Philippian Studies Part 8

[4] The _touton_ is slightly emphatic by position, for St Paul is about to speak of other persons also, himself and Epaphroditus.

[5] _egesamen_: I render the epistolary past by a present tense, which is the English idiom.

[6] So I render _apostolon_, to represent something of the _sacredness_ attaching by usage to the word. If I read aright, we have here an instance of gentle pleasantry, quite in harmony with the gravity of the Epistle at large. He takes the Philippians' message of love and gift of bounty as a sort of _gospel_ to himself, and so regards their messenger as a _missionary_ to him. So also with the word _leitourgos_: its usual a.s.sociations in New Testament Greek are sacred, or at least solemn; and so St Paul seems to employ it here.

Epaphroditus was no mere agent; he was a "_ministrant_," commissioned from a high quarter--the Philippians' love.

[7] _epeide epidothon en_: the epistolary past (_en_) is rendered in accordance with English idiom. _Epipothon_ is perhaps too _heavily_ rendered above; but the phrase is certainly a little stronger than _epepothei_ would have been.

[8] Perhaps it was an attack of Roman fever.

[9] _Ina me_ . . . _scho_: lit., "that I _may_ not." But the English idiom asks for "might." The Greek puts the past intention into what _was_ its present aspect.

[10] _Epempsa auton_: the epistolary aorist.

[11] Quite literally, "up to death he drew near." It is as if St Paul had been about to write, _mechri thanatou esthense_, and then varied the expression by writing _eggise_.

[12] _Paraboleusamenos te psyche_: so read, not _paraboleusamenos_ (which would mean, "taking evil counsel for his life," neglecting its interests). _Paraboleusamenos_ is a well-attested reading; the verb is not found elsewhere, but the form is abundantly likely. It would be developed from the adjective _parabolos_, "reckless," connected with the verb _paraballesthai_, "to cast a die."

[13] _Thoughts for Heart and Life_, by John Ker, D.D. (1888), p. 92.

[14] See Ep. i. _ad. Cor._, - 47: "Take up the Epistle of the blessed Paul, the Apostle. . . . He wrote to you in the Spirit (_pneumatikos_) about himself, and Cephas, and Apollos."

"One family we dwell in Him, One Church, above, beneath, Though now divided by the stream, The narrow stream of death.

"One army of the living G.o.d To His command we bow; Part of His host hath cross'd the flood, And part is crossing now."

C. WESLEY.

_JOY IN THE LORD AND ITS PRESERVING POWER: "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM"_

O Almighty G.o.d, whom truly to know is everlasting life; Grant us perfectly to know Thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the steps of Thy holy Apostles, we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect for St Philip and St James.

CHAPTER VIII

JOY IN THE LORD AND ITS PRESERVING POWER "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM"

PHILIPPIANS iii. 1-11

Doctrinal perils at Philippi--"Be glad in the Lord"--The true Israel--An ideal legalist--Position and experience--The spiritual power of holy joy--Acceptance and holiness--Atoning Cross and Risen Life

With the section just closed the Epistle reaches its middle point and already looks towards its end. We may lawfully think of St Paul as pausing here in his dictation; he returns to it after some considerable interval, with new topics, or rather with one important new topic, in his mind. Hitherto, if we have read him aright, we have seen him occupied, from one side or another, with the thought of Christian Unity at Philippi. That thought has been either explicitly developed, as in the close of the first chapter, and in the opening of the second, and again in the pa.s.sage embracing ii. 14-16; or it has been rather implied than expounded. The Apostle's a.s.surances of love and prayer have been often worded so as to suggest it. The grand pa.s.sage of doctrine, ii.

5-11, has been occasioned directly by it, and is made to bear immediately upon it; the Lord's wonderful self-abnegation (if the word may be tolerated) is revealed and a.s.serted there, not in an isolated way, but as it speaks to the believer of the spirit which should animate _him_, and which will preclude jealousies and separations as nothing else can. And even the paragraph where Timotheus and Epaphroditus are before us is tinged with the same feeling; what the Apostle says about both these dear friends is so said as _to unite_ the sympathies of the Philippians.

But he has more to speak of than this sacred call to union of spirit and of life in Christ. We gather that Epaphroditus, talking over the condition of the Mission with his leader, had alluded to the presence there of serious doctrinal perils, which must ultimately affect Christian holiness. That ubiquitous difficulty, the propaganda of anti-Pauline Christian Judaism, had come on the scene, or was just coming. The teachers who affirmed, or insinuated, that Jesus Christ could be reached only through the ceremonial law, were now to be reckoned with. The converts were disturbed, or soon might be disturbed, by being told that proselytism to Moses, sealed by circ.u.mcision, was a _sine qua non_ in order to a valid hope of salvation through the Gospel; that the man awakened from his paganism must be at least something of a Jew to be anything of a Christian; that the door was _not_ absolutely open between the sinner's soul and the Saviour, to be pa.s.sed through by the one step of a living trust in the Promise.

Let us remember that a.s.sertions like these, which to Christians now may seem obviously futile, by no means necessarily seemed so then. Then, much more than now, pagan enquirers after JESUS would be sure to be conscious that the true salvation offered was, in one sense, emphatically a Jewish salvation. It was the message which told of the life and death, the person and work, of One who _was_, "after the flesh," a Jew. It was the announcement that the long hope of _Israel_ was fulfilled in Him. Its terminology was full of words and ideas altogether Jewish. And its messengers--above all, for the Philippians, St Paul--were Jews, of unmistakable nationality, training, and (doubtless) appearance. On a first view, on a hasty and shallow view certainly, it may have seemed a quite natural incident in such a message when some of its propagandists a.s.serted that to reach this Hebrew Deliverer and King the enquirer must form a connexion in religion which should be definitely Hebrew.

It is conceivable that even yet, in the history of the Church, this phase of error may in some form a.s.sert itself again. We look in the future, it may be in the near future, for the keeping to the old Israel of promises which have never been revoked. We believe that Rom. xi.

shall yet find its fulfilment, and that the "receiving of them again shall be life from the dead" to the world. In that great period of blessing, the work of missions may (shall we not say, probably will?) be very largely taken up by Hebrew Christians. And if any of these, like some of their predecessors of the first age, should have only a distorted view of the Gospel of Christ, their intense national character may tell not a little on the form of their message. But this is by the way. All that is really before us here is the fact that--not the open hostility of unconverted Jews but--the sidelong counter-action of Judaistic Christians was threatening Philippi, and must be met by the Apostle.

Nor was this, if we explain rightly the close of ch. iii., the only such danger in the air. The antinomian traitor was also within the gates. There were those who could a.s.sert that the Gospel, the Pauline Gospel, the wonderful message of Justification by Faith only, and of a life lived in the Spirit as its sequel, was the very truth they held and rejoiced in; but they taught it so as to reason from it that practical holiness did not matter; the justified, the accepted, the man of the Spirit, lived in a transcendental religious region; he was not to be bound in conduct by common rules. Was he not in grace? And was not grace the ant.i.thesis of works? Was not grace, before everything else, the condonation of sin? And the more it did that work, was it not the more glorious? "Shall we not continue in sin then, that grace may abound?" What does it signify, though the perishable and burthensome body defiles itself? The emanc.i.p.ated spirit of the "spiritual" man lives on another plane; the sensual and the mystical elements may approach, may run parallel, but can never meet. The body may sin; the spirit must be pure--if only the man is in grace.

Such a.s.suredly were some of the conditions of error and evil to be considered when on that far-off day, in his Roman chamber, St Paul turned his soul again to Philippi, and asked his scribe to write.

There is a solemn comfort in the thought. In our days of trial, when again and again it is as it "the foundations were destroyed," it is something to remember the awful mental and moral trials of the apostolic age. It was indeed an "age of faith"; but, as the other side of that very fact, it was an age of clouds and darkness, from the point not of "faith" but of "sight." It had a glorious answer to the tremendous questions that beset it. But that answer was not human reasoning, or material successes; it was the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is for us to-day.

But now St Paul is at work; let us listen, and we shall hear how promptly he brings that answer to bear in his letter to Philippi.[1]

Ver. 1. For the rest (_to loipon_), my brethren, to turn now to another topic, as I draw towards an end, let me give you this comprehensive watchword +Be glad in the Lord+.[2] +To write the same things to you+, to reiterate that one thought, that CHRIST is our glory and our joy, "+to me not irksome, it is safe for you+."[3] Safe, because there are spiritual dangers around you from which this will be the best preservative; false teachings which can only be fully met with the gladness of the truth of Christ. +Beware of+,

Ver. 2. keep your eyes open upon (_blepete_), +the "dogs,"+ the men who would _excommunicate_ all who hold not with their half-Christian Pharisaism and its legal burthens, but who are themselves thus self-excluded from the covenant blessing. +Beware of the evil workmen+, the teachers whose watchword is "works, works, works," a weary round of observances and would-be merits, but who are sorry _work-men_ indeed, spoiling the whole structure of "Heaven's easy, artless, unenc.u.mber'd plan." +Beware of the concision+, the apostles of a mere physical wounding, which, as enjoined according to their principles, is nothing better than a mutilation (_katatome_), a parody of what circ.u.mcision was meant to be, as the sacrament of a preparatory dispensation now terminated in its

Ver. 3. fulfilment. +For+ not they but +we are the circ.u.mcision+, the true Israel of the true covenant, sealed and purified by our G.o.d; +we who by G.o.d's Spirit wors.h.i.+p+,[4] doing priestly service in a spiritual temple[5] in a life, love, and power, which is ours by the presence in us of the Holy Ghost, the promise of the Father; +and who exult+, not in tribal, national, ceremonial prerogatives, but +in Christ Jesus+, our refuge and our crown, our righteousness and glory, with an exultation infinitely warmer than the legalist's can be, and meanwhile pure, for its source is altogether not ourselves; +and who+, in Him, +not in the flesh+,[6] not in self and its workings, +are confident+ (for confident we are, but it is a "confidence in self-despair," the confidence of those who have been driven by self-discovery to Christ alone).[7] I speak with a general reference, of all true disciples; but let me instance myself as a case peculiarly in point. I speak thus,

Ver. 4. +though having+ (_echon_), I, myself (_ego_), from _their_ view-point, +confidence even in flesh+. +Whoever else thinks of confiding in flesh+, of building a legal standing-place on his privilege and merit, +I+ may do so +more+ than he; for I have reached the _ne plus ultra_ in that

Ver. 5. direction. +As for circ.u.mcision+,[8] I was an +eight-day+ child; no proselyte, operated upon in later life, but a son of the Covenant; descended +from Israel's race+, one of the progeny of him who was a prince with G.o.d (Gen. x.x.xii. 28); +of Benjamin's tribe+, the tribe which gave the first G.o.d-chosen king to the nation, and which remained "faithful among the faithless" to the house of David at a later day; +Hebrew+ offspring +of Hebrew ancestors+,[9] child of a home in which, immemorially, the old manners and the old speech were cherished; _in respect of the law,[10] a Pharisee_--the votary of religious precision, elaborate devotion, exclusive privilege, and energetic prose-

Ver. 6, lytism; +in respect of zeal+, intense and perfectly sincere, +persecuting the Church; in respect of the righteousness which+ resides +in the Law+, as its terms are understood by the Pharisee, +found+ (_genomenos_) +blameless+.[11] Such was my position. I possessed an ideal pedigree; full sacramental position from the first; domestic traditions pure and strict; an absolute personal devotion to the cause of my creed; the most rigorous observance of its rules; the most energetic

Ver. 7. efforts to maintain and extend its power. +But the kind of things which+ (_hatina_) +I felt+ (_moi en_) so many _gains,[12] these things I have come to consider_ (_hegemai_, perfect), +because of our+ (_ton_) +Christ+ (discovered at last in His glory, as the slain and risen Jesus), just one +loss+, one +deprivation+; not merely a worthless thing, but a ruinous one; a robbery of the true Blessing

Ver. 8. from my soul. +Aye more, I actually+ (_kai_) now +consider all things+, from all points of view, all possessions, all ambitions, +to be+ similarly +loss+, deprivation, +because of the surpa.s.singness of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord+, because of the immeasurable betterness of a spirit-sight of what HE is, in Himself, and as my own; +because of whom+--on account of what He now was to me--+I suffered deprivation+ (_exemiothen_) +of my all+ (_ta panta_), in the crisis of my change; +and I consider it+ only +refuse+,[13] rubbish, that +I may gain+[14] (in a blessed exchange of profit against loss, the loss of what I thought my "gains") +Christ+, nothing less than HIM, my boundless Wealth (_ploutos_

Ver. 9. _anexichniaston_, Eph. iii. 8), +and be found+, at any and every "time of finding" (Ps. x.x.xii. 7, Heb.) by the Holy One, +in Him+, one with Him, in His precious merits and in His risen life, but now especially in His merits; +not having a righteousness of my own, that derived from the Law+, a t.i.tle to acceptance drawn from my own supposed perfect correspondence to the Law, +but that which+ comes +through faith in[15] Christ+, through reliance wholly reposed in Him, +the righteousness which is derived+ not from the Law but +from G.o.d+, coming wholly out of His uncaused and sacred mercy, +on terms of our (_te_) faith+, conditioned[15]

Ver. 10. to us by simply our accepting reliance; +in order to know Him+, HIM, my Lord, with an intuition possible only to the soul which accepts Him for its All; +and the power of His Resurrection+, as that Resurrection a.s.sures His people of their justification (Rom. iv. 24, 25), and of their coming glory (1 Cor. xv. 20), and yet more as He, by His life-giving Spirit, shed forth from Him the risen Head, lives His "indissoluble life" (Heb. vii. 16) in His members; and +the partners.h.i.+p of His sufferings+, that deep experience of union with Him which comes through daily "taking up the cross," in His steps, for His sake, and in His strength; growing into conformity (_summorthi-xomenos_, a present participle) +with His Death+, drawn evermore into spiritual harmony with Him who wrought my salvation out by an ineffable surrender

Ver. 11. of Himself to suffer; if +somehow I may arrive+, along the appointed path of the believer's obedience, +at the resurrection which is out from the dead+ (_ten exanastasin ten ex nekron_: so read); "that blessed hope" for all who sleep in Him, when their whole existence, redeemed and perfected, shall leave the world of "the dead" behind for ever.

Here is a piece of consecutive rendering and paraphrase longer than usual. And meanwhile the pa.s.sage before us is one of extraordinary fulness and richness, alike in its record of experience and its teaching of eternal truths. But it seemed impossible to break into fragments the glorious wholeness of the Apostle's thought and utterance. And then, the utterance is so rich, so detailed, so explanatory of itself, that I could not but feel that, for very much of it at least, my best commentary was the closest rendering I could offer, with a few brief suggestions by the way.

Drawing now to a close, I can only indicate, under one or two headings, some main messages to the mind and soul.

i. I gather from the connexion of the pa.s.sage, as we have traced it, the supreme importance of a true joy in the Lord, a true personal sight of "the King in His beauty," in order to our spiritual orthodoxy. Let me quote again from the Prayer Book of the Moravians, from which I gave one short extract in the last chapter. In their "Church Litany," among the first suffrages, occur these pet.i.tions: "_From coldness to Thy merits and death. From error and misunderstanding, From the loss of our glory in Thee, Preserve us, gracious Lord and G.o.d._" The words are the very soul of St Paul, as it conveys the Spirit's oracle to us here.