it.
(2) The simplest explanation is this. Philippians is a personal letter, and a personal letter is never logically ordered like the argument of a thesis. In such a letter, we put things down as they come into our heads; we chat on paper with our friends; and an association of ideas which may be clear enough to us may not be so obvious to anyone else. The sudden change of subject here is just the kind of thing which might occur in any such letter.
The Lovely Letter
For many of us, Philippians is the loveliest letter Paul ever wrote. It has been called by two titles. It has been called the Epistle of Excellent Things – and so indeed it is; and it has been called the Epistle of Joy. The words joy and rejoice are used again and again. ‘Rejoice,’ writes Paul, ‘again I will say rejoice’, even in prison directing the hearts of his friends – and ours – to the joy that no one can take from us.
PHILIPPIANS
A FRIEND TO HIS FRIENDS
Philippians 1:1–2
Paul and Timothy, slaves of Jesus Christ, write this letter to all those in Philippi who are consecrated to God because of their relationship to Jesus Christ, together with the overseers and the deacons.
Grace be to you and peace from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
THE opening sentence sets the tone of the whole letter. It is clearly a letter written to friends. With the exception of the letters to the Thessalonians and the little personal note to Philemon, Paul begins every letter with a statement of his apostleship; for instance, he begins the letter to the Romans: ‘Paul a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle’ (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Galatians 1:1; Ephesians 1:1; Colossians 1:1). In the other letters, he begins with a statement of his official position, why he has the right to write, and why the recipients have the duty to listen; but not when he writes to the Philippians. There is no need; he knows that they will listen, and listen lovingly. Of all his churches, the church at Philippi was the one to which Paul was closest; and he writes, not as an apostle to members of his church, but as a friend to his friends.
Nonetheless, Paul does lay claim to one title. He claims to be the servant (doulos) of Christ, as the Authorized and Revised Standard Versions have it; but doulos means more than servant, it means slave. A servant is free to come and go; but slaves are the possessions of their masters forever. When Paul calls himself the slave of Jesus Christ, he does three things. (1) He lays it down that he is the absolute possession of Christ. Christ has loved him and bought him with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20), and he can never belong to anyone else. (2) He lays it down that he owes an absolute obedience to Christ. Slaves have no will of their own; their master’s will must be theirs. So Paul has no will but Christ’s, and no obedience but to his Saviour and Lord. (3) In the Old Testament, the usual title of the prophets is the servants of God (Amos 3:7; Jeremiah 7:25). That is the title which is given to Moses, to Joshua and to David (Joshua 1:2; Judges 2:8; Psalm 78:70; Psalm 89:3, 20). In fact, the highest of all titles of honour is servant of God; and, when Paul takes this title, he humbly places himself in the succession of the prophets and of the great ones of God. A Christian’s slavery to Jesus Christ is no cowering subjection. As the Latin saying has it, Illi servire est regnare – to be his slave is to be a king.
THE CHRISTIAN DISTINCTION
Philippians 1:1–2 (contd)
THE letter is addressed, as the Revised Standard Version has it, to all the saints in Christ Jesus. The word translated as saint is hagios, and saint is a misleading translation. To modern ears, it paints a picture of almost unworldly piety. Its connection is rather with stained-glass windows than with the market place. Although it is easy to see the meaning of hagios, it is hard to translate it.
Hagios and its Hebrew equivalent kadosh are usually translated as holy. In Hebrew thought, if a thing is described as holy, the basic idea is that it is different from other things; it is in some sense set apart. In order to understand this better, let us look at how holy is actually used in the Old Testament. When the regulations regarding the priesthood are being laid down, it is written: ‘They shall be holy to their God’ (Leviticus 21:6). The priests were to be different from other people, for they were set apart for a special function. The tithe was the tenth part of all produce which was to be set apart for God; and it is laid down: ‘All tithes from the land . . . are the Lord’s; they are holy to the Lord’ (Leviticus 27:30). The tithe was different from other things which could be used as food. The central part of the Temple was the holy place (Exodus 26:33); it was different from all other places. The word was specially used of the Jewish nation itself. The Jews were a holy nation (Exodus 19:6). They were holy to the Lord; God had separated them from other nations so that they might be his (Leviticus 20:26); it was they of all nations on the face of the earth whom God had specially known (Amos 3:2). The Jews were different from all other nations, for they had a special place in the purpose of God.
Now these privileges and responsibilities had been given to the Church, which became the new Israel, the people of God. Therefore, just as the Jews had once been hagios, holy, different, so now the Christians must be hagios; the Christians are the holy ones, the different ones, the saints. Thus Paul in his pre-Christian days was a notorious persecutor of the saints, the hagioi (Acts 9:13); Peter goes to visit the saints, the hagioi, at Lydda (Acts 9:32).
To say that the Christians are the saints means, therefore, that the Christians are different from other people. Where does that difference lie?
Paul addresses his people as saints in Christ Jesus. No one can read his letters without seeing how often the phrases in Christ, in Christ Jesus, in the Lord occur. In Christ Jesus occurs forty-eight times, in Christ thirty-four times, and in the Lord fifty times. Clearly, this was for Paul the very essence of Christianity. What did he mean? In his commentary, Marvin R. Vincent says that when Paul spoke of the Christian being in Christ, he meant that the Christian lives in Christ as a bird in the air, a fish in the water, the roots of a tree in the soil. What makes Christians different is that they are always and everywhere conscious of the encircling presence of Jesus Christ.
When Paul speaks of the saints in Christ Jesus, he means those who are different from other people and who are consecrated to God because of their special relationship to Jesus Christ – and that is what every Christian should be.
THE ALL-INCLUSIVE GREETING
Philippians 1:1–2 (contd)
PAUL’S greeting to his friends is: Grace be to you and peace, from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Colossians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; Philemon 3).
When Paul put together these two words, grace and peace (charis and eirēnē), he was doing something very wonderful. He was taking the normal greeting phrases of two great nations and moulding them into one. Charis is the greeting with which Greek letters always began, and eirēnē (= shalom in Hebrew) is the greeting with which Jews met each other. Each of these words had its own flavour, and each was deepened by the new meaning which Christianity poured into it.
Charis is a lovely word; the basic ideas in it are joy and pleasure, brightness and beauty; it is, in fact, connected with the English word charm. But with Jesus Christ there comes a new
