Philippians 1:3

Paul regularly opens his letters by thanking God for the people he writes to, as he does for the Ephesians (Ephesians 1:15–16), the Colossians (Colossians 1:3–4) and the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:2–3). Here the thanks is unusually warm. The personal “my God”, the “every remembrance”, and the joy, love and longing in the verses that follow show a real bond. In some letters the thanksgiving is followed by correction, and in this one it flows straight into joyful prayer for the readers’ growth in love and knowledge (Philippians 1:9–11).

The word for joy, chará, means joy or gladness, and it can also mean the cause of someone’s joy. What makes it remarkable here is where Paul is. He is in chains, facing the possibility of death, and longs to be with Christ yet is willing to stay for their sake (Philippians 1:23–26). His gladness comes from Christ and from what God is doing in his friends, and his circumstances cannot take it away. Joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), and Paul tells this same church that he has learned to be content in every state, because he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him (Philippians 4:11–13).

Scripture joins prayer and joy in the same way elsewhere. Paul tells the Romans to be “rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer” (Romans 12:12), and the Thessalonians to rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in everything (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18). Praying for other believers can be a delight, because it means speaking to God about the good he is already doing in them.

Paul’s prayers go to God through Christ, the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). Christ himself intercedes for his people at God’s right hand (Romans 8:34) and ever lives to make intercession for them (Hebrews 7:25), so when Paul prays for his friends, he joins in the prayer of his Lord.

The phrase is prōtos hēméra áchri nŷn: prōtos “first”, hēméra “day”, áchri “until”, and nŷn “now”. It stretches from the day Paul first preached in Philippi and Lydia believed, through all the years since, up to the very moment he writes. Their partnership was steady and lasting, the kind of continuing in the faith that Paul urges on believers elsewhere (Colossians 1:23). Behind their steadiness stands the faithfulness of Christ, “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8), and the next verse tells us who has kept them faithful.

The verb is peíthō, which means to persuade or convince, and in the form Paul uses here it means to be persuaded, to trust, to be confident. “This very thing” points ahead to what he is sure of. His certainty rests on God, who began the work and keeps hold of it. Paul has seen the Philippians’ faithfulness “from the first day until now”, and he reads it as the evidence of God’s hand.

“He which hath begun” is enárchomai, to begin or commence on (from en, “in”, and archomai, “to begin”). God is the one who started it. The “good work”, érgon agathón, is the work of salvation that God does inside a person. It begins when he makes someone new in Christ, it goes on as he makes them holy, and it ends when they are made perfect at Christ’s return. Paul describes the goal of that work as being “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29), and says that we are “changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The work began in grace, for “by grace are ye saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8–9), and it goes on as Christ lives in his people (Galatians 2:20). In the Philippians that work had shown itself in their partnership in the gospel, and the God who began it there will carry it on.

“Will perform it” is epiteléō, a compound of “upon” and “to complete”, meaning to carry something through to its intended end, to finish it thoroughly. God will see his work through to the end. The end in view is “the day of Jesus Christ”, the day of his return. Paul promises the Corinthians that Christ will confirm them to the end, “that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:8). He prays that the Thessalonians will be preserved blameless at Christ’s coming, and adds, “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24). On that day “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Jesus is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), so the work that begins in Christ ends in Christ. Jude closes his letter with praise to the one “that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 1:24). This is the comfort of the verse. Our hope rests on God’s faithfulness to finish what he has begun, and on that firm ground we can keep going after we stumble.

The believer works hard because God is at work. In the next chapter Paul tells this same church to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), and gives the reason at once: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). God gives the will and the power, and we answer by obeying, yielding to his Spirit and using the means of grace he has given, confident that he who began the work will finish it.

The promise rests on who God is, and God finishes what he starts. Believers differ on how far this verse carries that truth. Some hold that it assures every true believer that God will keep them to the end, so that none whom he has truly begun to save will be lost, and they read it as a central text for the perseverance of the saints. Others hold that Paul is speaking of this church in particular, whose faithfulness he had watched for years and of whom he says, in the next verse, that “it is meet for me to think this of you all”, and they read it beside Paul’s call to “continue in the faith” (Colossians 1:23). On either reading, the work is God’s from start to finish, and the believer’s part is to trust him and press on.

The word for “bonds”, desmón, is a band or chain, the shackle of a prisoner. Paul is literally in chains for the gospel. The Philippians share his chains through their gifts (Philippians 4:15–16), their encouragement, and their own suffering, for Paul tells them that it has been given to them to suffer for Christ and that they have the same conflict they saw in him (Philippians 1:29–30). In a proud Roman colony, loyalty to Christ could bring social and legal pressure, and their support for a prisoner of Rome carried real risk. Following Christ means taking up the cross (Matthew 16:24), and those who suffer with him are joint-heirs with him (Romans 8:17). Paul’s chains echo the path of Christ himself, the Servant who was despised and wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:3–5).

“Defence” is apología, a plea or an answer given for oneself, a legal defence. It is the word behind our “apology” in its older sense of a reasoned defence. As a prisoner Paul answered for the gospel before the authorities, and the Philippians answered for it alongside him against opposition and false charges. “Confirmation” is bebaíōsis, making something firm and established. Together the two words describe the whole work of upholding the gospel: setting out its truth and showing it to be true through sound teaching and changed lives. The truth they defended was Christ himself, the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), and Paul will soon urge them to stand fast in one spirit, “striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27).

“Ye all are partakers of my grace.” The word for partakers is synkoinōnós, a fellow sharer, companion, partaker with someone. It is built on the same root as koinōnía in verse 5, with “together” added to the front. The grace is God’s favour and the strength he gave Paul for his work as an apostle, the grace that kept him in prison. The Philippians share that grace with him. Paul speaks in the same way of “the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia” (2 Corinthians 8:1), and of the Gentiles as partakers of Israel’s spiritual things (Romans 15:27). All of it flows from being called into the fellowship of God’s Son (1 Corinthians 1:9), and it is kept as believers walk worthy of their calling, “endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1–3). Christ endured the cross for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2), and the grace that carried him carries his people when they suffer for him.

The word “record” is mártys, a witness, the word that later came to mean a martyr. Paul calls on God, who knows every heart, to vouch for what he is about to say. It is a solemn appeal, close to an oath, a way of speaking that Jews and Greeks of the time both knew. Paul uses it elsewhere too: “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers” (Romans 1:9), and he says the truth in Christ and his conscience bears witness when he speaks of his great heaviness for Israel (Romans 9:1–3). Here he calls God to witness so that the Philippians can know his love for them is wholly sincere.

“How”, hōs, marks the depth of what follows. To “long after”, epipothéō, is to yearn for earnestly, to long for someone’s presence and welfare with a desire that can ache. Paul longs to be with them and to see them grow strong in Christ. He writes of the Thessalonians in the same way, praying night and day that he might see their face and supply what was lacking in their faith (1 Thessalonians 3:10).

The word splánchnon means the inner parts of the body, and in the thought of the time these were the seat of the deepest feelings, especially compassion, pity and tender love. Jews and Greeks both spoke this way, much as we speak of the heart. Modern versions render the phrase “with the affection of Christ Jesus” (ESV). Paul is saying that his longing comes from the very core of his being, and that it is Christ’s own tender love at work in him. His love is like Christ’s because it comes from Christ.

Jesus showed that love when he saw the crowds as sheep without a shepherd and was moved with compassion for them (Matthew 9:36), and above all when he went to the cross as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The same love is now “shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost” (Romans 5:5). So Paul can tell believers to put on “bowels of mercies” (Colossians 3:12), and Jesus can command us to love one another as he has loved us, so that all will know we are his disciples (John 13:34–35).