This is a letter from Paul to the church in Philippi, a Roman city in Greece that Paul visited with Silas on his second missionary journey. This letter was written by Paul when he was in a Roman prison, very likely the last place he would be before his execution for being a Christian. It begins like many letters in that era:
“Paul and Timothy, servants [slaves] of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.”
Introduction: Letters in the first century began with the name of the sender, the name of the receiver, and a greeting. So does this one. But it deviates from simple names and contains some teaching.
After the initial identifying of who this letter is from (Paul and Timothy), we learn that it is “To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons.” God is taking the tools of the day, something as simple as letter writing, and using it to teach his people in Philippi.
Acts 16 records Paul’s time in Philippi. It is clear that God led him to that city. It was a Roman city, an important trade city between Rome and Asia and the Middle East.
There were very few Jewish people living in Philippi, so there was no Synagogue for Paul to preach in. He and Silas went down to the river and found Lydia, a purple cloth trader from Thyatira. Purple was a luxury worn only by the rich and powerful. Paul shared with her that Jesus is the Messiah and she and the members of her household were baptized right there at the river.
Things got ugly in Philippi when Paul cast a demon out of a slave girl. This girl’s demon apparently could predict the future and she made a lot of money for her owners. When the owners of this slave girl found out what Paul had done, they dragged him and Silas into the marketplace to face the authorities.
They were publicly stripped, severely beaten and flogged, and then thrown into a cold, dark prison.
That night, around midnight, Paul and Silas start singing hymns to God. Their joy did not depend on circumstances. They knew that God was good and God was in control of their lives even in the Philippian jail. And so they began, even in a dank musty prison, singing the praises of God.
Suddenly there was a miraculous earthquake which opened all of the prison doors. The jailor thought he had failed miserably and lost all his prisoners and was about to kill himself, saving his boss the trouble. Paul shouted, “Don’t hurt yourself. We’re here!”
The jailor knew that God was behind this. He knew that Paul was in jail for his religious teachings. So the jailor asked him, “What must I do to be saved?”
Paul told him the same thing he told everyone else, the same thing that is true for us today, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.” That night he and his family accepted Christ and were baptized.
Paul and Silas were released the next day from prison and told to leave the city and not come back. After a final meeting with the new converts at Lydia’s house, they left and continued their journey to preach Christ.
Now consider the kind of church they left behind. Lydia, a seller of purple, was a wealthy person who knew people in high places. She had a multi-national corporation operating in several large cities. She regularly interacted with some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the area.
Presumably the slave girl, after freed from her demon, accepted Christ. So in the same church as Lydia is this poor, formerly demon possessed slave girl.
And the third charter member is a Roman jailor. Probably a former Roman soldier, a tough, gruff man who works with the underbelly of society.
These are the saints of Philippi. Of course there were more by the time Paul wrote the letter from Rome. But these were the type of people who are called saints: rich and poor, slave and free, people from different nationalities, skin colors, various levels of education and importance.
What makes them saints is stated in verse 1: “To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi.” What makes them saints isn’t what they have done, but what Christ has done for them. Saints in the Bible are not people who are better than other people. They are people whose sin has been forgiven by Jesus and therefore are perfect in the sight of God.
This letter is to all the saints in the church - all of those people in the city of Philippi who believe in Jesus Christ. And it is God’s word for the saints in the twenty first century as well: all those who belong to Christ.
At the outset, we need to see that his is not a theological paper or a systematic theology, it isn’t cold and impersonal. In fact, it is a
I. A Personal Letter
It may strike you as odd that most of the New Testament is made up of letters. But the gospel is personal. It is God’s grace applied to specific people, to personal circumstances that need to be redeemed by God’s grace and power. The Good News of Jesus Christ isn’t intended to be read, it is intended to be heard, applied, and acted on. The Gospel is always addressed personally.
A. This personal letter is written to people who live in a city where Paul was beaten, humiliated, and thrown in prison. I’ll bet he didn’t have the greatest memories of Philippi. And the letter was written by Paul as he waited in a Roman Prison, probably in Rome, awaiting a trial that would eventually lead to his death sentence. The circumstances of this letter are not pleasant, but it is a
B. Call to Joy. In these first verses joy is mentioned. “I thank my God every time I remember you. I always pray with joy.”
1. This short letter contains the word joy more than any other book in the Bible. The theme of it is joy.
2. Phil 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
3. From a dark prison cell Paul can call fellow Christians to a life of joy because Christian joy does not depend on the immediate circumstances of life, but on the sure knowledge that God is in control.
4. Is Paul happy to be in prison? NO. He would rather be out preaching and teaching. Is he happy that the church in Philippi will be persecuted for their faith? NO. He would rather not have his friends suffer for their faith.
5. But he is joyful because he knows the truth: that in all things, the good and the bad, God’s will is being done, his plan is unfolding, and God will have the final victory, not Rome, not the pagans who will persecute the Christians.
C. As a personal letter, it addresses specific situations and problems within the church of Philippi. When we read these personal letters in the Bible we need to realize that we are reading someone else’s mail. It was intended for us by God. But we don’t know the whole story, we have to read between the lines a bit.
1. The church in Philippi seems to be one of the most healthy churches in the first century. This is a very encouraging, upbeat letter. However, there is one concern that Paul has for the church: their unity.
2. Apparently there were the beginnings of division in the church. We’ll look more at that situation in a few weeks. But at the very beginning of the letter, Paul lays the foundation for Christian unity:
3. Personal humility. Look how Paul refers to himself and Timothy: Servants of Christ Jesus. The word actually means slave, and some Bible translations use that word. The reason the NIV uses servant is because the first century institution of slavery was not as cruel as our perception of slavery. It wasn’t race based: people of all skin colors were slaves in the Roman Empire. It was a kinder, gentler form of slavery that we experienced in America.
a. However, the key characteristic of a slave remains unchanged: a slave is not his own master, cannot follow his will but rather the will of his master. he belongs to another and his life’s existence is to please that person.
b. Phil 1:21 “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
c. The reason he has joy is that he has totally surrendered his will, his life, his dying, to the Lord Jesus. And if he believes that God will use his time in prison to further the gospel, then he has joy.
d. Paul models the humility necessary to ensure unity in our relationships, in the church. “A slave of Christ Jesus”
e. Phil 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
4. He makes a point of honoring the elders/overseers/bishops and deacons in the greeting of the letter. But he calls himself and his partner in ministry slaves. In other letters, like Romans, he calls himself a slave of Christ but also mentions that he is an apostle, set apart for the gospel. In 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians he calls himself an apostle, claiming a title of honor in the early church. Not here. I think the reason for this departure from the expected title was to set the stage for the kind of attitude needed in the church for there to be a lasting unity with such a diversity of people.
This is a very upbeat letter. After the greeting, Paul launches into thanks: “3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,”
II. A Personal Partnership
The church in Philippi were Paul’s partners in ministry. The term partnership means more than just fellowship or sharing:
A. Partnership is a sustained sacrificial support
1. It is more than just feelings of appreciation and admiration, more than just prayers, it is practical, financial support. It is sending money to support missions in other cities, money to support churches that have less, it is sending people to Paul while he is in prison to help care for him.
2. A great example of partnership is what happened to us in Calcutta. We were met early in the morning by Subir (a local missionary pastor in Calcutta), and he spent the entire day showing us his schools and his church and his orphanage and his offices. At some point during the day, I wondered why this man who runs a school system with 1500 kids, an orphanage with 75 and pastors a church would spend an entire day with us. The answer was obvious: he was showing us what God was doing, hoping we would see the needs, and then praying that we would become partners. It worked: at the end of the day we emptied our pockets of rupees, added some US dollars we had along, and gave him enough money to feed the kids at his mobile school for street children until Roger could return with more funds. Our Sunday School raised enough money though it’s Quarters for Calcutta program to feed these kids for another 6 months. We are partners with a pastor in Calcutta doing a ministry that needs our partnership.
3. Here’s what Hank De Rooy wrote about that day (used without permission): “Subir knows what he’s doing. And we know that he is deliberately leading us. This, after all, is how it works: the leader prays to God for help, then addresses the agents through whom that help might come. This “not-so-subtle” subtlety works wonderfully well when all parties are committed to the same Lord, share a deep interest in His work, and listen for his Spirit’s leading. I’ve seen this done perhaps a dozen times on this journey. It’s a ‘game’ Christian brothers and sisters play know and love to play, aware that the Coach and Referee will benefit all players - those in need, those who plead, and those who give, and will make winners of everyone on his team!
4. It is sustained: through thick and thin: “whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me.” verse 7. They don’t just support Paul when he has a public speaking ministry. They are his supporters in prison as well - where he just sits around - and yet where God used Paul to write this letter.
a. Even when no one else supported Paul, they were his partners:
b. Phil 4:14-16 “Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. 15 Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; 16 for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid again and again when I was in need.”
c. Too often we support people who are successful (by the standards of the world - numerical success, financial success), and when they go through difficult times we pull support.
(1) You could make a case that supporting Subir is a waste of money - with perhaps a million street children in Calcutta he is reaching only 1500. But that isn’t how God defines success. Every one of those 1500 belong to God and are precious to him.
(2) I’m thinking of a misssionary family in Guinea, Africa. They are working with Muslim people who will be terribly persecuted if they accept Jesus. So they are a very resistant mission field. And yet, we need Christians on the front lines of Islam, telling them about salvation in Christ and about the one True God. They may never be numerically successful. But if they are faithful to their calling, we should be their faithful partners. Not just praying for them (and I am not belittling prayer!) but a real partnership that begins with prayer and ends with checks and letters of support.
B. It is evidence of true faith- these practical demonstrations of obedience is evidence of true faith, it gives us and other confidence that God is at work in my life!
1. Phil 4:16-17 “. . . you sent me aid again and again when I was in need. 17 Not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account.”
2. That passage is not talking about earning salvation
3. It’s talking about the fruit of salvation - if God is at work in your life, then there is goodness, righteousness, stored up in your account, credited, and it overflows in acts of kindness, in partnering in the ministry of the gospel
4. If I have truly experienced the joy of salvation, then I want others to have that same joy, that same relationship with God through Christ
5. So I support actively the ministry, I give ongoing financial, prayer, and personal support to the ministry of God to the world.
C. Yet it is God who works these good works in us and will carry them to completion
1. 6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
2. While the book of Philippians calls Christians to do good things for Christ, it also teaches that everything we do that is good is because of God working in us!
3. And he is faithful, he will carry it on to completion!
This opening passage also contains a personal prayer for the Christians . . .
III. A Personal Prayer
Verse 9 “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.”
A. An increase in love - they will know you are my disciples if you love one another - love is the litmus test for Christians. So his prayer is not that they are spared persecution, not that their church grows in numbers, not that they start more mission outreaches, but that they increase in love.
1. Out of an increase in love everything else will flow!
2. Not just any love, but Christ-like love.
B. The quality of that love: knowledge and discernment
1. “that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight”
2. Not just feelings of love, or commitments of love, but a deeper understanding of how to express that love in the world
3. so that they will be able to discern, to know, to choose, what is best.
4. Paul wants the best for the Christians in Philippi.
5. God wants the best for you! Love, deep love, understanding love, a love that connects us with our Maker and with those around us!
C. The end result is the glory and praise of God!
1. The mature Christian life, a life of love, always glorifies God.
2.
This is a personal letter to a church in place most of us will never go in a time none of us could ever visit. It isn’t a letter to us, first of all. But it is. It is God’s word to us. And God’s word is tailored to our specific needs and our life’s situations.
Conclusion Have you answered God’s letter to you?
It’s God’s will that you be one of his saints - whether you have more in common with rich Lydia, the seller of purple or a poor forgotten slave girl or the hard working jailor. God’s love is for everyone. His word is for you.
