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INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS

We are fortunate in one thing in our study of Philippians – there are practically no critical problems involved, for no reputable New Testament critic has ever doubted its genuineness. We can accept Philippians as undoubtedly an authentic letter of Paul.

Philippi

When Paul chose a place in which to preach the gospel, he always did so with the eye of a strategist. He always chose one which was not only important in itself but was also the keypoint of a whole area. To this day, many of Paul’s preaching centres are still great road centres and railway junctions. Such was Philippi, which had at least three great claims to distinction.

(1) In the neighbourhood, there were gold and silver mines, which had been worked as far back as the time of the Phoenicians. It is true that, by the time of the Christian era, these mines had been exhausted; but they had made Philippi a great commercial centre of the ancient world.

(2) The city had been founded by Philip, father of Alexander the Great; and it is his name that it bears. It was founded on the site of an ancient city called Krēnidēs, a name which means the Wells or Fountains. Philip had founded Philippi in 368 BC because there was no more strategic site in all Europe. There is a range of hills which divides Europe from Asia, east from west; and at Philippi that chain of hills dips into a pass, so that the city commanded the road from Europe to Asia, since the road had to go through the pass. This was the reason that one of the great battles of history was fought at Philippi; for it was here that Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius, and thereby decided the future of the Roman Empire.

(3) Not very long after this, Philippi was raised to the status of a Roman colony. The Roman colonies were amazing institutions. They were not colonies in the sense of being outposts of civilization in unexplored parts of the world. They had begun by having a military significance. It was the custom of Rome to send out parties of veteran soldiers, who had served their time and been granted citizenship, to settle in strategic road centres. Usually, these parties consisted of 300 veterans with their wives and children. These colonies were the focal points of the great Roman road systems, which were so engineered that reinforcements could speedily be sent from one colony to another. They were founded to keep the peace and to command the strategic centres in Rome’s far-flung empire. At first they had been founded in Italy, but soon they were scattered throughout the whole empire, as the empire grew. In later days, the title of colony was given by the government to any city which it wished to honour for faithful service.

Wherever they were, these colonies were little fragments of Rome, and their pride in their Roman citizenship was their dominating characteristic. The Roman language was spoken; Roman-style clothes were worn; Roman customs were observed; their magistrates had Roman titles, and carried out the same ceremonies as were carried out in Rome itself. They were stubbornly and unalterably Roman and would never have dreamt of becoming assimilated to the people among whom they were set. We can hear the Roman pride breathing through the charge against Paul and Silas in Acts 16:20–1: ‘These men are Jews, and they are trying to teach and to introduce laws and customs which it is not right for us to observe – for we are Romans.’

‘You are a colony of heaven’ (Authorized Version), Paul wrote to the Philippian church (3:20). Just as the Roman colonists never forgot in any environment that they were Romans, so the Philippians must never forget in any society that they were Christians. Nowhere were people prouder of being Roman citizens than in these colonies; and Philippi was one such colony.

Paul and Philippi

It was on the second missionary journey, about the year AD 52, that Paul first came to Philippi. Urged on by the vision of the man of Macedonia with his appeal to come over and help them (cf. Acts 16:6–10), Paul had sailed from Alexandrian Troas in Asia Minor. He had landed at Neapolis in Europe, and made his way from there to Philippi.

The story of Paul’s stay in Philippi is told in Acts 16; and an interesting story it is. It centres round three people – Lydia, the seller of purple; the demented slave girl, used by her masters to tell fortunes; and the Roman jailer. It is an extraordinary cross-section of ancient life. These three people were of different nationalities. Lydia was from Asia, and her name may well be not a proper name at all but simply ‘the Lydian lady’. The slave girl was a native Greek. The jailer was a Roman citizen. The whole empire was being gathered into the Christian Church. But not only were these three individuals of different nationalities; they came from very different levels of society. Lydia was a dealer in purple, one of the most costly substances in the ancient world, and was the equivalent of a merchant prince. The girl was a slave and, therefore, in the eyes of the law not a person at all, but a living tool. The jailer was a Roman citizen, a member of the sturdy Roman middle class, from which the civil service was drawn. In these three, the top, the bottom and the middle of society are all represented. No chapter in the Bible shows so well the all-embracing faith which Jesus Christ brought to men and women.

Persecution

Paul had to leave Philippi after a storm of persecution and an illegal imprisonment. That persecution was inherited by the Philippian church. He tells them that they have shared in his imprisonment and in his defence of the gospel (1:7). He tells them not to fear their adversaries, for they are going through what he himself has gone through and is now enduring (1:28–30).

True Friendship

There had grown up between Paul and the Philippian church a bond of friendship closer than that which existed between him and any other church. It was his proud boast that he had never taken help from any individual or from any church, and that, with his own two hands, he had provided for his needs. It was from the Philippians alone that he had agreed to accept a gift. Soon after he left them and moved on to Thessalonica, they sent him a present (4:16). When he moved on and arrived in Corinth by way of Athens, once again they were the only ones who remembered him with their gifts (2 Corinthians 11:9). ‘My brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for,’ he calls them, ‘my joy and crown . . . in the Lord’ (4:1).

The Reasons for Writing the Letter

When Paul wrote this letter, he was in prison in Rome, and he wrote it with certain definite aims.

(1) It is a letter of thanks. The years have passed; it is now AD 63 or 64, and once again the Philippians have sent him a gift (4:10–11).

(2) It has to do with Epaphroditus. It seems that the Philippians had sent him not only as a bearer of their gift, but that he might stay with Paul and be his personal servant. But Epaphroditus had become ill. He was homesick, and he was worried because he knew that the people at home were worried about him. Paul sent him home; but he had the unhappy feeling that the people in Philippi might think of Epaphroditus as a quitter, so he goes out of his way to give him a testimonial: ‘Welcome him then in the Lord with all joy, and honour such people, because he came close to death for the work of Christ’ (2:29–30). There is something very moving in the sight of Paul, himself in prison and awaiting death, seeking to make things easier for Epaphroditus, when he was unexpectedly and unwillingly compelled to go home. Here is the height of Christian courtesy.

(3) It is a letter of encouragement to the Philippians in the trials which they are going through (1:28–30).

(4) It is an appeal for unity, from which rises the great passage which speaks of the selfless humility of Jesus Christ (2:1–11). In the church at Philippi, there were two women who had quarrelled and were endangering the peace (4:2); and there were false teachers who were seeking to lure the Philippians from the true path (3:2). This letter is an appeal to maintain the unity of the Church.

The Problem

It is at this point that the problem of Philippians arises. At 3:2, there is an extraordinary break in the letter. Up to 3:1, everything is serenity, and the letter seems to be drawing gently to its close; then without warning comes the outburst: ‘Beware of dogs; beware of the evil workers; beware of the mutilation of the flesh.’ There is no connection with what goes before. Further, 3:1 looks like the end. ‘Finally, my brothers and sisters,’ says Paul, ‘rejoice in the Lord’ – and, having said finally, he begins all over again! (That, of course, is not an unknown phenomenon in preaching.)

Because of this break, many scholars think that Philippians, as we possess it, is not one letter but two letters put together. They regard 3:2–4:3 as a letter of thanks and warning sent quite early after the arrival of Epaphroditus in Rome; and they regard 1:1–3:1 and 4:4–23 as a letter written a good deal later, and sent with Epaphroditus when he had to go home. That is perfectly possible. We know that Paul almost certainly did, in fact, write more than one letter to Philippi; for Polycarp, the second-century Bishop of Smyrna, in his letter to the Philippian church, says of him: ‘when he was absent he wrote letters to you’.

The Explanation

And yet it seems to us that there is no good reason for splitting this letter into two. The sudden break between 3:1 and 3:2 can be otherwise explained in one of two ways.

(1) As Paul was writing, fresh news may have come of trouble at Philippi; and there and then he may have interrupted his line of thought to deal with it.

(2) The simplest explanation is this. Philippians is a personal letter, and a personal letter is never logically ordered like the argument of a thesis. In such a letter, we put things down as they come into our heads; we chat on paper with our friends; and an association of ideas which may be clear enough to us may not be so obvious to anyone else. The sudden change of subject here is just the kind of thing which might occur in any such letter.

The Lovely Letter

For many of us, Philippians is the loveliest letter Paul ever wrote. It has been called by two titles. It has been called the Epistle of Excellent Things – and so indeed it is; and it has been called the Epistle of Joy. The words joy and rejoice are used again and again. ‘Rejoice,’ writes Paul, ‘again I will say rejoice’, even in prison directing the hearts of his friends – and ours – to the joy that no one can take from us.