to pagan deities, they received life, food, and space on his terms. And from out of gratitude the summons to honor the Commandments. However, in place of gratitude the Church originated the Second Commonwealth, considering David’s rule the first. This Commonwealth formed a kingdom motivated by the Tradition of the Elders and energized by the Oral Law, the Oral Law whereby adherents gained self-righteousness. In effect, the Second Commonwealth in imagination replaced the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus. The leaders of the Second Commonwealth, initially the Pharisees, later with the Sadducees, invented a self-righteousness only superficially similar to the gratitude shaped through living the Commandments.
To escape misidentification: Paul distinguished Christ’s Commonwealth from what the Jews called the Second Commonwealth, a kingdom and a communion intended to crowd the Kingdom out of existence. The post-exilic Jews, arrogant, imagined themselves capable to create another Davidic reign, as extensive and as glorious. However, they founded only another anti-messianic rule. In that large-scale disparagement of the covenant promises, they worked with life, food, and space against the Lord Jesus; they took the promises for growing the tough Oral Law tradition. In and throughout this post-exilic process of covenant breakage, the Church misrepresented the Old Testament tradition of gratitude inspired at the Sinai and moved by the Holy Spirit. That misrepresentation unconverted Jews in the Church at Philippi sought to synthesize with the original commitments of Christianity; these Jewish members wanted re-imposition of circumcision and lead all into achieving self-righteousness, the very self-righteousness the Lord and Savior had with awesome finality condemned on the Cross. Because of the long tradition of the Oral Law the congregation at Philippi had no example in Christ to follow and became easy victims for the unbending pharisaically hearted; earning self-righteousness appeared more attainable than in the Faith bowing before the Lord Jesus.
In that complex cultural interplay of competition the Head of the Church at Philippi incited Paul to make his exemplary living the new norm for Christian sanctity, until first stirrings in the covenant tradition gained purchase. Therefore, Paul exhorted the congregation to scrutinize closely the way of living he created, since yet no such tradition of the Christian life existed; effectually, the Apostle with companions had to start living in Christ anew, for themselves too and as example for the congregation—against virtuous-in-appearance only pressures to Pharisaic conformity. Many of the congregation whom the Christ had drawn out of the Tradition of the Elders remembered the striving for self-righteousness and easily enough found the simplicities of the old way appealing.
To dispense with the Jewish danger the apostolic precedent intensely and intensively inspired the believers in Philippi to walk in Christ Jesus with heart, soul, mind, and strength, always within the circumambience of the Commandments. Despite pressures of succumbing again to self-righteousness the Lord Jesus willed the covenant way for the Church entering the New Testament millennia.
Second: To consolidate the Philippian congregation in replicating his believing and living the proprietary Apostle solidified also other wavering members—those drawn out of Hellenism—to withstand and overcome another revolutionary elemental force on the loose in that covenant communion. Even though imprisoned, Paul remained on constant alert for the well-being of Christ’s Church, also in Philippi. Therefore he called the faithful to beware of rebellious members who attempted to ease the congregation by a process of synthesizing again into the libertine ways of Hellenism; these adaptors sought measures of accommodation with the world from which the Christ had drawn them and import into the congregation/Commonwealth ways of Hellenism to decrease the time-eternity tensions; such members sought less emphasis on the not of the world and more on the in the world. Discomforts of residing in two worlds at once proved irritating. The Apostle’s militant call to arms came none too soon.
“For many,” Paul declared, had betrayed the Christ by becoming a confrontational menace to the integrity of that congregation. The Apostle concentrated on those who, spurning the Lord Jesus’s reformation, sought excesses germane to Hellenism, to cater along with the world to the demands of the flesh, such as the seven deadly sins; prideful, envious, angered, slothful, greedy, gluttonous, and lustful, they compelled Christian liberty onto different stages of immoderation. Gal 5:13. Those members still wanted what Hellenists assumed as freedom, thus to eat away at the life in Christ Jesus and the destruction of the Faith. While bearing the name of the Savior, Hellinizers cherished sins of self-indulgence. Under the guise of Christianity these hypocritical souls aggravated the covenant community with libertine lusts, whether Epicurean, or Stoic, Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonic, Aristotelian, Gnostic, Mithraic, etc., the whole of Hellenistic religiosity controlled and commended by Caesarianism. This Hellenism encircled the Church and through neo-Hellenists penetrated into the Church at Philippi.
Often, Paul claimed, while founding this congregation he had alerted the first generation followers of the Christ to the execrable afflictions deformative of the Faith from among which the Savior had forcibly drawn them. Were many and more now to return to those deadly sins? Such evil men, imposters, members in the congregation, advocated synthesizing, agitating for antinomian living under the name of Christ. The Lord Jesus, unerring Head of the Church, drew those antinomians into the communion of the Philippian congregation to reveal his dominion. With all authority over heaven and earth the Christ willed a number of these evil workers into the community to display his omnipotence over unbelievers and to test the commitment of believers. On account of this admixture—unbelievers among believers—the Philippian congregation fought internally also against old-world religiosities and philosophies; in that Roman city Jesus Christ gathered as his own, in addition to Judaists, also men of habitual wickedness, inclined to all evil in libertine ways. These connoisseurs of sinfulness proved themselves for all in Christ to see and judge a source of grievous tribulation, and for the congregation also public humiliation, unless through the office bearers the living members called those sinners to account, either repentance or excommunication. Such enemies of the Cross, men with constricted hearts, and insensitive, mocked the Savior in his work as they, tempting, sought assimilation for the congregation to Hellenism, at that time the other illusive face of covetousness. Singly as well as collectively those men presented detrimental exampling to budding generations, to say nothing of the Christ’s reputation in the City of Philippi and surrounding territory to the north and to the south. Sworn-to-evil trouble makers intended to live in the world and compel all of Christ to synthesize with the ways constitutive of Hellenism.
The Tearful Way
Paul, composing this letter while confined to Roman imprisonment, with urgent entreaty wept at the internal tribulations in and the public damages to that beloved body of believers the Lord Jesus had instituted; “even with tears” the Apostle implored the members to hear him out. From within socially low and despicable imprisonment the Apostle fought against Christ-opposing and time-bound members who, Judaist or Hellenist, resisting the Holy Spirit and the Word, willed the congregation into conformity with and assimilation to the world, thus synthesis. Awareness of the intrusive enmities within the Church moved the Apostle to tears, as a father grieving for wayward children. Acts 20:19, 31; 2 Cor 2:4. Apostolic tears in this instance proved a hard warning to the synthesizers. Those whom Paul thus specifically confronted through this missive pretended to walk the straight-way of the Faith; actually they had strayed onto devious courses into the restlessness of religiosity. He, therefore, warned the believers against any complacency by tolerating the evil-workers at synthesis, further harming Christ’s congregation. The apostolic tears revealed the depths at which Paul suffered in anguish because of the sins mushrooming in that congregation, signifying that the sinning had gone much too far and the believers’ resistance much too weak.
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In the congregation at Philippi two streams of evil coursed among the members, both of which gave occasion to Paul’s tears. Judaist self-justificatory ethics and Hellenistic self-gratificatory ethics fought over the communion’s soul. Paul had sized up the conflictive currents and imminent dangers. Hence, he warned the congregation through the overseers and the deacons to oppose those adversities, the Jewish self-righteousness and the libertine arrogance. By means of deception Judaists and Hellenists under pretensions of Christianity strutted and/or
