In this assembly all the saints at Philippi are addressed, with the bishops and deacons; these, we have seen, are not even alluded to in Corinthians, where the God of order was correcting the disorders which abounded. The gifted persons were powerless to correct it, possessing their gifts apart from communion with the divine Giver. Still it was God’s assembly at Corinth, and the saints, simply as such, are in view. All were in the house of God—the “sanctified in Christ Jesus” alone, members of His body. Of such exclusively is composed the assembly which Christ builds (Matt. 16), for the assembly is looked at in more than one aspect in Scripture.
With all that call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place {1 Cor. 1:11Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, (1 Corinthians 1:1)} includes the whole professing church. As we have seen, all was disorder at Corinth, and there was none to help. Bishops are not mentioned, and the gifted persons out of communion with the mind of God. The result was that they—the saints—became more immediately the object of the care of God Himself. The assembly was God’s assembly, they were God’s building, God’s husbandry; and Paul, as one of God’s workmen, His messenger to them.
If overseers or deacons had failed or were absent, could God become the servant of His own ordinances? And the apostle, not searching out iniquities, but earnestly desiring to recognize any good thing amongst them, tells them that he thanks God always for the grace of God given to them in Christ, in that they had been enriched in Him in all word of doctrine and in all knowledge.
But how cold, and unlike the opening of the address to the Philippians! The uniting power of a common interest in the work, and of joint participation in the sufferings and conflicts of the gospel, which, in a beautiful way, he speaks of as a person, was wanting at Corinth. It was a poor substitute for what he found at Philippi, to talk of gifts and gifted men. The gifts were still there; but the connection between the streams and the fountain hardly manifest.
But to proceed with our chapter. “I thank my God for my whole remembrance of you.” Not a break nor a gap from the beginning to the present hour, not a supplication to God in which their names were omitted, and this with accompanying joy. The ground of it, their fellowship, not here with Paul, but with the gospel itself, suffering evil with it, according to the power of God, not ashamed of the testimony of their Lord. But his joy in those saints was not limited to the remembrance of their ways from the first day: his thoughts about them ran on into the future, even unto the day of Jesus Christ—the day of glory, with boundless confidence in Him who had begun the good work in them, that He would complete it unto that day. But this confidence in God respecting them was united in Paul with a conviction as to their spiritual condition, founded upon their attitude both towards the gospel and towards himself, so that it was only a right thing in him to feel this. With what delicacy and grace; both of the Spirit surely, he tells them of his feelings towards them. They had Paul in their hearts, and in his bonds and the defense of the gospel shared the grace given to him.
What uniting bonds were these! He loved them with the affections of Jesus Christ Himself. “Ye have me in your heart”; they were linked up with him in the maintenance of the truth, the object one, the conflict one. If a man is “feeding” on the “bread” of the “mighty,” he becomes “single-minded” and single-hearted, and deeply happy. Paul was the channel through which God was feeding them with this bread. “That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.” There was the true bread of the mighty! It was in Christ these blessed affections were realized.
Surely these few verses unfold a scene of remarkable moral beauty, “the bond of perfectness” binding together in blessed affections (the bowels of Jesus Christ, as he calls it) the apostle and the beloved Philippians.
But this longing after them in the bowels of Jesus Christ tells itself out in more than words. He prays that the love already in them may abound yet more and more; no measure here, for it was really divine love, though he calls it theirs—“the love of God shed abroad in the heart,” but with special characteristics, full knowledge and all intelligence. What a glorious thought! love for ever growing, both in itself and in full knowledge and intelligence. Whence such thoughts as these? Ah! we need not say whence, but how? Jesus Himself was filling his heart, and coming out through this channel to theirs. And Paul was thinking of Him in this passage, not as at the right hand, but as in His own day; the day of glory and of power come; and of the Philippians being pure and without offence for that day. Compare 1 Thess. 3:12, 1312And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: 13To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. (1 Thessalonians 3:12‑13), “In order to the confirming your hearts unblamable in holiness . . . at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”
Paul has evidently left the old things behind; the subject here is toil and suffering, laboring amongst and against adversaries, and suffering. for and with Christ in view of the day of manifested glory. A great part of our deplorable weakness flows from this, that what that day of glory means for Him and for us, is practically lost for the hearts and minds of so many of His people. He comes with all His saints into the scene of His glory and theirs: the creature is expecting the revelation of the sons of God, when He is revealed they are revealed with Him. It is in view of this glorious day that the saints suffer for and with Christ in spirit: these sufferings and glories cannot be separated “If we suffer we shall reign” (not live).
In none of these passages have we the standing of believers in Christ, no sitting in heavenly places, but the responsibility of pilgrims in the wilderness, in view of salvation through and out of it at the end.
In another aspect, in connection with the work finished on the cross, they were already saved. Forgiven, justified, accepted, and united by the Spirit to Christ glorified, they were fit for sharing the portion of the saints in light on taking the first step into the wilderness. But here the apostle is not speaking of what had been done for them, but expressing his confidence that what God had begun in them, “He would complete unto the day of Jesus Christ.”
Now look at the character in which his heart contemplated them as fit for Jesus Christ’s day: love abounding in itself, as also in full knowledge and in all intelligence. Then there was to be spiritual judgment and appreciation of the things that are more excellent, in view of purity and being without offence for Jesus Christ’s day. And finally, their being complete (filled) as regards proofs of righteousness, to God’s praise and glory. What termini are these to the trials of the wilderness! Christ’s day and God’s praise and glory!
Verse 12. The subject changes, and we have Paul’s history of himself in relation to surrounding circumstances; but everything, to the least detail, is for the profit of the saints. Contemplated from above, everything was in favor of the man who said, “This one thing I do.” Whatever Mien might say of the power of circumstances, it is evident that the prisoner of Jesus Christ was ever “master of the situation,” as men say. It was really Christ in him in the power of the Spirit. Compare what he says in 2 Cor. 2: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in the Christ.”
Through his captivity at Rome, the name of Jesus was first heard in the Praetorium, as it had once reached the ears of the prisoners at Philippi. The circumstances there were the dungeon, the stocks, and the midnight darkness. Was Paul making melody in his heart in the midst of them, praising God with singing, above or beneath those circumstances? God Himself was there in Spirit! The prisoners listened. What name was that which reached them through the dungeon walls? (for Paul was in the inner prison). Was that a mere circumstance? I think not, and that one sees there also the effect of the presence of Him whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not.
At Rome, he says, his bonds had become manifest as being in Christ, in all the Praetorium, and in all others, or in all other places. (See New Trans.). And most of the brethren were emboldened to speak the word without fear, trusting in the Lord through his bonds. Thus the “Name” was made known everywhere, and the brethren encouraged to proclaim it without fear. Such was the result of Satan’s efforts to destroy it, and of God’s purpose to glorify it; and the instrument in all this service, the poor prisoner of Jesus Christ. To him might be aptly applied the well-known lines:
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.
His free and quiet spirit was in perfect liberty, where there is neither “Greek nor Jew,” nor Roman neither! but where “Christ is everything, and in all.”
We see now that circumstances are only occasions in the hand of power for the accomplishment of God’s will. Some preached Christ out of contention, for envy and strife: “What then,” he says, “Christ is preached, and I rejoice, and will rejoice, for even this will turn out to my salvation (looked at as realized at the end of the race) through your supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” In these words we note his lowliness and dependence; farther on he says, “I have learned,” and “I know”; but this was the road he took upheld by their prayers, and the “supply of the Spirit of Christ” (increase of spiritual energy). He does not say “Spirit of God,” because Christ was immediately before his mind, and he was seeking to follow Him in the path which He had traversed, in all the energy of the Spirit of holiness, not one footmark out of place, not one thought to refuse, not one thing to regret. Paul was not ignorant of the end of the wondrous course finished by the “leader and completer of faith” Himself, in the glorification of God, the revelation of the Father, the accomplishment of the work given Him to do, the conquest of the world. His blessed servant could say at the end of his course, “I have kept the faith.” He could not, like His divine Master, be the object of faith; but the creature has not reached a more elevated point in the race set before us than that marked out in these simple words, “I have kept the faith.” Never had mortal man had such treasures committed to his keeping: “the faith,” “the name of Jesus,” and “the ministry,” “to testify the glad tidings of the grace of God.”
How his heart responded to the great commission, his pen has described in words never equaled by man in feeling and simplicity: “What do ye, weeping and breaking my heart? for I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at. Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” When the Holy Spirit in every city witnessed that bonds and tribulations awaited him, his answer was: I make no account of my life as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received. of the Lord Jesus, to testify the glad tidings of the grace of God. “And finally he exclaims, when the conflict was ended, “I have kept the faith.”
The last circumstance, if men will call it so, of the way, death, was imminent. Did that give him trouble? Surely he was saying in faith, “Though an host should encamp against me, whom shall I fear?” It is not here, “I am ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus,” but “My earnest expectation and my hope, in all boldness, as always, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.” Christ was his life, and death gain, and he was “always bearing” about in his body the dying of Jesus.
By the grace of God, through faith, both the life and death of Christ were Paul’s. Christ was his life, and “identified with him in the likeness of his death,” and united to Him in heaven by the Holy Ghost, he was already spiritually in a place where circumstance, as a thought or expression, has no meaning or application. What are the circumstances of the eternal life of which Paul lived? His own he refuses, saying, “It is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.” Was that life subject or superior to circumstances? It is hid with Christ in God; there he is speaking of its source on high; we do not talk of circumstances there. Dead to all that Christ was dead to, and alive in Him to God, that life is not subject to circumstances, though in one down here it may pass through them, manifesting itself in a power that is really divine, as expressed in the words, “I have strength for all things in him that gives me power.”
But in many a one of our day, only the contrast to all this is discernible, judged of according to appearances. It is sometimes said even of a Christian, he is “a creature of circumstances.” Was Paul that? What was the world, what the things in it, to one who wanted to be out of it with Christ? But as His saints were here, how could he cease to care for them! It was more necessary for their sakes that he should abide; and so, divinely guided and assured, he knew that he should abide with them for their joy in faith and progress in faith, the only kind of progress he ever thought of; but the end of this progress and joy was that their boasting in Christ Jesus might abound. For Paul’s heart, every thought of blessing, whether on earth or in heaven, had Christ for its source, center, and end.
And now, his last thought in this chapter, he presses on them the claims of the glad tidings of the Christ. Their hearts would own them in standing fast in one spirit, with one soul, laboring together in the same conflict with the faith of the gospel, personified here, as in the other passage: “Suffer evil along with the glad tidings.”
What a blessed thought! association with the gospel as with a person, participating in its afflictions and conflicts. Who entered into this conflict like the apostle himself, or, being in it, behaved himself as he did? How many have been able to say at the end, and how soon that comes! “I have fought the good fight?”
And note what he says by the way: “Now thanks be to God, who always leads me in triumph in the Christ.” Their not being frightened by adversaries was a demonstration to them of destruction, but to the saints, of God’s salvation. To them to suffer was a gift; were they, in accepting of it, the creatures or the masters of circumstances in the power of the life of Christ, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus?
The truth as it is in Jesus is a wonderful thing—the life of God in man. Here it is all practical; you get a man realizing what he teaches. Without. anything like pretension or affectation, the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven was the Lord of his heart. The Lord said: “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” That is the divine way of helping the saints. Paul has apprehended the glorious thought, and has found in Christ an object for himself supremely above the saints whom he loved so well, and was ready to die for. Separation to Christ—His glory, honor, interests, is the measure of all true love and care for His saints. As far as the Holy Ghost works in me unhinderedly, you see a person who can really be a blessing to the saints.
We are to conduct ourselves worthily, it does not say of human principles, but “of the glad tidings of the Christ”; and, as said elsewhere, “of the Lord unto all well-pleasing.”
Finally, it is through the priesthood of Christ, His advocacy on high, the supply of His Spirit, the intercession of saints, and putting on the whole armor of God, that Paul speaks of salvation realized at the end of the course; it is thus that God brings us through the wilderness. In another aspect, according to divine teaching, the first step into the wilderness was taken with the knowledge of eternal salvation, where it is viewed as the fruit of the work finished on the cross. To Him who accomplished it be glory for ever.