Chapters 3, 4.
CHAPTER 3 presents our Lord in a way quite different from that of chapters 2. It is not the uttermost humiliation in obedience of the Son’s Person become man, emptying Himself and humbling Himself to the death of the cross: that service of love beyond compare, which creates, fashions, and maintains Christian devotedness in the saints. Here the central truth is Christ gloried, as the object set before the believer to detach him from every idol, to shine on the path with sure and heavenly light, to fill the heart with His own excellency, and to keep the glorious goal before him, whatever the trials of the way.
The apostle exhorts his brethren for the rest to rejoice in the Lord. He deserves and desires it; and well may we. Did any complain of sameness? To write so was not irksome to this wondrously endowed soul; for them it was safe. Yet he finds room with energetic contempt to denounce the Judaizers, as the dogs, the evil workers, and the concision, of whom they had to beware. He declares that the circumcision are we who worship by the Spirit of God, and who boast in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, though if any had such ground of confidence, the apostle had more. It is of fleshly religion he speaks here and throughout, not fleshly license (verses 1-4).
Next, he states his own case. Was he not circumcised the eighth day, of Israel’s race, of Benjamin’s tribe, Hebrew of Hebrews; as to law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to righteousness that is in law, found irreproachable? But the Christ he had seen in glory made him regard this gain as a loss. Nor was it a hasty estimate, but so he counted all things because of the excellence of the knowledge of Him, his Lord, for Whom he suffered the loss of all things. He was still counting them dung, that he might win Christ and be found in Him, not having his own righteousness which is of law, but that which is by faith in Christ, the righteousness of God on condition of faith. The same Paul in Romans 9 would have the Jews know that, far from disparaging, he exalted the privileges of Israel beyond their estimate; here he shows that the Christian has in Christ far better things than Israel’s hopes (verses 5-9). And so he continues, “that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformed to His death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from out of the dead” (verses 10, 11).
Nothing then satisfied him short of that portion. Flesh and earth are quite left behind. Therefore he adds, “Not that I have already attained, or were already perfect, but I pursue, if I may apprehend (or, get possession of) that for which also I have been apprehended by Christ.” We shall then be like Him and in the same glory. Yet he carefully tells his brethren that, as this was not true of him yet, “one thing” (he does); “forgetting the things behind [not past evils, but present progress], and stretching forth toward those before, I press unto the mark for the prize of the calling upward of God in Christ Jesus” (12-14). All the full-grown should have this mind, and, if in anything they were otherwise minded, God would reveal this also to them; but whereto they were arrived, let them walk alike. How wholesome even for saints in good estate! Nor does the apostle hesitate to bid them imitate him and mark those that followed his example. Others, alas did very differently, enemies of Christ’s cross, and earthly-minded, whose god is the belly, whose glory is in their shame. For our citizenship subsists in the heavens, whence also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, Who shall change the body of our humiliation and conform it to the body of His glory, according to the working of the power He has to subject even all things to Himself (vers. 15-21). Salvation here looks on to that final change.
Chapters 4 opens with strongly expressed affection, and the call to stand fast in the Lord. Two sisters he exhorts severally by name to the same mind in Him; and he beseeches his true yoke-fellow, Epaphroditus probably, to help those women in that they shared his own conflicts in the gospel, with Clement too and the rest of his fellow-workers whose names are in the book of life. How sad their lot whose names were not there! They did not love the Lord, whatever their labors (vers. 1-3).
The saints in general here again he calls on to rejoice in the Lord “always,” and again would say, “Rejoice.” How blessed from Paul the prisoner in Rome under Nero to saints at Philippi suffering in Christ’s behalf! Yet he would have their gentleness known to all (in view of the Lord at hand), their anxiety in nothing, their requests to God in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving; and he assures them that the peace of God (and it is constant), which surpasses all understanding, should guard their hearts and their thoughts in Christ Jesus (vers. 4-7). For the rest, he urges brethren to think, not on the dark side, but on whatsoever things are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, if any virtue or any praise: what they both learned and received and heard and saw in him, let them do; and the God of peace, which is yet more than the peace of God, blessed though it be, should be with them. This indeed would be Christian experience—to live Christ (8:9).
Then as we easily see from verse 10 to 20 he speaks of his joy in the Lord at their renewed thought for him, though he spoke not of want, having learned to be content in whatsoever state he was; and he knew both to abound and to be in want, and declares he can do all things through Him that empowers him. But he appreciated their fellowship with his affliction, which they only had shown him thus in the early days of the gospel: not that he sought the gift, but the fruit that increased to their account. He could say that he had all things, and abounded, that he was filled, having received from Epaphroditus their things, which he does not hesitate to call “an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God.” On their part or on his, it was to live Christ. “And my God,” he adds, “shall fulfill your every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now to our God and Father the glory unto the ages of the ages. Amen.” Then he salutes “every saint” in Christ Jesus, as he unites with it that of the brethren who were with him, and indeed of all the saints there, specially those of Cæsar’s household; for so did Christ work in His own. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit” is the suited close.
W.K.