Philippians

The verb phroneō, to set the mind on something, runs through the letter. Paul asks the church “that ye be likeminded … being of one accord, of one mind” (2:2), and grounds the request in Christ: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (2:5). The hymn that follows is the pattern for the verses before it: “in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (2:3). The same verb names the alternatives. The enemies of the cross “mind earthly things” (3:19); as many as be perfect are to “be thus minded” (3:15); Euodias and Syntyche are besought to “be of the same mind in the Lord” (4:2). Even the church’s gift is its “care” for Paul, the same word (4:10).

Paul writes from prison, and rejoice appears in every chapter. Some preach Christ “of envy and strife” (1:15), and still Paul says, “I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice” (1:18). If he is “offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith,” he will “joy, and rejoice with you all” (2:17). The command comes twice, “rejoice in the Lord” (3:1) and “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice” (4:4), and its ground is the Lord himself, who “is at hand” (4:5). The church had seen this at its beginning, when Paul and Silas, beaten and set in the stocks at Philippi, “prayed, and sang praises unto God” at midnight (Acts 16:25).

One verb, hēgeomai, to count or reckon, joins Christ’s choice to Paul’s. Christ “thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (2:6); the church is to “esteem other better than themselves” (2:3); and Paul says, “what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (3:7). The gains are named: circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, and “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (3:5–6). He counts them “but dung” beside Christ, to “be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (3:8–9). That righteousness is received, not achieved, and the one who has it still presses “toward the mark” (3:14).

Paul thanks God for the church’s “fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now” (1:5). Koinōnia is a sharing, and in this letter it runs both ways. In his bonds they are all “partakers of my grace” (1:7), and he seeks “the fellowship of his sufferings” with Christ (3:10). Their gifts are its plainest form: when he left Macedonia “no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only,” and “even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity” (4:15–16). He receives the latest, brought by Epaphroditus, as “a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God” (4:18). Theodoret noted what it cost them: Their praise is enhanced by their poverty. Paul says the same of the churches of Macedonia, whose “deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality” (2 Corinthians 8:2).