that they must take up their cross and follow him, denying themselves and losing their lives for his sake. Somehow self is sacrificed for obedience to God in service to others. In a much overused metaphor, the Christian life, yours and mine, is a Copernican revolution of learning and living everything revolving around God, and not us. Knowing Christ means being transformed from a life of Incurvatus in Se, being curved in on ourselves, to a life lived outward in love to God, ourselves, and others. In other words, Jesus’ life, suffering, death, and resurrection, not the law, makes obedience to the greatest commandments possible. We’ll see in the rest of the letter not by any means perfectly or fully, but our gaze is very long term, upon the final victory over death when we will finally be clothed with the imperishable and immortal.

Philippians 2:12-18 Work Out Your Salvation With Fear and Trembling Because . . . .

After Paul’s great declaration of the divinity and exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ, we get another of his many Therefore’s. Paul is nothing if not rigorously logical, and he is always fleshing out the practical implications of the great truths of the faith. As I’ve said, all theology is practical. He’s told us that Christ was obedient even unto death on a cross, so he implores the Philippians to themselves be obedient, and to

continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³ for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

This verse wonderfully captures how our responsibility in salvation is perfectly compatible with our confidence that it is God’s sovereign working that saves us. It would seem, though, that fear and trembling would contradict such confidence. How can we be confident and fearful at the same time?

First, notice that our salvation isn’t something we are in the process of gaining or earning; it is something we already have. Also notice that God is presently at work in us, so the issue isn’t our works versus God’s. His working is what drives our will and actions to want to work out the salvation he’s already given us. So fear and trembling is more akin to awe and amazement, like that which we experience witnessing a great thunderstorm. The power and magnificence, something that is inconceivable to mere human beings, takes our breath away. The same God who created the booming thunder and lightening, is the same God working in us to fulfill his, in Greek, good pleasure, properly, what seems good or beneficial to someone. In other words, God is having a good time sanctifying us; he enjoys it! You know why? Because it’s his work! He can’t fail! It is not up to us! Boy, that is such good news.

It follows that the working out (katergazomai-κατεργάζομαι) of our salvation is simply engaging what has already been accomplished, literally, “work down to the end-point,” i.e., to an exact, definite conclusion; bring to decisive finality (end-conclusion). The beginning, middle, and the end, or justification, sanctification, and glorification, were baked into the cake, as we know from Ephesians 1, before the world even began. Fear and trembling means we don’t take this for granted, means we take this salvation with the utmost seriousness as the precious, priceless gift it is. It took God’s own son’s obedience unto death on a cross to give it to us! And more practical implications flow from this:

¹⁴ Do everything without grumbling or arguing, ¹⁵ so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the universe ¹⁶ as you hold firmly to the word of life. 

Integral to this working out of our salvation is having a good attitude, being a pleasant person, a team player, not in it for our own selfish ambition, in Paul’s earlier words. No wonder Christianity transformed the world, and still does. It did and can do that because our self or circumstances (in other words pragmatism) isn’t the motivation, Christ is! Becoming “blameless and pure” doesn’t mean the good attitude allows us to became blameless and pure (we already are in Christ), but that we should fulfill what we already are. We’re children of the King, so we should act like it! And the difference in us should be obvious in a fallen world full of fallen people who are not children of the King, stars in the sky obvious. None of this can be done apart from the word of life, Christ himself, revealed in his word, our Bible, the Scripture, to which we must hold firm.

Paul is imploring them to live worthy of their calling so that he may “boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain.” Paul very much wanted to see the fruit of his labor, wanted to know he was making a real difference in real people’s lives. That I am writing this, and you are reading it 2,000(!) years later, is a testimony that he was fruitful indeed! He further tells them that even if he is “being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith,” that both he and they can rejoice. That phrase means a total surrender even unto death. Paul, as we know, did surrender his life for the gospel unto death, but his entire life, every moment of it, was poured out for the gospel. He could do that, as challenging and continually difficult as that was, because he knew it was true. His life is one of the great apologetics (defense) for the Christian faith, even as his work continues to bear fruit to the ends of the earth 2,000 years later.

Philippians 2:8-11 – Every Knee will Bow, and Every Tongue Confess

We got partway through Paul’s explanation of his exhortation to, “Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus.” He declared that Jesus was both pre-incarnate deity, and fully man. If that isn’t hard enough to wrap our minds around, he tells us something even more incomprehensible to pagan and Jew alike at the time:

⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

This is not incomprehensible to us today because the cross has been a ubiquitous part of Western culture for 2,000 years. We see crosses in and on churches, on the side of roads and on billboards, in cemeteries, and as jewelry. In the ancient world, by contrast, crucifixion and crosses where seen as so ghastly and horrible that it was rarely ever even mentioned. It so happens that I’m reading a small book called Crucifixion by Martin Hengel, and he says the educated classes saw crucifixion as “obscene.” To think that God would become a man and die that way was utter “madness.” Paul called it in Galatians 5 an offense, from the Greek word scandal. In I Corinthians he says the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Here he says it was the path of obedience for Christ, who humbled himself by submitting to the grossest humiliation possible, and that at the hand of those he created. That, my friends, was a tough sell, and in apologetic terms absolutely, positively, could not be made up. 

If God became a man and was obedient even to death on a cross, we can surely be obedient, period. The rationale for obedience to God in Christ is absolute because at the same time he saved us he gave us the ultimate example of it. If God could humble himself, and be debased in such a manner, we can at least attempt to love him and others as well. That’s why he said in verse 3, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,” and because Christianity isn’t about self-debasement, he adds, “not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Our own interests, what we care about, are perfectly valid and important, but in Christ self is now no longer all important, or even of first importance. 

The example Christ set for us is the ultimate rationale for love, but the example of obedience is not all Christ accomplished on the cross. Liberal Christians over the last two plus centuries have claimed that’s all the cross was about, the ultimate act of love, but the question must be asked: Why did Christ have to go to the cross? Certainly not to just be an example. The reason is why he was given his name, Jesus, to “save his people from their sins.” It could only be the ultimate display of love if it actually accomplished something, and that we call his substitutionary atonement. God through Isaiah 700 years before Christ tells us what that is (53):

⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.

The wages of sin is death, God told Adam, and not only physical death, but spiritual as well. Christ paid for both for each one of “his people.” The wrath of God was poured out on him for “our transgressions,” for “our iniquities.” Thus our alienation and estrangement from God our Creator has been transformed, and our relationship to him of shame and hate has become affection and love. We are no longer enemies, but children of the great King! This is why I believe with Calvin and the Reformed tradition that Christ didn’t merely make our salvation, the transformation of our relationship to God, possible on the cross, but actual. Does the verse from Isaiah only sound like a possibility? No!

Which brings us to another of Paul’s many Therefore’s. There is something cosmic going on in the universe of which we know next to nothing. By his obedience unto death on a cross, and his resurrection, God placed him in a position of cosmic authority above all things. Here is the way Paul puts it here:

⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

I’ve been familiar with these verses for over 40 years, but I don’t think until this moment I’ve ever asked the question: Why does Paul just use the name Jesus without Christ here? If you do a word search for Jesus in Paul’s letters, the vast majority of references are Jesus with Christ, or the Lord Jesus. He does use just Jesus at times, but I would expect in such a grand declaration as this, with such cosmic all encompassing ramifications, that Messiah or Christ, his office, who he in fact was, would be a natural for Paul to use here. I can only speculate, of course, but I’m always driven back to how and why Jesus was given his name, as I linked to above. By accomplishing (not trying) the saving of his people from their sins (individually and corporately), he was granted the ultimate authority in the universe and beyond. But as we see, the confession or acknowledgement is to the full declaration of his exalted title, Jesus Christ is Lord! 

When Paul uses the verb form “should bow,” in Greek it is the verb tense aorist subjunctive active. That’s important because what Paul is saying is that, “It is an action without history or continuation. A ‘pure form’. A definite outcome that will happen as a result of another stated action.” In other words, knees will bow! It will not be a choice. Rebellion will not be allowed. The King will reign, and due obeisance given. I will admit thinking of these verses in a less than charitable spirit over the years as I’ve witnessed the enemies of our Lord and Savior, Jesus, spew their hate for him and us, his redeemed, his children. And this is a fullest declaration Paul could make that Jesus is himself God. It gives me the chills when I realize Paul is quoting from Isaiah 45:

²³ By myself I have sworn,
    my mouth has uttered in all integrity
    a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow;
    by me every tongue will swear.
²⁴ They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone
    are deliverance and strength.’”
All who have raged against him
    will come to him and be put to shame.
²⁵ But all the descendants of Israel
    will find deliverance in the Lord
    and will make their boast in him.

Jesus is the God and Savior of Israel! And Us! His Church! How glorious and wonderful is it to bow the knee to him, now and forever. 

Philippians 2:1-7 – Christ’s Transformative Example: The Divine Becomes Human

Now we come to one of the more amazing passages in Paul’s writings, and one of the most revelatory in all of Scripture. We get a glimpse into the deep mystery of the God-man, Christ Jesus, the nature of his divinity and humanity, and why Christology has implications for how we as his followers live our lives. In other words, theology (or doctrine) is always practical. Paul implores his readers to be like minded, meaning embrace what he’s said to that point, and that it will make his joy complete if they have “the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.” We’ve read the same exhortation in Paul’s other letters, and what the consequences are for our lives as followers of Christ:

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

As I’ve said numerous times, such teaching was insanely revolutionary in the ancient world, and transformed it in due course into the modern world. There would never have been such a thing as philanthropy, for example, if there were no Christianity. The reason we are to do what is so unnatural to us (not being self-centered) is because of the rationale for us to do it: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” What made Christianity so radical and unique (and to most at the  time, incomprehensible) was that God was no longer asking us to do what he wasn’t willing to do, and hadn’t already done in Christ. The excuse that God can’t relate was now promptly blown out of the water. The truth is that we could never relate to the suffering he endured, and so all our travails are put in much bigger context where they can make some sense. Jesus became for us the ultimate example of the Christian life. He who implored his followers to take up their cross and follow him, took up an actual cross as our ultimate example of self-sacrifice. The cross, and the mercy, grace, and love displayed there, is central to every relationship the Christian has.

Some think that the verses 6-11 were a hymn sung by early Christians Paul found useful here, but that’s speculation. Whatever it’s origin, Paul made it Scripture, and what powerful revelation it is. Speaking of “this mind” of Christ, Paul says:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be grasped;
⁷ rather, he emptied himself
    taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.

Paul is saying without equivocation that Jesus is God. The Greek says, “Who in the form of God existing.” The word existing, huparchó-ὑπάρχω, is properly, already have (be in possession of); what exists, especially what pre-exists, i.e., is already under one’s discretion (note the prefix hypo). Which is why the NIV translates it being in very nature God. Paul is referring to Jesus as the pre-incarnate Son of God who existed as God prior to being incarnated, to being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the virgin Mary’s body, and born as any other human being. The Greek word form may sound familiar, morphé-μορφή, properly, form (outward expression) that embodies essential (inner) substance so that the form is in complete harmony with the inner essence. There can be no doubt, contrary to much critical scholarship over that last two centuries, that Jesus was recognized by the early church as fully divine and fully human.

As the church began to grasp the implications of who Jesus was, various heresies arose that would over emphasize one side of the divine-human equation or the other. Inevitably, the heretics could not accept what the human mind cannot comprehend, that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. The question was settled as orthodox doctrine at the council of Nicea in 325. The New Testament Church, it seems, was content to simply accept what was obvious without feeling the need to explain the unexplainable. The rise of heresies, however, eventually forced the church to try explain what is impossible to explain. The reason it was so complicated is found in the second part of verse 6 and verse 7; Jesus didn’t make it easy. In some sense and to some degree he laid aside his deity, emptied himself of it, and became a human being, and a servant human being at that. If anyone carefully reads through the gospels without preconceived notions of what they’ll find, just take the text and testimony of the writers at face value, it’s apparent Jesus displays both human and divine qualities. The divine, however, and what makes it believable as true history, is only exercised in the service of his redemptive mission. You’ll notice a realism of depiction in that the stories of miracles, including his resurrection, are told with great restraint, and nobody believes they can happen until they actually happen.

One of my favorite gospel stories of the cluelessness and incredulity of the disciples is when Jesus calms the wind and the sea after a storm overtakes them. They were terrified, and ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Well, that’s easy, God! Jesus, they observed, didn’t pray for the wind and the waves to be still, he commanded them to be still; big difference. We also see in that story the fully human Jesus. He was asleep in the boat in a storm because he was obviously exhausted from his teaching and ministry. You also see his humanity in the reaction people in his hometown had when he came back to teach and minister there: “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” They knew his brothers and sisters, so clearly for 30 years he was just another member of their small community, nothing at all apparently divine about him. The gospels depictions of both his humanity and divinity have a compelling verisimilitude about them; they read like real people confronting something that is unintelligible to them, that makes no sense. Which is exactly what you would expect if God became a man! These don’t read like myths and fairy tales, at all. We’ll see something even more inconceivable in the next verses, the cross, and what that ultimately means for the God-man, and us.

Philippians 1:20-24 – To Depart and Be With Christ: Better by Far

As I mentioned in my previous post, I needed another one to delve into a couple more things that I take away from this, one of the most amazing passages in Paul’s letters:

²⁰ I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹ For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²² If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³ I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴ but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.

I mentioned the implications for anthropology, or how we understand the nature of man (anthropos in Greek). What exactly are human beings? First, why is that question even important? Because our view of what humans are will determine how we treat them, and how we ought to treat them, including how we treat ourselves. It also includes how we view humanity in relationship to eternity, as Paul is doing here. If we’re merely a jumble of atoms, lucky direct, as I like to say, then that’s one thing. What Hitler, Stalin, and Mao did, killing a hundred million people, is no big deal, and certainly not morally wrong. Human beings would have no more value than, say, a spider, because we are just a different jumble of atoms, and that’s all. Any way you look at it, dirt is still dirt.

Christianity, by contrast, starts with the imago dei, man made in God’s image. That changes everything, gives man dignity and infinite worth. You mess with man, you are messing with God’s image in man. But the true nature of man is only adumbrated in the Old Testament; we don’t get the full picture until the new. Some Christians have a tripartite view of humanity, that that we are body, soul, and spirit, but Paul is very clear in this passage: there is Paul’s body, and there is Paul. The Christian view is dualistic; we are physical and spiritual beings. When the physical body dies, the spiritual soul lives on. The body is every bit us as is the soul, but we are not our bodies. This is why Paul can say that he can depart from his body and be with Christ, but that he needs to now stay in his body.

Since Christ, and Paul’s explanation of what his life and death means for the world, Christians have believed in something called the intermediate state, that time of our existence between our death and the resurrection of our bodies. When we die we don’t cease consciousness, but we continue to exist “with Christ.” Our souls, us, you and me, live without our bodies, until one day we are reunited with a resurrected, eternal body. To me the ultimate proof of this is the transfiguration, in which Jesus is visited by Moses and Elijah. Both men appeared from out of nowhere as who they are, were talking to Jesus, and disappeared just as quickly. When Moses died he didn’t cease to exist, he continued in what is obviously some type of spiritual body. Elijah, as we know, didn’t die, but was taken up to heaven, and he too had a spiritual body. So when Paul says he wants to depart and be with Christ, he means the moment he dies he is with Christ. So will we, and it will be better, by far!

Finally, why should we believe all this far fetched stuff? One reason: It’s true. Personally, there are a boat load of reasons I am convinced it’s true, even as I find it so hard to believe. I have faith because faith is trust based on adequate evidence, and to me the evidence is overwhelming. First I have to consider the alternatives. If this isn’t true, something else has to be, and none of the alternatives are the least bit compelling, not even a little bit. Atheist materialism is a joke, not to be taken seriously because it posits that everything came from nothing for no reason at all. As I said, a joke. Pantheism is no more compelling given we live in a world filled with persons, and it claims the universe, God, is ultimately impersonal. And if you study any of the Eastern religions even a little bit, you find speculation upon conjecture upon contradiction, all leading nowhere, literally. And neither of these alternatives has any explanation or answer for the problem of evil. It just is, deal with it.

The only other alternative is theism, and Christianity is the only theistic religion that claims a risen Savior come back from the dead to tell us what this whole mess is all about. Which brings me to the apologetic power of the Apostle Paul, and why I believe what he’s telling us in these verses is true, that when we die we, us, our souls, continue to live with Christ. He’s only echoing Jesus’ words in John 11:

²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, ²⁶ and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Yes! Especially because the guy who said it promptly went to a grave and brought a man back to life who had been dead for four days!

Paul was also the most unlikely convert in the history of Christianity, his story well known. That itself is evidence for the message’s veracity, but Paul also became well acquainted with the eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and he preached it from the very first days after his conversion, that Jesus was the Son of God. Again, if the message of the gospels and Acts is not true and accurate history, then it must have been made up. That’s what critics and skeptics insist, it’s myth, fiction, a fine story, but no more. The problem is that it’s harder for me to believe that, than to believe it’s true. Simply, people don’t die for what they know to be a lie. Were all the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the miraculous nature of it all, deluded. Again, it takes way more faith to believe that (for a myriad of reasons) than that it’s all true. No, I believe Paul, who did depart by losing his head, and is now with Christ, which is better by far.

Philippians 1:20-24 – To Live is Christ, and To Die is Gain

In my last post when I came to these verses where Paul discusses his death and dying, and I was too far along to address them in a way worthy of the issues and implications of what Paul is saying. It’s worthy of many posts, but I’ll try to keep it to one. He writes:

²⁰ I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹ For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²² If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³ I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴ but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.

Not many Christians facing death for the proclamation of their faith would look forward to it eagerly. Not that it was easy for Paul because, as he says, he trusts he would have sufficient courage when the time comes, as we know it did. It is also difficult to wrap our minds around the concept of Christ being exalted (to make or declare great) in our bodies by the death of our bodies. It’s easy to see ourselves exalting Christ while we’re alive, in our words and deeds, but death is, well, death. The end, seemingly so final. Possibly Paul is speaking of the manner in which we face death, that Christ will be exalted because we don’t face it like cowards, in abject fear. I’m reminded about a podcast I listened about the the Cold War, the rise of the Soviet Union, and the cold blooded murder of millions of Russian citizens by the thugs who ran the country. Almost all of the murderers who inevitably faced death in Joe Stalin’s Russia did so like cowards. The murderers never expected to be murdered, and facing what they thought was a God-less eternity scared the hell out of them, even as they were surely headed for hell.

Paul gives us the answer to facing death with some kind of equanimity: “to live is Christ and to die is gain.” If we will come to see and accept death as gain, we must know what to live is Christ means. That’s easy to know because it’s all over Paul’s letters, and the rest of Scripture. We’ll see what that is in the rest of the letter, but to live something means it is our everything, what we think about every waking moment. In the title of a book I once read, it’s a magnificent obsession. People become obsessed with all kinds of things in their lives, but rarely are they ultimate things. It seems to me if we compare our lives on earth to forever, forever is a lot longer, so it behooves us to consider the implications of what forever might be. It may even be something to become obsessed with. That doesn’t mean we become so heavenly minded we’re no earthly good, as the saying goes, because everything we do on earth has eternal, forever, implications. That’s terrifying, or exhilarating depending on our perspective. To live is Christ means we can live in the expectation of unfathomably great things to come once we exit from our rotting earthly body. Nobody can know what gain actually means, but the Apostle John gives us a hint:

³ And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

⁴ And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

⁵ And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

The prophet Isaiah gives us another glimpse:

⁶ On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
    a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
    the best of meats and the finest of wines.
⁷ On this mountain he will destroy
    the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
⁸     he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
    from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
    from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.

We know, trust, believe, have faith (we’ll see why in what must be another post), that in the long run at the resurrection we will have a body like what Paul describes in I Corinthians 15 as “imperishable” and “immortal.” We will inherit a body like Christ’s resurrected body, physical and spiritual, because as Paul says, Christ is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Whatever this body and existence will be like, it will be nothing like life in a body slowly rotting because of the effects of sin. We will still and always be finite creatures, but we will no longer be limited by and subject to a material sinful world. It will still be material, but no longer sinful. That is frankly inconceivable to me, but glorious to try to conceive. If anyone speaks about what eternal life will be like, it can only be conjecture and speculation. We know it will be something like this, but totally different. I often think of the phrase I once heard a pastor of ours use, the gravitational pull of sin. We will know and live a life, forever, without that gravitational pull constantly, ubiquitously, always weighing us down. What hope we have in Christ!

Since I’m passing 1,000 words, and have much more to say, I must continue my thoughts in another post. I will address two things specifically, what this passage tells us about a biblical anthropology (what is the makeup of man), and why we can have such confidence in believing what Paul is saying is true. I can’t wait!

Philippians 1:12-30 – The Prisoner Paul Advances the Gospel in Chains

Paul is in chains in Rome, and he sees that as a strategic advantage for the gospel. We read how that happened in Acts 28, that after he was arrested he appealed to Caesar because he was a Roman citizen. Paul was able to live in a rented house for two years with one guard watching him, and from there he wrote to the Philippians. It had become known throughout the palace guard, the palace inhabited by the emperor Nero, that he was in chains for Christ. It would take almost 300 years, but eventually an emperor in that palace would himself embrace Christ. That would have been unfathomable in AD 60, but such is the power of the gospel which Paul preached. And Paul’s chains encouraged other Christians, he says, “to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.” He admits that some preach the gospel with less than noble motives, but he doesn’t care as long as Christ is preached.

Paul also rejoices in a coming deliverance:

 ¹⁹ for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.

First, notice the Trinitarian implications of this sentence. I’ve said this over and over, but it’s important to affirm it for the credibility of the Christian message. Many biblical critics starting in the 18th century claimed the the early Christians didn’t believe that Jesus was divine, that he was the God-man. Even in that fraud of a book and movie of 2006, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown claims it wasn’t until the Council of Nicea in 325 that the church finally accepted that Christ was God. This was supposedly an evolving concept, but from the many statements in Paul’s letters like this, it is very clear that Christians understood that Jesus was no mere human being. They may not have worked out the relation of God the Father to God the Son to God the Holy Spirit, as if that could ever be understood, but they clearly proclaimed the Trinity by implication. Paul is appealing here to all three persons of the Trinity.

The word deliverance in Greek is where we get the word soteriology, sótéria-σωτηρία, (from 4982 /sṓzō, “to save, rescue”) – salvation, i.e., God’s rescue which delivers believers out of destruction and into His safety. It can be translated welfare, prosperity, deliverance, preservation, salvation, safety. Since scholars and historians believe Paul was released after a couple years in captivity before being imprisoned again and executed, maybe he had some notion from God that he would be delivered to continue to proclaim the gospel throughout Europe. But whether he was to be released or not, Paul knew his ultimate, eternal salvation was secure. That is why he says he will not be ashamed

but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹ For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²² If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³ I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.

Needless to say, but I’ll say it, in the age of masks, modern medicine, and health obsession, this is a very foreign way of looking at life. One could write an entire post, or many posts, on just these verses, which I think I’ll do. If I start digging in now, this post would be entirely too long. So I’ll briefly comment on his statement that staying in the body will mean “fruitful labor” for him.

From a purely human perspective, the entire spread of the gospel throughout the earth to our day is a result of Paul’s “fruitful labor.” That’s a lot of fruit! So even though he would prefer the gain of death and being with Christ, he believes it’s more necessary for them that he “remain in the body.” That means for them, “progress and joy in the faith,” and he is convinced he will be with them again. I’ve heard a lot of well-meaning Christians over the years criticize church growth movements, as if working, longing, and praying for a growing church are somehow less than pure motives for church leaders. I always wonder if such critics are actually envious, and use their criticism to justify their own lack of growth, or what Paul would call fruit. Some might see lack of growth as a result of their commitment to the purity of their doctrine, while others may see it as a rejection of marketing and American commercial culture. Whatever the motivation, we know how Jesus feels about trees that don’t bear fruit. From Peter’s first sermon after Pentecost when 3,000 were converted, the church has always been about growth, about being fruitful. As Luke says, “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Fruit is of course more than just numbers, but also the growth in the maturity of believers, as Paul always prays.