Author: Lamar Austin

This morning I would like to address what has been foremost in our minds over the past few weeks, what has flooded TV news and our inboxes, and what is causing rising panic in our hearts…the coronavirus.

I want this morning to help us come to the Word of God to find Peace in a Time of Panic.  As followers of Jesus Christ–the Master of the Universe–we can choose faith over fear and peace over panic, and be lights in this world.

We live in unprecedented times.  Places that are normally teeming with people, like Times Square and the Mall in Washington, D. C., are eerily empty.  My email inbox has literally exploded with articles about the coronavirus—from information, to how to lead, to how it to talk to your children about the coronavirus, to how to go online with church worship services.

So much information thrown at me that one blog was entitled “This email is NOT about the coronavirus.”

Restaurants, libraries and theaters are closed.  Supermarket shelves are cleared out.  Many church last Sunday was via webcast—and likely will be for several weeks.  All of us have had our lives significantly interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

For many, what stands out boldly in pandemic is the letters P-A-N-I-C, panic.  Fears and anxieties abound not only because of the rapid spread of this invisible disease and the possibilities of fatalities, but also the economic impact.

At the time of this writing, the COVID-19 Virus has been labeled a “pandemic”, businesses are suspending operations or working remotely, churches are scrambling to figure out how to hold gatherings, America is essentially closed.

The word “unprecedented” is being used a lot.  New words, like “social distancing,” have crept into our vocabulary

Uncertainty is at an all-time high.

Many stabilizing forces in our world feel unstable.

As parents you’ve had to tell your children about how to handle this virus.  Seniors have likely have spent their last days with their classmates at school.

Anxiety is a thief.

It steals our sense of safety and turns our mind into a battlefield. Suddenly, we are questioning if we will be able to make ends meet, or if we will have enough food if things get really bad.

It steals our peace. A little cough is no longer just a little cough but feels life-threatening.

It steals the moment from us. We sit with our kiddos, trying to engage, but it’s hard to when our thoughts have drifted into the worse scenarios.

It whispers threats about our parents and grandparents into our minds as we try to sleep at night.

It’s a thief.  It robs us of hope in the future and strength for today.

Corrie ten Boom, along with other faithful from among the nations, led courageously in the face of the Nazi fascism—a different form of deadly virus. And she reminds us, “Worry doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrows, it empties today of its strength.”

The most unsettling part about the COVID-19 is that this is uncharted territory and we don’t know what’s going to happen next.

No one does.

No one, except God.

When we look to the Lord we will be reminded that our anxiety doesn’t know it all. But He does.

He knows exactly how this all goes.

When we think about how He both goes before us into the unknown, and then takes our hand and walks beside us through it, we can breathe a little easier.

I certainly don’t intend to make light of what is happening, and I do believe we all need to take precautions, but as believers in Jesus Christ we do not need to fear.  We do not need to be anxious.  Although things have changed almost overnight, there are some things that have not changed:

First, God is still on the throne.  He has not abdicated His throne; He is not absent from His throne.  And He is sitting on His throne.  He is not pacing back and forth, wringing his hands, mumbling, “What’s going to happen next?  What am I going to do now?”

No, our God is still in complete control of all that is happening.

No infected molecule can enter your lungs, or your three-year-old’s lungs, unless sent by the hand of a heavenly Father. The Heidelberg Catechism defines God’s providence as, “The almighty and ever-present power of God by which God upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand.” That truth is like an asthmatic’s inhaler to our soul–it calms us down, allows us to breathe again. (Dane Ortlund)

Second, we know that God is still “working all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Now, that verse isn’t saying that everything that happens to us is good, but rather than God is able to make it all work out together for a good ending.

We saw in our study of Philippians last week, how Paul was caught between two good things—living on so he could still minister to the Philippian church, or dying, which he saw as “better by far” and as “gain.”

Romans 8:31-32 tell us that God is “for us.”  Although things might happen which we perceive as being against us, God is for us.  And He has proven that by already having done the hardest thing—not sparing His Son Jesus, but giving Him up for our sakes.  And if God has already done the hardest thing, we can be sure He will do for us whatever else we need.

Third, we know that God is still with us.  He promised that he would “never leave us and never forsake us.” So we can know that whatever we may go through, He is right there beside us—loving us and ministering to us.

Whether we go through the fire or through the flood (Isaiah 43:2-3) or even through “the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4), we can know that He is right there beside us.

Do you remember the situation where the disciples were out in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and a storm came up while Jesus just slept on?  They were in panic mode; Jesus was at peace.

Jesus calmed the storm, but before He did He asked, “Why are you afraid?”

Apparently they weren’t afraid that God couldn’t save from from a storm, but they feared that He might not be able to save them through it.  When we find ourselves in the midst of storms we cannot control we need to remember that Jesus is right there with us and He is powerful enough to calm any storm.

Fourth, we know that He cares for us.  If you are stuck in your home by yourself, you might feel like no one cares.  But God does and He asks us to unload our burdens onto His shoulders.  Peter tells us “Cast all your anxiety upon Him for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

In times of turmoil, in seasons of distress, Jesus is more feelingly with his people than ever.  Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced all the horror of this world that we do, minus sin (Hebrews 4:15).  So apparently he knows—he himself knows—way down deep, what it feels like for life to close in on you and for your world to go into meltdown.  We can go to him.  We can sit with him.  His arm is around us—stronger than ever—right now.  His tears are larger than ours.

And if you are an older person stuck in your home and you are anxious about getting out to get groceries or supplies, let me know.  My number is 479-234-1206.  That’s 479-234-1206.  We have a card that we could give you and that would help us to serve you.  Again, that’s 479-234-1206.

Finally, our God is able.  Our God is all-powerful.  He can handle this.  He’s “got this.”

How big is your god?

• Can your god heal disease? Jesus can (Matthew 9:20-22).
• Can your god raise the dead? Jesus can (Matthew 9:18-19, 23-25; John 11:1-44).
• Can your god forgive sin? Jesus can (Mark 2:1-12).
• Can your god allow disabilities in people? God can (Exodus 4:11)
• Can your god use those disabilities to bring him glory and accomplish his purpose? God can (John 9:1-3).
• Can your god provide for your needs? God can (Genesis 22:1-14).
• Is your god big enough to use difficulties to bring him glory? God can (Romans 8:28).
• Is your god big enough to use trials and challenges to help you grow to maturity? God can (James 1:2-12),
• Can your god give you peace when everyone around you is consumed with worry? God can (Philippians 4:6-7).
• Can your god give you hope when you are feeling depressed? God can (Psalms 42 & 43).
• Can your god guarantee you a home in heaven? Jesus can (John 3:16; 14:1-6).
• Can your god control the weather, manage the environment, and provide for the animals? God can (Job 38-41).
• Can your god help you be content with your limitations? God can (2 Corinthians 12:1-10).

How people respond to a tragedy like the tornado that recently devastated Nashville, TN, or a pandemic like the COVID-19 virus reveals the size of their god. Some panic and cower in fear. Others throw their hands up in despair. Still others search for someone to blame.

People of faith and followers of Jesus act with prudence and wisdom but do not give into fear. They are confident that God is in control. He has a plan and a purpose and he will use all things to help accomplish his plan and purpose.

It is times like these that true believers will rise to the surface and be shining examples of neighbor love and hope.

Dane Ortlund recently said

Times of public panic force us to align our professed belief with our actual belief. We all say we believe God is sovereign and he is taking care of us. But we reveal our true trust when the world goes into meltdown. What’s really our heart’s deepest loyalty? The answer is forced to the surface in times of public alarm, such as we’re wading into now.

So this coronavirus hasn’t changed everything and it gives us opportunities to express our faith and deepen our faith and also to love our neighbors.

For Christians, this is the moment Jesus calls upon our light — his light — to shine before men. Are we going to respond primarily thinking about ourselves and the logistics of how we can livestream church or manage online school? Or are we going to lift our heads and step into God’s calling to love and serve those around us who are scared, displaced and in need?

As in any other natural disaster, when schools, businesses and entire industries are closing or facing drastic disruption, when people are worried about how they will provide for their family, when society is beginning to see panicky behavior, this is the time for the body of Christ to be a voice of faith instead of fear — and a source of practical help.

Two millennia ago, during another set of pandemics, the church did the same.  In A.D. 165 and 251, two great plagues swept the Roman Empire.  Where pagans tried to avoid all contact with the sick, Christians put themselves at risk in order to succor those sick and dying, caring for those who had always treated them with contempt.  But with the love of Christ in their hearts, how could they not step forward when so many were hurting and in need?

Many paid the ultimate price.  But as Rodney Stark concluded in his 1996 book “The Rise of Christianity,” this visible love so overwhelmed the reigning philosophies of the day — it so showed Jesus ­— that it was one of the most important factors behind the explosion of our faith to every corner of the empire and beyond.

We hope and pray that this pandemic will never come close to the scale of those plagues, which killed millions.  But the fear today is real.  Let the Body of Christ be and show the perfect love that casts out fear.

You see, anxiety and compassion don’t play well together.

Have you ever noticed that we try to rid ourselves of anxiety by trying not to be anxious?

Fighting anxiety creates more anxiety. The best you can do is answer anxiety.

Focusing on anxiety validates anxiety. But if you ignore anxiety, people will think you don’t care.

Compassion answers anxiety.

Anxiety and compassion don’t play well together. Anxiety wants to protect itself. Compassion wants to serve others.

Anxiety makes you small and self-concerned. Compassion makes you big and expresses your best self.

Use anxiety to awaken compassion.

Commit to take care of each other.

Respond to anxious people with your best answer and a commitment to care. You might need to say, “At this time we don’t know. But I know we’re committed to take care of each other.” (“But” creates a powerful contrast.)

Show up to take care of someone.

Ask yourself, “How will I take care of the people I meet today?” Ask the care-question on your way to the office. Before making a call, ask the care-question.

Our hope rests not in fully stocked shelves and ample disinfectant, but in the saving blood of Christ, who gave his life so that one day all disease and pestilence will vanish from the earth (Rev. 21:4).  As the headlines scroll across our screens, and anxiety mounts in our chests, let his love for us, rather than fear for ourselves, spur us to action.

Remember to wash your hands.  Remember to stay home when you’re sick.  And most of all, remember to do all this not out of panic, but out of love for your neighbor—the 80-year-old in the third pew, the nonagenarian in the choir, the transplant recipient at work—because Christ loved us first.

You know the correct way to wash your hands is to wash them for 20 seconds, scrubbing them thoroughly with soap.  You can sing “Happy birthday” twice (and maybe add “and many more”), or you can use that time to pray for other people.

So turn with me this morning to Philippians 4, where Paul gives us some insights into how to deal with our worries and anxieties.

4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

We are natural worriers, but times like these stoke the flames of our anxieties.  Some of us worry more than others.  Did you know that a recent study (prior to COVID-19) showed that kids ages 7-12 have an average of just 7.6 worries a day!

You’re probably thinking: “I wish I could go back to that.”

Five hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne said: “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”

And studies have shown that 85 percent of what we worry about never happens.

Lo and behold, it turns out that 85 percent of what subjects worried about never happened, and with the 15 percent that did happen, 79 percent of subjects discovered either they could handle the difficulty better than expected, or the difficulty taught them a lesson worth learning. This means that 97 percent of what you worry over is not much more than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and misperceptions.

A bassoon player came up to his conductor, famed Arturo Toscanini, and nervously said he could not reach the high E flat.  Toscanini just smiled and replied, “Don’t worry.  There is no E flat in your music tonight.”

Maybe you’ve seen the cartoon where the husband says to his wife, “99% of what you worry about never happens!”  And she responds, “She, it works!”

Many of our worries are like that…unfounded and unnecessary.

Yet, we worry.

For several years a woman had been having trouble getting to sleep at night because she feared burglars and imagined them in her home.  One night her husband heard a noise in the house, so he went downstairs to investigate.  When he got there, he did find a burglar!  “Good evening,” said the man of the house, “I am so pleased to meet you.  Come upstairs and meet my wife.  She has been waiting 10 years to meet you.”

We know that worrying isn’t good for us.  It can lead to all kinds of physical and emotional difficulties.

That’s why Proverbs 12:25 says, “An anxious heart weighs a man down…”  Worry weighs us down and wears us out.

Proverbs 14:30 adds, “A heart a peace gives life to the body…”

I’m quoting Arthur Somers Rouche, who pointed out: “Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind.  If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”

Now, there are things that are under our control, and we should take responsibility for those things.  But worry is assuming a responsibility that God never intended you to have.  Worries most often focus on things that are outside of our control and therefore they are not our responsibilities, but belong to God.

Anxiety is the unproductive concern about something you can’t do anything about that hasn’t happened, and might not happen.

Jesus talked about worry, too.  And he had reasons to be anxious in the Garden, but he did exactly what Paul recommends—pray about it.

Jesus told us that worry doesn’t do a thing for us and it shows that we are really unbelievers, like the pagans who have no heavenly father.  “Worry is an indication that we think God cannot look after us” (Oswald Chambers).

Phil Keaggy put to music the words of Elizabeth Cheney

Said the robin to the sparrow,
I would really like to know
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so.
Said the sparrow to the robin,
Friend, I think that it must be
That they have no Heavenly Father
Such as cares for you and me.

Max Lucado, in his book Anxious for Nothing points out four principles for dealing with anxiety and worry in vv. 4-8.

• Celebrate God’s goodness—“rejoice in the Lord always”
• Ask God for help—“let your requests be made known to God”
• Leave your concerns with him—through giving thanks
• Then meditate on good things, as contained in verse 8.

You might not be able to rejoice in your circumstances.  But you can rejoice in the Lord.  Of course, it’s hard to rejoice in Him if you don’t know Him very well.  One of the requirements for not worrying is that you have to know God—like we said earlier—that He is in control, He’s working all things together for God, He hasn’t left us, He’s always for us and He is all-powerful.

If we are fully persuaded that God is these things, we can rejoice in Him even if our circumstances are dire.

Anxiety focuses upon our circumstances and as long as we’re focused on the circumstances, we will feel anxious.

Remember how Paul and Silas did this?  What were they doing at midnight, having been severely beaten and thrown into jail?  They were singing!  They were focusing their attention upon God and His goodness and greatness, and as a result they were praising God and rejoicing in Him and not focused on their sad circumstances.

Of take Asaph, in Psalm 73.  At first he is troubled by the ease and affluence of the wicked, but then he comes into the temple and meditates, and he comes to find that God really was enough for Him, and the anxieties disappeared.

Psalm 37 is another passage that directly contrasts rejoicing in God with fretting over our circumstances.  Listen to David’s words…

1 Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! 2 For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. 3 Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. 6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. 7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!

And in the book of Habakkuk, where Habakkuk is struggling over the seeming injustice of wicked Babylon being used by God to discipline disobedient, idolatrous Israel, ultimate comes to this same conclusion—that joy replaces anxiety.  Listen to his words…

16 I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. 17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. 19 GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.

Some of you are anxious right now.  Jobs are being lost, job opportunities are drying up.  What you depended upon and were looking forward to is no longer there.

What are you going to do?  “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD…”

You can choose anxiety, or you can choose joy.  The key is to choose the place of the focus of your attention…and affection.  Is it on this world?  Or is it upon Jesus Christ?

Secondly, Paul tells us to ask God for help.  In verse 6 Paul says to stop being anxious, but rather turn your anxieties over to God.

Paul could have been anxious.  He was not writing from a Mediterranean resort where he was relaxing and enjoying life.  He was in prison awaiting whether his life would be spared or taken.

The Philippians had their own circumstances causing them worry.

Now, trying to keep an emotion like worry from happening is like trying to keep a dozen beach balls under water—they just keep popping up.  It’s like play “Whack-a-Mole.”

Paul gives us a way to defeat worry—turn your worries into prayers.  Consistently and repeatedly turn it over to God.

Worry focuses on the problems, prayer focuses upon God’s promises.

So get out your “to do list” for this week.  Under the “worry” column put the word, “nothing.”  Under the “things to pray about” column put the word, “everything.”

We pray because we do believe that God is in control, working everything for our good, with us and for us and supremely capable of handling anything we put into His almighty hands.

In 480 B.C. the outnamed army of Sparta’s King Leonidas held off the Persian troops of Xerxes by fighting them one at a time as they came through a narrow mountain pass.

Commenting on this strategy, C. H. Spurgeon said, “Suppose Leonidas and his handful of men had gone out into the wide-open plain and attacked the Persians—why, they would have died at once, even though they might have fought like lions.”

Spurgeon continued by saying that Christians stand in the narrow pass of today.  If they choose to battle every difficulty at once [or save them up for an extended prayer time] they’re sure to suffer defeat.  But if they trust God and take their troubles one by one, they will find that their strength is sufficient.

Pray to God because he is real, and the act of prayer puts Jesus in the picture.

Supplicate him because he is the source of peace in your situation.

Offer thanksgiving because he is good and has already given you much.

Make a request because he is powerful and he is the one who is sovereign over your situation.

Helen Roseveare, a medical missionary to Africa who passed away in 2016, told this story of making specific requests to God.

One night, in Central Africa, I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all that we could do, she died leaving us with a tiny, premature baby and a crying, two-year-old daughter.

We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive.  We had no incubator.  We had no electricity to run an incubator, and no special feeding facilities.  Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts.

A student-midwife went for the box we had for such babies and for the cotton wool that the baby would be wrapped in.  Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle.

She came back shortly, in distress, to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst.  Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates. “…and it is our last hot water bottle!” she exclaimed.

As in the West, it is no good crying over spilled milk; so, in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over a burst water bottle.  They do not grow on trees, and there are no drugstores down forest pathways.

All right,” I said, “Put the baby as near the fire as you safely can; sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts.  Your job is to keep the baby warm.”

The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with many of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me.  I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby.

I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle.  The baby could so easily die if it got chilled.  I also told them about the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died.

During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt consciousness of our African children. “Please, God,” she prayed, “send us a water bottle.  It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, the baby’ll be dead; so, please send it this afternoon.”

While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added by way of corollary, ” …And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?”

As often with children’s prayers, I was put on the spot.  Could I honestly say, “Amen?” I just did not believe that God could do this.

Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything:  The Bible says so, but there are limits, aren’t there?

The only way God could answer this particular prayer would be by sending a parcel from the homeland.

I had been in Africa for almost four years at that time, and I had never, ever received a parcel from home.  Anyway, if anyone did send a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle?  I lived on the equator!

Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses’ training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door. By the time that I reached home, the car had gone, but there, on the veranda, was a large twenty-two pound parcel!

I felt tears pricking my eyes. I could not open the parcel alone; so, I sent for the orphanage children.  Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot.  We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it unduly.

Excitement was mounting.  Some thirty or forty pairs of eyes were focused on the large cardboard box.

From the top, I lifted out brightly colored, knitted jerseys.  Eyes sparkled as I gave them out.

Then, there were the knitted bandages for the leprosy patients, and the children began to look a little bored.

Next, came a box of mixed raisins and sultanas – – that would make a nice batch of buns for the weekend.

As I put my hand in again, I felt the…could it really be?  I grasped it, and pulled it out. Yes, “A brand-new rubber, hot water bottle!”

I cried. I had not asked God to send it; I had not truly believed that He could.

Ruth was in the front row of the children.  She rushed forward, crying out, “If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly, too!”

Rummaging down to the bottom of the box, she pulled out the small, beautifully dressed dolly.

Her eyes shone: She had never doubted!  Looking up at me, she asked, “Can I go over with you, Mummy, and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?”

That parcel had been on the way for five whole months, packed up by my former Sunday School class, whose leader had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle, even to the equator.  One of the girls had put in a dolly for an African child — five months earlier in answer to the believing prayer of a ten-year-old to bring it “That afternoon!”

The same God who answered Ruth’s audacious prayers is the God you present your requests to.  He can show the same goodness and power to you as well.

The third thing we can do is to give our requests to God “with thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving is the mark that we’ve moved from fear to faith.  We have put our request in God’s hands and we are now thanking Him that He will act in our behalf in goodness and love.

We make requests because we believe that God is powerful and in control; we thank Him because we believe He is good and kind.

When we get to the place where our prayers are littered with thanksgivings, it is a sign of victory over anxiety.

Verse 7 tells us that when we do these things—rejoice in the Lord, hand our troubles to Him and rejoice in His goodness, then peace floods our souls.

Peace is tranquility, calmness, a sense of centered well-being.  These are the goals of Zen gurus, yogis, day spas, and meditation retreats.  But here Paul promises that if you repent of anxiety rather than excuse it, and if you focus on gratitude to God, and ask God for his involvement: you will experience true peace.

The Greek word for peace is irene.  It means peace of mind, tranquility arising from reconciliation with God and a sense of a divine favor.  The Old Testament equivalent is Shalom.

It is the type of serenity that characterizes God himself, for He is the “God of peace.”  He isn’t fretting about what’s going on in our world today.

This isn’t an artificial ‘ignorance is bliss’ type of peace.  It’s the peace that comes from God—it is supernatural.  And it is a gift from God.  It is real.  You merely need to ask for it.

And this is a surpassing peace, one that goes beyond our imaginations.  It is far superior to any peace our world promises (John 14:27).

Pastor Steve Cole explains the importance of thanksgiving when he says…

Thanksgiving in a time of trials reflects three things: (1) Remembrance of God’s supply in the past.  You think back over His faithfulness to you up to this point and realize that His mercies have sustained you.  He has been with you in every trial.  He has never abandoned or forsaken His children, even if we face persecution or death for His sake.

(2) Submission to God’s sovereignty in the present.  To thank God in the very midst of a crisis or trial is to say, “Lord, I don’t understand, but I submit to Your sovereign purpose in this situation. I trust that You know what You’re doing and will work it together for good.”  We are not just to thank God when we feel like it, but also when we don’t feel like it (1 Thess. 5:18).

(3) Trust in God’s sufficiency for the future.  A thankful heart rests upon the all-sufficient God, knowing that even though we don’t see how He is going to do it, He will meet our every need as we cast ourselves on Him.

Finally, we choose to focus on good things-things that are true and honorable and pure and good and praiseworthy.

What you choose to dwell upon affects your moods and emotions.  You have a choice.

Notice that Paul says we should “dwell” on these things.  We should turn our attention to these things and focus on them instead of the negative things we so often worry about.

So I invite you today to turn your peace into panic.  Whatever are the specific fears, worries and anxieties that are eating away at you right now, rejoice in God, turn them over to Him, thank Him for His goodness and kindness and focus on positive things.

Prayer

Before signing off, let me just say that if you need things to do with your children or you need ideas for family devotions.  Just let me know.

Also, I’ve created a Facebook Group for Age and Phase and we will have a video for 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds this coming week.  I will let you mothers know about that and if anyone else is interested please text me at 479-234-1206.

Philippians is an epistle of joy.  Although joy is not the dominant theme, it is certainly a prominent one.  Throughout the epistle Paul commands joy and models joy.  He was able to rejoice in his chains, because through them the gospel was being more broadly and more boldly preached.  He was able to rejoice in his critics, for even through them Christ was being preached.  And now he is able to rejoice in his crisis, because He is so focused on living for Christ that whether he lived or died, Christ would be glorified.

Paul was not afraid of life or death!  Either way, he wanted to magnify Christ in his body.  No wonder he had joy!

That joy came from being so totally Christ focused and so totally focused on others.  Life revolved totally around Jesus Christ.

When American chess player Bobby Fisher defeated Russian Boris Spasky of the Soviet Union to become the World Champion Chess player, some reporters asked him, “What does chess mean to you?”

Fisher hesitated for a full sixty seconds, then replied, “Everything!”

That’s what Christ meant to Paul.  After his conversion, Christ became his entire life.

Now, we read in vv. 22-26, having just expressed “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”…

22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

Paul here admits that he was facing a dilemma.  On the one hand, life is Christ; on the other, death is gain.  On the one hand, living means fruitful labor; but on the other hand, death is “better by far” because it means he would be in Christ’s very presence.

But, living seems to be more necessary for their sake.

In this dilemma both choices are worthy and Paul admits he had difficulty choosing between the two.  He feels literally “hemmed in on both sides” (sunechomai).

We might ask ourselves, why did Paul seem to entertain the very real possibility of his execution in vv. 20b-23, but then appear convinced (cf. v. 25) that he would remain alive and continue his ministry with them?

The answer seems to lie in a theme that runs throughout this epistle:  Paul is seeking to model for the Philippians the joy that comes by putting “the interests of others” ahead of (or above) one’s “own interests” (cf. 2:4).

Although Paul’s greater preference would be to “depart and be with Christ” he is willing to lay aside his personal preference (no matter how tempting and how good it might be) for the sake of their “progress and joy in the faith” (v. 25).  Like Christ in Philippians 2:6-8; Timothy in 2:20-21 and Epaphroditus in 2:30, Paul has put the interests of others ahead of his own and the interests of the gospel ahead of all.

Wiersbe notes:

What a man Paul was!  He was willing to postpone going to heaven in order to help Christians grow, and he was willing to go to hell in order to win the lost to Christ! (Romans 9:1-3)

So Paul puts his own life, and death, in second place and chooses instead to meet the needs of the Philippians.  Shame on us for being so self-centered that we split churches over whether to place the new piano on the right or left side of the sanctuary!

Let’s notice two things about death that Paul adds here.  He has already told us that “death is gain” for those who center their lives around Christ.

Here Paul indicates that once a believer dies, they are immediately “with Christ.”  Paul emphasizes this again in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 when he says that

6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Now, we are “away from the Lord,” but through death our spirit leaves our body and goes “home with the Lord.”

Jesus told the thief who believed in him, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

These verses would lead us to believe that our soul-spirit, the immaterial part of humanity, leaves the body at the time of death and while the body is buried here on earth, the soul-spirit goes to be with Christ at home with the Lord in paradise.

And the fact that Paul goes on to say that this is “better by far” and his current ability to fellowship with God, it argues against the Seventh Day Adventist doctrine of soul-sleep, the idea “the soul is simply inert and resides in the memory of God” (https://carm.org/soul-sleep, Matt Slick)

In addition when we look at the account of The Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, we clearly see Jesus using the imagery of consciousness after death.   If soul sleep is true, what was Jesus doing relating the account of two individuals who were both conscious after their death?

In Revelation  6:10 we see the account of people being conscious after death and asking God, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”   This is before the resurrection.  Here gain we have another account of consciousness after physical death.

Therefore, the doctrine of soul sleep is incorrect.   The soul continues on after death in a conscious state.   The wicked face the judgment of God, and the Christians will dwell in His presence.

The essence of eternal life is to be “with Christ” forever, growing in our knowledge of Him and enjoying Him in uninterrupted fellowship.  Jesus has gone ahead of us to prepare a place for us and will come to take us to be where He is (John 14:2-3).

I love the words of Thomas Godwin who said about the sentiment of Jesus expressed in the words of John 14:3…

“It’s as if he had said, the truth is I cannot live without you and I will never rest ‘til I have you where I am that we may never part again.  Heaven shall not hold me, or my father’s company, if I have not you with me.  My heart is so set on you.”

I seems highly unlikely that Jesus would go to all that trouble just to bring an unconscious soul to heaven.

Death is gain because death gives us more of Christ.  The essence of worship is experiencing Christ as gain. Or in other words: it is savoring Christ, treasuring Christ, being satisfied with Christ.

The other fact about death recorded here is that Paul believed “to depart and be with Christ is better by far.”

This idea of “departing,” found here and again in 2 Cor. 5:1-8 is analuseo, a word that pictures an army striking camp or a ship being loosed from its moorings so it can sail away.  That is a picture of death, a journey to another place.

Does heaven seem “better by far” to you?  This earth seems pretty good.  There is much we can enjoy in this life.  But we need to take seriously that all the joy and beauty and sweetness that we experience in this life is but a thimble in the ocean of heaven’s “better by far.”

Heaven is not just “better,” but “better by far.”  It’s actually a construction which could literally be translated, like toddlers say it “more better,” and Paul precedes that with a word meaning “very much.”  It just expresses that whatever we could imagine as better, the reality of heaven is even “very much more better.”  There are no bounds to the proper excessiveness of heaven.

It’s like David says in Psalm 16:11

11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

We experience joy and pleasure in this life.  In fact, some of us could point to lives that overflowed with joy and pleasure.  Nevertheless, our joy in this life is never quite full.  We always come up a little empty, a little short of “full joy.”  Our experiences never quite match our expectations.

Likewise, our joys in this life are not constant, not “forevermore.”  In general they are short-lived.  Our joys are punctuated with aggravations and irritations and sadnesses and disappointments.

But in heaven, we will have complete joy continually, we will have full joy forever.  That is “better by far.”

So it is quite easy to see why Paul’s “desire” was to die and enter eternal bliss with Christ.  But he tempered that desire with the reality that the Philippians still needed him here, on this earth, for a while.

Paul brings the “better by far” back down to earth with the words “much more necessary.”  I don’t think the necessity in any way outdid the superiorities of heaven, but they weighed on Paul’s conscience and he knew he must stay.

So against his own personal desires, putting their needs ahead of his own pleasures, he chose what was necessary “for you” and puts their concerns ahead of his own.  But realize, even though he was giving up his preference for the gain of death and the “better by far” of being with Christ, he was still living Christ.  And as long as he did so, death would be even more gain.

Paul was concerned, and was staying behind, for two things: “your progress and joy in the faith.”  Paul was concerned about their faith, which may have been challenged by his imprisonment.  He wanted them to experience progress in their faith, to keep growing, and to experience joy in the faith.

This is the purpose of leadership in a local church.  Our aim is to produce progress and joy in the faith.  This is why it shouldn’t be a struggle for a congregation to submit to their leaders, because their leaders are working for their good—for their progress and joy in the faith.

So John Piper notes:

It drastically changes the prospect of submitting to a leader when you know he isn’t pursuing his own private good, but genuinely seeking what is best for you, what will give you your deepest and more enduring joy.  “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy” (Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:24).

You who are skeptical of leaders in general, what if you knew that “those who are over you in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 5:12) were not in it to stroke their ego, or garner private privilege, or assert their will to control others, but actively were laying aside their rights and comforts to self-sacrificially take initiative and expend energy in working for your joy?

And you who are leaders in the church or in the home or in the marketplace, what if those under your care were convinced — deeply convinced — that your place of authority was not for self-aggrandizement or self-promotion, but that you were working for their joy?  That your joy in leadership was not a selfish joy, but a satisfaction you were finding in the joy of those whom you lead?

Leaders taste the greatest joy when they truly look out for the interests of others — when they do everything in their power to bring about the thriving and flourishing of those in their care.  They know the delight of the apostle who says, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).  They can say, “What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming?  Is it not you?  For you are our glory and joy” (1 Thessalonians 2:19–20).

When undershepherds in the church show themselves to be workers for the true joy of their flocks, they walk in the steps of the Great Shepherd — the great Worker for your joy — the one who tells us to pray “that your joy may be full” (John 16:24), and speaks to us “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11; also John 17:13).

Christian leadership exists for the joy of the church.  Such a vision changes everything, first for pastors and then for their people.

Two significant things stand out in this phrase that helps us capture the essence of spiritual formation in our lives.

First, we need to be constantly seeking “progress” in our faith.  If we don’t give attention to moving our faith forward, we won’t just sit still, we will actually begin to drift backward.  Our culture works overtime to bend you and shape you to conform to the world culture.  If you are not being spiritually formed by Christ, you are being deformed by Satan.

Second, a key element in our growth is our joy.  We will always do what we enjoy doing.  We will either pursue pleasure or avoid pain.  In other to make progress in our faith, we must find joy in it.

Without joy our discipline becomes drudgery.  With joy disciplines turns to delights.  For Paul, joy was an indispensable element in the Christian life.  That’s why he mentions it so often in his interactions with the churches.

What makes you “come alive”?  For some it is shopping.  Not me.  My interest and passion and energy is sparked by other things.

What makes you “come alive?”

Philippians 1:21 becomes a valuable test for our lives.  Try to fill in this blank: “For me to live is ___________.”  How would you fill in that blank?  What really gets you revved up?  Not angry, but interested?

“For me to live is money and to die is to leave it all behind.”

“For me to live is fame and to die is to be forgotten.

“For me to live is power and to die is to lose it all.”

No, we need to echo Paul’s convictions if we are going to live a life of joy in spite of circumstances and experience an eternity of great gain.  Give your live to what really matters.

“For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

“Because of Paul’s chains, Christ was made known (Phil. 1:13), and because of Paul’s critics, Christ was preached (Phil. 1:18).  But because of Paul’s crisis, Christ was magnified (Phil. 1:20)” begins Warren Wiersbe for this next section of the book of Philippians.  Next to the “Christ hymn” in Philippians 2:6-11, it is one of the high points of Scripture.

Paul was in prison, unsure whether he would live or die.  But what mattered most to Paul was whether Christ would be magnified.

In the last part of Philippians 1:18, Paul turns his attention from the present to the future.  He says, “Yes, and I will continue to rejoice.”  Although Paul was not totally confident about whether his future would result in his release or his execution, he seems to have a growing confidence that he would be released and minister to them again in the future.

So let’s read that passage…

Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

I’m going to divide this passage into two sections:

1. Paul can rejoice because Christ will be exalted in life or in death (1:18b-21)
2. Paul can rejoice because the Philippians will be helped if he remains (1:22-26)

Notice that in either case Paul’s ability to rejoice arose because he did not focus upon himself, but on Christ and on others—even in the face of dire and possibly deadly circumstances.

What is your life focus?  Is it on yourself—your acclaim, your comfort, your possessions, your peace, your safety, your convenience?

The famous way that Paul expressed this perspective is found in verse 21: “For to me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

What a wonderful perspective!  What a liberating perspective!  It was a double win!  Whether Paul lived or died, it was all for Christ and therefore even death would be gain.

Is Christ your life focus?  Will death be gain for you?

Notice that Paul says at the end of verse 18, “I will rejoice,” which has the idea “I will continue to rejoice” and then verse 19 gives the grounds of his rejoicing…

19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance,

Paul didn’t know for sure whether he would be released or executed.  Although his preliminary trial had gone favorably, the final verdict was yet to come.  You see, unlike our court system where an unfavorable verdict can be appealed to a higher court, Caesar was the final verdict.  Whatever he said, that was it.

And you might remember that the Caesar at the time was none other than that maniac—Nero!

Yet, in the very midst of all that might lend itself to uncertainty, Paul had definite assurance of his deliverance.  Somehow, he “knows…this will turn out for my deliverance.”  Paul uses the word for “knows” that speaks of the “knowledge of intuition or satisfied conviction.”

Because the words “will turn out for my deliverance” is an exact quote from the LXX text of Job 13:16, it is quite possible that Paul’s confidence was based on God impressing these words of Job on his heart.  Knowing that God had ultimately delivered Job, Paul was confident he would be delivered.

Now, although the word “deliverance” here is soteria, the word often translated “salvation,” it is clear that it is not justification that is in view, but physical deliverance.  Remember that the context determines the meaning.

Maybe, Paul uses this word to express the idea that he believed he would be vindicated (justified in the eyes of the court) and therefore released.

And on a deeper level, Paul knew that whether he lived or died, he would stand vindicated (with no condemnation) before the court of God.

Paul had prayed that the Philippians would stand “pure and blameless on the day of Christ” in v. 10 and now he is saying that the Philippians’ prayers for him would result in a “successful” stand—a vindication—before the judgment seat of Christ.

Paul wasn’t questioning at all whether he would end up in glory, nor is he expressing the idea that his ultimate salvation rested in the prayers of the saints.  Rather, his concern is that Christ be magnified in his life so that he would receive reward in heaven.  Paul was very careful to “beat my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified from the prize” (1 Cor. 9:27).

So Paul is rejoicing in this confidence he has, which has come “through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.”

Also interesting in verse 19 is the connection between the prayers of the Philippians and the supply of the Spirit to Paul.

Again, Paul isn’t calling into question the basic reality that every Christian has the Holy Spirit dwelling in them (cf. Rom. 8:9).  However, he also uses language like the Spirit being “given” to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:8), being “supplied” to the Galatians (Gal. 3:5) and tells the Ephesians they needed to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).

As Frank Thielman writes:

“All believers have the Spirit all the time, but they sometimes experience the Spirit’s presence in greater power and abundance than at other times.”

Peter was “filled with the Holy Spirit” when he stood before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:8); the Jerusalem believers were “filled with the Holy Spirit” and spoke the word boldly (Acts 4:31).  Stephen was “full of the Holy Spirit” prior to his martyrdom (Acts 7:55).  In all these cases, the people received an abundant measure of the Holy Spirit prior to a time of special testing or ministry, allowing them to stand firm and testify to the gospel.

And this is exactly what Paul wanted—that through their prayers for him he needed and wanted an unusual measure of the Holy Spirit that would allow him to have boldness to testify to Christ in front of crazy Nero!

Paul didn’t want this extra measure of the Holy Spirit so that he could experience some higher emotional plane, or even so he could enjoy his giftedness.  He especially wasn’t looking for more of the Spirit to give him health and wealth.  Rather, he hopes that the Spirit’s abundant presence in his life would lead him to bear courageous and clear testimony to the gospel, so that whether he is spared or executed “Christ will be exalted” (v. 20).

Jesus had promised this to his disciples.  He told them that when that stood before a court, the Holy Spirit would give them the words they needed to speak just the right words at just the right moment (Mark 13:11; Matthew 10:29; Luke 12:12).

Then, in vv. 20-21, Paul again states his confidence: “I will in no way be ashamed….Christ will be exalted” and again he gives a reason, “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Again, Paul can maintain a joyful attitude in very difficult and uncertain circumstances because whether he lived or died, he was centering his life around Christ and Christ would be exalted.  Joy exists when self is denied.

The words “eager expectation and hope” at the beginning of v. 20 express Paul forward stance.  The two words match each other.  “Eager expectation” is from the Greek word apokaradokia, which has the idea of turning the head away from something to look in another direction.  And that other direction is the future, expressed by the word “hope,” which, in the Bible, always means a “confident expectation.”

So Paul has this intense expectation that he would “not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body.”

He believed that he would survive.  But why was Paul so eager for this?  It is not because he could not bear with the suffering, or even that he feared dying.  Rather, his court appearance might demonstrate that he was innocent of all charges and therefore prove that the gospel was not a subversive element in the Roman empire.  His hope was that his personal vindication might clear the way for the declaration of the gospel.

What Paul is saying here is that: “Even if his appearance before a Roman tribunal results in condemnation and death at the hands of an executioner, Paul contends that he will not have been put to shame by his enemies and that the Lord will be exalted.  His physical circumstances were out of his hands, and it may look perhaps to some as if they are out of God’s as well, but the apostle knows that despite appearances God is still sovereign over the affairs of his life and that God will see him safely through to ultimate, eternal vindication” (Frank Thielman, p. 77).

Paul’s greatest desire is that Christ would be honored, or exalted.  The word here as the idea of making something great.

But Christ is already supremely great, so great that He couldn’t be any greater.  So, what does this mean?  How do we magnify something already so great?  Or, to put it another way, “How do we glorify God?”

John Piper describes it with this illustration:

We are not called to be microscopes, but telescopes.  Christians are not called to be con-men who magnify their product out of all proportion to reality, when they know the competitor’s product is far superior.  There is nothing and nobody superior to God.  And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is.

You see, a microscope takes something that is, in reality, quite small, but makes it look larger.  On the other hand, a telescope focuses on something exceedingly large, but far away, and makes it more clearly visible to the human eye.

Like the NASA photographs reveal the greatness and beauty and majesty of far away galaxies hidden from the naked eye, so we make the already immensely glorious, all beautiful, majestic Christ visible through our preaching and through our lives.

So, when we glorify God through our thoughts, words and deeds we do not add to his glory, but make his glory visible to others.

The reason Paul could be so confident in his ultimate deliverance and future opportunity to magnify Christ is that “to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Paul was not afraid of death and didn’t need to grasp onto life.  His life was bound up with Christ.  Nothing else was important.  Later, in chapter 3, Paul will tell us that he considered everything else rubbish in order to gain Christ and his greatest desire in life was to know Him.

When you “live to” Someone, you center your life around that person.  Your allegiance, affections, attention and energies are all directed towards that one person.

Notice that Paul starts this verse with the words “to me.”  In other words, this is Paul’s personal perspective of what makes life worth living.  It is his settled conviction.  It is ours?

What is your life mission statement?  What do you want to accomplish in life?  Ask yourself, “When all is said and done, will I be proud of what I spent my life on?”

See if you can figure out who made these causes their life’s ambition:

• “end slavery and preserve our nation” (Abraham Lincoln)
• “lead our nation out of the Great Depression” (FDR)
• “eradicate racism in our land once for all” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
• “to show mercy and compassion to the poor” (Mother Teresa)

And this one should be easy:

• “to seek and save the lost” (Jesus)

But what was Paul’s life mission statement:

• “I want to know Christ”

You see, simple statements like these gave these people single-minded focus and great determination and as a result they accomplished great things.

You can’t easily derail a person with a focused and significant cause.

Imagine if we had a church filled with people who had a laser-like focus to know and follow Jesus Christ!

What is “life” to you?  What does it mean to “really live”?  Sad to say, for most of us it is not Christ.

Even most of those who name Christ as their Savior don’t make Christ the center focus of their lives.  Too many other things, and many of them good things, crowd into the center of our lives and demand our attention and drain our affection.

What did it mean for Paul to have Christ as his life?  It meant that he focused every moment—every moment—on living for Christ’s glory, on doing whatever he could to help others see the greatness of God.

Gerald Hawthorne describes it as:

“Life is summed up in Christ.  Life is filled up with, occupied with Christ, in the sense that everything Paul does—trusts, loves, hopes, obeys, preaches, follows, and so on—is inspired by Christ and is done for Christ.” (Hawthorne, p. 45)

Commentator John Eadie, in his commentary on Philippians, says…

—the preaching of Christ the business of my life
—the presence of Christ the cheer of my life
—the image of Christ the crown of my life
—the Spirit of Christ the life of my life
—the love of Christ the power of my life
—the will of Christ the law of my life
—and the glory of Christ the end of my life.

Christ was the absorbing element of his life. If he travelled, it was on Christ’s errand; if he suffered, it was in Christ’s service. When he spoke, his theme was Christ; and when he wrote, Christ filled his letters…

And here’s the great lesson—when Christ is our life, death is gain.  It is gain, real gain.

So, if our life is much about Christ, there will be much gain; little about Christ, little gain.

And if Christ is not in your life at all, death is not gain but rather horrible, tragic loss.

Notice that Paul is attacking one of our cultural icons:  Life is good and death is to be avoided at all costs.  Our society’s goal is the postponement of death as long as possible.

The Greek pagan viewed death as release from earthly troubles but no more.  Paul saw death not only as a continuing of his relationship with Christ (vs. w3), but genuine gain.  Knowing Christ causes us to look beyond the grave.

Paul sees both life and death as vehicles through which he can enjoy Christ.  Greater than life is Christ.  Greater than death is Christ.

Death won’t be nearly as much gain for us as it could be if we don’t make Christ our life-focus here and now, and from this day forward.

On the flip side, it is when we begin to take seriously the idea that eternity could be great grain for us if we would just make Christ the center of our lives now.

“…It is tempting for believers to live as if there were nothing beyond the grave.  This can only cause us to clutch our material possessions more tightly for the security they can give and keep us from risking our lives in the service of God” (Frank Thielman, p. 89)

Two extended quotations on Philippians 1:21

Since Paul was in prison awaiting trial, he had to face the fact that it was quite uncertain whether he would live or die; and to him it made no difference.

“Living,” he says, in his great phrase, “is Christ to me.”  For Paul, Christ had been the beginning of life, for on that day on the Damascus road it was as if he had begun life all over again. Christ had been the continuing of life; there had never been a day when Paul had not lived in his presence, and in the frightening moments Christ had been there to bid him be of good cheer (Acts 18:9-10).  Christ was the end of life, for it was towards his eternal presence that life ever led.  Christ was the inspiration of life; he was the dynamic of life.  To Paul, Christ had given the task of life, for it was he who had made him an apostle and sent him out as the evangelist of the Gentiles.  To him Christ had given the strength for life, for it was Christ’s all-sufficient grace that was made perfect in Paul’s weakness.  For him Christ was the reward of life, for to Paul the only worthwhile reward was closer fellowship with his Lord.  If Christ were to be taken out of life, for Paul there would be nothing left.

“For me,” said Paul, “death is gain”.  Death was entrance into Christ’s nearer presence.  There are passages in which Paul seems to regard death as a sleep, from which all men at some future general resurrection shall be wakened (1 Corinthians 16:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:14 and 16); but at the moment when its breath was on him Paul thought of death not as a falling asleep but as an immediate entry into the presence of his Lord.  If we believe in Jesus Christ, death for us is union and reunion, union with him and reunion with those whom we have loved and lost awhile.

The result was that Paul was swayed between two desires. “I am caught,” he says, “between two desires.”  As the Revised Standard Version has it: “I am hard pressed between the two.”

–William Barclay

My father’s favorite verse throughout most of his life was Romans 8:28, but toward the end of his life he claimed Philippians 1:21, “for me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” When we live much for Christ, we have much gain. When we live little for Christ, we have little gain. When we live not for Christ at all, we have no gain, but loss. Listen to the words of John Eadie:

“Christ, says the Apostle, shall be magnified in my body by life, ‘for to me to live is Christ.’ Christ and life were one and the same thing to him.

Might not the sentiment be thus expanded? For me to live is Christ:

—the preaching of Christ the business of my life
—the presence of Christ the cheer of my life
—the image of Christ the crown of my life
—the Spirit of Christ the life of my life
—the love of Christ the power of my life
—the will of Christ the law of my life
—and the glory of Christ the end of my life.

Christ was the absorbing element of his life. If he travelled, it was on Christ’s errand; if he suffered, it was in Christ’s service. When he spoke, his theme was Christ; and when he wrote, Christ filled his letters…

And when did the Apostle utter this sentiment? It was not as he rose from the earth, dazzled into blindness by the Redeemer’s glory, and the words of the first commission were ringing in his ears.

It was not in Damascus, while, as the scales fell from his sight, he recognized the Lord’s goodness and power, and his baptism proclaimed his formal admission to the church.

Nor was it in Arabia, where supernatural wisdom so fully unfolded to him the facts and truths which he was uniformly to proclaim. It sprang not from any momentary elation as at Cyprus, where he confounded the sorcerer, and converted the Roman proconsul.

No, the resolution was written at Rome in bonds, and after years of unparalleled toil and suffering. His past career had been signalized by stripes, imprisonment, deaths, shipwreck, and unnumbered perils, but he did not regret them.

He had been ‘in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness,’ but his ardour was unchilled; and let him only be freed, and his life prolonged, and his motto still would be—’For me to live is Christ.’

It did not repent the venerable confessor now, when he was old, infirm, and a prisoner, with a terrible doom suspended over him, that he had done so much, travelled so much, spoken so much, and suffered so much for Christ.

Nor was the statement like a suspicious vow in a scene of danger, which is too often wrung from cowardice, and held up as a bribe to the Great Preserver, but forgotten when the crisis passes, and he who made it laughs at his own timidity.

No. It was no new course the Apostle proposed—it was only a continuation of those previous habits which his bondage had for a season interrupted. Could there be increase to a zeal that had never flagged, or could those labours be multiplied which had filled every moment and called out every energy?

In fine, the saying was no idle boast, like that of Peter at the Last Supper—the flash of a sudden enthusiasm so soon to be drowned in tears. For the apostle had the warrant of a long career to justify his assertion, and who can doubt that he would have verified it, and nobly shown that still, as hitherto, for him to live was Christ?

He sighed not under the burden, as if age needed repose; or sank into self-complacency, as if he had done enough, for the Lord’s commission was still upon him, and the wants of the world were so numerous and pressing, as to claim his last word, and urge his last step.

It was such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ, who placed on record the memorable clause, inscribed also on his heart—’for me to live is Christ.’”

–John Eadie, A Commentary on the Greek Text of the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians (ed. W. Young; Second Edition.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1884), 51–51-52.

May you and I live much for Christ today. May He be our life, our joy, our treasure and greatest pleasure.

Philippians has been called the epistle of joy.  Joy is certainly a dominant theme of this book and reflect Paul’s own attitude as well.  He is writing this epistle from a Roman prison.  Including his imprisonment in Caesarea, Paul has now spent close to four years in prison.  For a man who had spent much of the previous decade moving from city to city preaching the gospel and planting churches, this would have seemed to have stymied Paul’s ministry.

But in this section of Philippians 1 we find that instead his imprisonment had only served to advance the gospel.  It was claiming new ground.  Two things were causing Paul problems.  First was his chains, which would seem to limit him, but instead had only given him greater opportunity and had emboldened others to share the gospel as well.  This was an external, physical trial that God was using for good.

In vv. 15-18 we read of the second trouble that Paul faced—competition from other preachers.  But what again might seem a loss was proving to be gain, as they, too, were sharing the gospel.  This internal, emotional trial God was also using for good.

And the reason Paul could rejoice is that he placed greater value on the spread of the gospel than his own comfort and convenience.  In vv. 15-18 of Philippians 1 we read…

15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

All was not well in the Roman church despite the fact that the vast majority had the courage to speak the word.  There were actually two groups of preachers in the church who proclaimed Christ but from different motives: “Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will” (v. 15).

Apparently there were some who were preaching “out of rivalry” with Paul, thinking that their gain meant his loss, their success meant his failure.

The identity of those here who preach Christ from envy and rivalry is difficult to determine. They are clearly antagonistic to Paul, and thus one could imagine they are the same “Judaizing” people mentioned in ch. 3. But it is hard to see how Paul could rejoice in the proclamation of something (namely, a return to the old covenant) which he saw as a betrayal of the good news (see esp. the letter to the Galatians). It seems more likely that these were other Christians who preached a generally sound gospel but were personally at odds with Paul. (ESV Study Bible)

Paul contrasts between two groups here:  Both groups were preaching Christ, but Paul’s friends were doing it with “good will,” “out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.”  The others were doing it “out of envy and rivalry,” “not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.”

One might wonder why Paul even brought this up.  I can think of two reasons.  First, Paul acknowledges that there are people like this who exist within Christian circles—people who desire to build a kingdom to themselves.  Second, I believe that Paul wanted to model how to move beyond the hurt and rejection in ministry to a deeper joy.  After all, they were “preaching Christ.”

Sometimes, we pastors can get envious of our more gifted brothers who have larger followings.  Whether through giftedness or opportunity they seem to prosper more than we do.  But as long as they “preach Christ” we should rejoice.

Envy is an insidious poison in our hearts.  Envy is annoyance at the success of others so much so that we want to deprive them of it rather than gain it ourselves.

Paul had come to Rome with a long list of ministerial successes to his credit. Notwithstanding his unimpressive appearance, the gifts Paul possessed were immense, unique apostolic endowments.  He had taken the gospel to Asia Minor and on into Europe, fighting Judaizers and heretics all the way — and had won.  When Paul arrived in Rome, the focus of the church turned naturally to the apostle, and some of the leadership turned green with envy and began a contentious gospel rivalry.

On the other hand, the majority preached Christ “from good will.”  And Paul explains of them, “The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel” (v. 16).  They understood that Paul was under orders issued by God and that his captivity was part of his defense of the gospel.  So those in the majority were motivated to preach Christ by their love for God and their love for his apostle.

John Claypool said in his 1979 Yale Lecture on Preaching that even while in seminary he experienced jealous jockeying for position and that his experience in the parish ministry had not been much different.  He writes:

I can still recall going to state and national conventions in our denomination and coming home feeling drained and unclean, because most of the conversation in the hotel rooms and the halls was characterized either by envy of those who were doing well or scarcely concealed delight for those who were doing poorly.  For did that not mean that someone was about to fall, and thus create an opening higher up the ladder? (John R. Claypool, The Preaching Event (Waco, TX: Word, 1980), p. 68)

But whatever these preachers were saying about Paul, he was most more concerned with what they were saying about Christ, and in that case they were “preaching Christ.”  Paul was thus more concerned about the content of their preaching than their method of preaching.

What we must focus on is not our brothers’ successes or failures, but whether the gospel is being preached and whether the church is life giving.  If so, then we need to rejoice in their success and be glad that they are here.

We’re not sure all they were saying to try to cause Paul harm.  Perhaps they were casting doubt on his apostolic credentials, or saying that his sufferings meant his message was insufficient, or possibly that his sufferings meant their was sin in his life.  Maybe they were disappointed that Paul was advocating his own release, believing that it was more spiritual to die as a martyr.  Whatever it was, it was focused on Paul.

Yet, Jesus Christ was preached as well, and in that Paul rejoiced.

At the end of the day, after all their efforts to oppose Paul, they only succeeded in doing the thing that was most important to his heart and that his friends were also doing—preaching Christ and seeing people saved.

Joy, it’s a matter of perspective.

Our perspective in life is directly related to what we think about.  Your brain is like a bank.  What you put into it determines what you will be able to draw out of it.

Do you remember the old computer term GIGO—garbage in, garbage out.  That meant that you couldn’t expect good results from poor coding.

So what do you put into your mind, your brain bank?  Paul will counsel the Philippians later  “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8).

If you plant the truths of God’s Word in your heart, those truths will guide your thinking, which is especially helpful when your world is crumbling around you, when all outside “data” seems to tell you that God isn’t good, isn’t wise and isn’t on your side.

What is the orientation of your thinking?  If our orientation is primarily about ourselves, then we will naturally get unhappy and angry when things don’t turn out our way.  But if our orientation is towards God and the gospel and about eternal things, then we can maintain our joy because we know that God can brings gains out of chains and advances out of adversity.

Again, the key to making the best out of the worst is to focus on how even our worst circumstances could be advancing the kingdom of God.

Because Christ was being preached, Paul said, “I rejoice.”  He had learned not to get sidetracked by the small stuff.  Even though Paul was in chains, the gospel was not.  Even though some meant to hurt Paul, he was still rejoicing.

The Apostle Paul had ample reason to feel down.  He was the missionary general of the early church, a type A personality if there ever was one.  Confinement was tough on his activist soul.  He knew the gospel as did no other.  He was the preeminent theologian of the apostolic church.  He had more knowledge in his little finger than his detractors had in their combined IQs.  He had the right stuff.  He could take a beating like no one else.  No one could gainsay his experience.  But Paul refused to have a pity party.  There was no “Why me?” from Paul.

Rather, Paul voiced an astonishing attitude: “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice” (v. 18).

Paul was so gospel-intoxicated, so centered on getting the good news of Christ out to the lost in Rome, that his feelings and aspirations were subsumed and subject to the gospel.

Don Carson writes:

Paul’s example is impressive and clear: Put the advance of the gospel at the center of your aspirations.  Our own comfort, our bruised feelings, our reputations, our misunderstood motives — all of these are insignificant in comparison with the advance and splendor of the gospel.  As Christians, we are called upon to put the advance of the gospel at the very center of our aspirations.

What are your aspirations?  To make money?  To get married?  To travel? To see your grandchildren grow up?  To find a new job?  To retire early?  None of these is inadmissible; none is to be despised.  The question is whether these aspirations become so devouring that the Christian’s central aspiration is squeezed to the periphery or choked out of existence entirely (D. A. Carson, Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1996), p. 25, 26).

It’s like John Piper said in his address to the Passion 2000 students entitled, “You Have Only One Life, Don’t Waste It.”  In that address he pled with these young people to chose to make a difference with their lives.  He said…

You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world.  But you do have to know the few great things that matter, and then be willing to live for them and die for them.  The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by a few great things.

If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity, you don’t have to have a high IQ or a high EQ.  You don’t have to have good looks or riches.  You don’t have to come from a fine family or a fine school.  You just have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things, and be set on fire by them.

But I know that not everybody in this crowd wants their life to make a difference.  There are hundreds of you — you don’t care whether you make a lasting difference for something great, you just want people to like you.  If people would just like you, you’d be satisfied.  Or if you could just have a good job with a good wife and a couple good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement, and quick and easy death and no hell — if you could have that, you’d be satisfied even without God.

That is a tragedy in the making.

Three weeks ago, we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon.  Ruby was over eighty.  Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick.  Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon.

The brakes give way, over the cliff they go, and they’re gone — killed instantly.

And I asked my people: was that a tragedy?  Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ — two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico.  No.  That is not a tragedy.  That is a glory.

I tell you what a tragedy is.  I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is. “Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.  Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their thirty foot trawler, playing softball and collecting shells.”

That’s a tragedy.  And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream.  And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it.  With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream.  The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: “Here it is Lord — my shell collection!  And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat!”

Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.

The reason Paul was the apostle of joy is that he gave his life to the things that mattered.  He didn’t let petty people or hurtful people steal his joy, as long as Christ was being preached.

He didn’t waste his life on the things that really won’t matter in eternity.

Paul was concerned about the gospel, about defending the gospel.  As long as Christ was preached and the gospel being proclaimed, he would rejoice.

One other thing, notice the connection between those who love Paul and their knowledge of the fact that he was defending the gospel.  He had prayed that their love would be a smart, discerning love back in vv. 9-11 and here is an example of the fact that they did have a discerning love.

Paul had been “put here” for the defense of the gospel.  Why this word?  Maybe he had in mind the words of Jesus to his apostles in Luke 21:

12 But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. 13 This will be your opportunity to bear witness.

Far from being threatened to remain silent, far from being cowed into silence, Paul saw his imprisonment as the very opportunity he had to defend the gospel.  Not himself, but the gospel.

So what was Paul trying to do in this portion of Philippians?

First, he was trying to encourage them by his own example of how to focus his perspective in time of hardship.  He will get back to this in vv. 27-30.

Second, he wanted the Philippians to know that God works not merely in spite of but through our troubles.  God is able to work ALL THINGS, both good AND bad, towards a good ending.

Finally, Paul wanted to remind them that they must connect their joy to the right things—neither personal conveniences or public approval—but on the advancement of God’s glory through the gospel.

So, how do you make the best out of the worst?  By choosing to focus your mind on the advancement of God’s glory rather than your own convenience and comfort, your own applause or approval ratings.  Then you will rejoice and have great joy.

They say that two things are certain—death and taxes.  But for the Christian there is one thing that we can depend upon—we will go through difficult times.  Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation…” (John 16:33).  James doesn’t say “count it all joy IF you go through various trials” but “when you go through various trials” (James 1:2).  Paul was careful to remind his disciples “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22)

Of course, the reason Paul said this was because he went through many trials himself.  He had “been there and done that.”  Yet, through it all, he maintained his joy.  Listen to his words to the Philippians in Philippians 1:12-18…

12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. 14 And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. 15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. 18 What then?  Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,

You’ve heard of Murphy’s law?  It has been formulated in a variety of ways:

• Nothing is as easy as it looks.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• If anything can go wrong, it will.
• If everything seems to be going well, you’ve obviously overlooked something.
• It is impossible to make everything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.

Well, Paul might have adopted Murphy as his last name, because in almost every town he entered, he encountered trouble.  Many lesser men would have become soured and scared, and would have quit.

But, you see, one of the surest measures of a Christian’s spiritual maturity is what it takes to rob him or her or their Spirit-bestowed joy.  For many, it doesn’t take much—long lines, whiny kids, being underappreciated or unappreciated.

Yet Satan’s ploy is to destroy our joy.  Why?  Because he knows that the “joy of the Lord is our strength.”

He brings trouble into our lives to try to keep us from maintaining our confidence that God is for us.  He wants to destroy our joy.  Yet, it is vital that you keep your joy.

In this passage, even though Paul was in prison and going through some tough times, he says, “I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice…”

Let’s review just a few basic facts about joy.

First, the joyful Christian is the most attractive witness for Christ.  We have “good news of great joy” to declare.  How can we be “bad news believers” when we have such “good news” to share?

Second, when we truly know Jesus Christ as our Savior and His work for us, joy is a natural (or should I say supernatural) by-product.  In fact, it is called the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22).  Thus, it should mark us as believers.

Finally, joy is a matter of obedience.  The Bible commands us to rejoice and to “serve the Lord with gladness.”  C. S. Lewis believed that this command to rejoice was the most disobeyed command in the Bible.  A persistently sad saint is a disobedient disciple.

So “joy up cowboy!”

Here is what Paul will teach us in this passage, and it is a very important lesson.  Paul teaches us here that “joy is a matter of perspective.”  It is a matter of how we view things.

Joy is the settled conviction that God is for us and sovereignly works all things together for my good and His glory.  All things!

The issue that determines our happiness, therefore, is not so much what happens to us as in how we interpret what happens to us.

If we can view every circumstance, no matter how tragic or troublesome, from the settled conviction that God is for us and working everything for our good, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and rejoice.

Joy is a choice, regardless of circumstances.  And joy comes from choosing to rejoice in difficult circumstances.

The key to making the best out of the worst is by focusing on what really matters—the greater realities of God and His love for me, His goodness and control over all things in my life, and eternal rewards.

Now, Philippians 1:12-26 is all one section.  The focus is on the present troubles Paul was experiencing.  It is common in epistolary literature of the time, to follow an introduction (such as vv. 1-11) with a description of what was going on in the reader’s life.

Philippians 1:12-26 tells the Philippians that Paul was still in prison awaiting trial, still somewhat unsure whether he would live or die.  The passage begins and ends with the signal word prokopeo, which means “progress” or “advancement” (Phil. 1:12, 25).  This signal word not only shows the boundaries of this section of Philippians, but also points out Paul’s key concern.

Paul was joyful because the gospel was advancing (1:12-18) and because he might potentially advance into Christ’s presence (1:19-26).

Today and next week we’re going to focus on vv. 12-18—where Paul is describing his imprisonment.  The amazing thing is that Paul’s real focus is less about him and more about the gospel—how it was advancing despite the fact that he was standing still.

In this section, Paul faces two problems—the trouble of chains and the trouble of competition.

The Trouble of Chains

The bad news was that Paul was still in prison.  He had spent 2 years in prison in Caesarea and now nearly 2 years in Rome.  He had been in jail for four years, unable to move around the churches he had planted, OR plant churches in new areas.

The good news, however, is that although Paul was stationary, the gospel was advancing into unexpected places and in unexpected ways.

Gerald Hawthorne in his commentary to the Philippians says it well:

“When Paul was arrested in Jerusalem (Acts 21) and shut away in prison in Caesarea (Acts 23, 24), one could easily imagine that this was the end of his ministry, especially as his imprisonment dragged on month after month (Acts 24:27). But in the providence of God the place of his imprisonment, the Praetorium of Herod (Acts 23:35), and the length of his imprisonment, both served to thrust the gospel up into higher levels of Roman society than it had ever reached before.” (Word Biblical Commentary)

Mike Leake then comments:

What I really love about this story is that Paul is dying to get to Rome—and in the wisdom of God he sends Paul to Rome as a prisoner.  As we are going to learn in the coming days Paul was able to minister to people and places that had he not been a prisoner he probably would have never won an audience.

We so often base our happiness on getting what we wanted…now.  But God in His wisdom and goodness plans other ways to give us our greater joy and it brings Him greater glory.

Now, notice that Paul is not talking so much about his imprisonment.  That is old news and the Philippians were already aware of that.  Rather, he is focusing on the opportunities that this imprisonment was bringing.

Homer Kent suggests

Perhaps Paul had been moved from his hired house (Acts 28:30) to the Praetorian camp or to some place more accessible to the trial scene.

Satan will stop our plans in an effort to spark frustration so that we will gripe and complain rather than rejoice.

But good news shines brightest in bad news situations.

John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress (which probably wouldn’t have been written if he had not been jailed), Bunyan was imprisoned for preaching the gospel.  He was allowed to preach to his inmates, but when crowds started gathering outside the prison walls, they put a stop to that.  In solitary confinement he penned Pilgrim’s Progress, a treasure to us still today.

Here was Paul’s situation: Although he was still imprisoned and didn’t know whether he would be released, what has happened “has really served to advance the gospel.”  The word “really” or “rather” in some versions, serves to announce that something unexpected has happened!

Far from hindering the spread of the gospel, Paul’s imprisonment was actually helping it; instead of slowing it down, it was actually speeding it up!

Instead of impeding or stopping the spread of the gospel, God was using Paul’s bad circumstances to “advance” the gospel.

Now that word “advance,” which, as we mentioned, comes from prokopos, is a word-picture of pioneers cutting a path before a marching army.

History has shown that “chains” (sometimes even people dying for their faith) has served to advance the gospel. In fact an early Christian writer Tertullian proclaimed that, “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”

The story of Jim Elliot and 4 other missionaries to the Auca Indians portrays this beautifully:

“In the Autumn of 1955, missionary pilot Nate Saint spotted an Auca village.  During the ensuing months, Elliot and several fellow missionaries dropped gifts from a plane, attempting to befriend the hostile tribe.  In January of 1956, Elliot and four companions landed on a beach of the Curaray River in eastern Ecuador.  They had several friendly contacts with the fierce tribe that had previously killed several Shell Oil company employees.  Two days later, on January 8, 1956, all five men were speared and hacked to death by warriors from the Auca tribe.” (Taken from http://www.intouch.org/myintouch/mighty/portraits/jim_elliot_213678.html)

These men never had the opportunity to share Christ with the Auca tribes—at least not with their lips.  What is really interesting to note is that a few years after Jim Eliot was martyred his wife, Elisabeth, among many of the other missionary wives were able to make contact with the Auca Indians and many where led to Christ; in fact it is told that Elisabeth had the opportunity to lead the Indian who had killed her husband to faith in Jesus Christ.  Jim Elliot and those 4 other missionaries where much like the Apostle Paul—pioneers cutting a way before the gospel could march through.

Jim Elliot’s now famous quote sums up well the motivation of those who give their lives (whether in life or death) to the cause of Christ.  In a journal entry a few years before he ultimately gave his life Elliot wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

• Ask yourself today am I giving my life for what I cannot keep?  Or am I giving my life to gain what I cannot lose?  To put that another way—are you living for eternity or for the fleeting pleasures of today?
• In what areas of your life is God calling you to be a “path cutter”?
• In what areas of your life is God calling you to advance the gospel after those who have already “cut a path”?

The key to Paul’s joy is that he kept a kingdom perspective.  Instead of focusing only upon himself, he was more concerned about the spread of the gospel.  His joy derived from seeing this and being committed to placing the salvation of others ahead of his own comfort and convenience, indeed ahead of his very own life.  In other words, he made the best out of the worst by remembering what was most important.

Paul then explains in v. 13 how this “advancement” had taken place.

First, the gospel was being declared more broadly.

Paul was chained to a member of the palace guard, and I’m sure they rotated in and out.  This palace guard were the Navy Seals of their day.  They not only had a major influence within the military, but also in political issues.  Also, these very men would be sent out (as missionaries!) throughout the Roman empire to take care of problems and secure goals.

In Paul’s mind, he wasn’t chained to these guards, they were chained to him!  He had a captive audience for several hours a day.  With the potential of 8-hour shifts, Paul could have potentially met with as many as 2,200 of these elite soldiers during the past two years!

Many of them had come to faith in Christ.  We know this because of Paul’s greeting to the disciples at Philippi in 4:22, where Paul says “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.”

Now, this may well be another group of people that Paul had an opportunity to witness to, the very members of Caesar’s household, certainly servants and possibly family members.

This was literally a “chain reaction!”

Wiersbe notes:

“Little did the Romans realize that the chains they affixed to his wrists would release Paul instead of bind him!  Even as he wrote during a later imprisonment, “I suffer trouble, as an evildoer (not because he was an evildoer, but as an evildoer would), even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound” (2 Tim. 2:9)

The result is that it had “become clear,” an adjective expressing the idea “known for what it really is” and expresses the notion that Paul’s imprisonment might have appeared at first glance to be truly defeating and miserable, but on closer inspection it had been a gold mine for evangelism.

What we need to do when we go through trials and troubles is to ask God to make it “clear” to us what He is trying to accomplish through it.  Like James encourages, “ask for wisdom” (James 1:5).  The clearer we are on what God is trying to accomplish, the greater our ability to fight for joy.

Paul wanted the Philippians (and us) to develop this same ability to see clearly and to be amazed at how God can use negative circumstances for a greater good.

Throughout history God has been using trials and troubles to advance the gospel.

By Tertullian’s day (about 150 years later) there were so many Christians in the Roman Empire that it was causing problems for Rome and their pagan way of life.

Secondly, we see that the gospel was advancing in that it was now being declared more boldly by others.

Paul says that others had been emboldened by Paul’s imprisonment and his continued urgency to preach the gospel, that “most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear” (1:15).

People were being challenged by Paul’s example.  If he could do it, they reasoned that they could do it.

The word “speak” here is not “preach,” but rather in their everyday conversation.  Maybe the Roman citizens knew of Paul’s case and the Christians were using this opportunity to direct them to the good news.

Paul was clearly rejoicing in the fact that neither he nor these people were letting anything stop them from sharing the good news with others.  May you and I be emboldened as well.

We are back in Philippians 1 today, looking at Paul’s prayer for the Philippians in 1:9-11.

9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

We noted last week that Paul was praying that their love would increase and that it would be intelligent, that it would be boundless, but have boundaries—that we would express it in large measures, but in the right way at the right time for the right reason.

Another verse which expresses this balance is Romans 12:9

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.

For love to be “without hypocrisy,” implying that it is quite possible for our love to be hypocritical (self-serving, for example), we have to abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good.  Obviously, even knowing the difference involves a moral judgment, but then we have reject (literally “hate”) what is evil for our love to be genuine, and not let go of what is good, and right.

Far too often in the name of love we have jettisoned what is good and right and true in order to go with the flow of our culture.  But if our love is to be genuine, we have to hold the line on truth and “abhor what is evil.”

Genuine love takes a stand against evil.  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:6, love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”

Love deals with sin because sin destroys people.  Therefore, genuine love must discern sin and bring truth against it.

When love is increasing and intelligent, Paul says it then allows us to “approve what is excellent.”

The word “approve” is sometimes translated “discern,” but this one is a common word.  It is dokimazo in the Greek.  It has the idea of “to test in order to approve.”  It referred to testing money to make sure it wasn’t counterfeit, to test a candidate for political office and Luke 21:56 speaks of testing the sky to discern the weather.

Do you remember how, when you bought a pair of pants, a piece of paper with a number would be in the pocket?  That number showed that the pants had been tested, not to see if they would fail the test, but to prove that they were of good quality.

Paul is praying that they would abound in love and knowledge so that they would make good choices in their daily lives.

We might say that in this case Paul is concerned not so much with whether they can discern good from evil, but the good from the better and the best.  To be able to set proper values on things, activities or even people is not only distinguishing good from evil, but the good from the best.

We want to approve and pursue those things, activities and people that really matter in life, and not live trivial pursuits.

Sometimes Scripture is very clear as to what our priorities ought to be, such as “seek first the kingdom of God” and “Mary has chosen the better part.”  Paul, later in this book, will say, “This one thing I do.”

In order to approve the things that are excellent and do them, we must “renew our minds” through God’s Word so that we can “prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2) and “test all things; holding fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

We all face choices in life. Some are crucial, many seem less consequential.  How do we decide?  How can we make choices to do what is excellent, what is important?

Little choices may matter greatly.  Even gray areas can be vitally important for us to make the best choice.

Unless we have this knowledge and discernment guided love, we are likely to make poor, selfish choices of how to use our time and energy and money.

But Paul is praying that their love would ramp up to white hot and also be guided by cool reason and practical discernment so that they make excellent choices in how they will spend their lives.

Since the Bible doesn’t give us clear “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not” in every situation, we need a love guided by wisdom to make the right choices.

Now, Paul’s second request for the Philippians is that they would live an authentic life—that they would be sincere and blameless and fruitful (vv. 10b-11a).

and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness

Paul knew that when people begin to lose their love for Christ, their moral lives begin to go downhill.  Choosing the best in life consistently is that allows us to live sincerely, blamelessly and righteously.

Our English word “sincere” comes from the Latin sine cera, literally meaning “without wax.”  In the ancient world normal, everyday pottery would be thick and not very pretty.  But decorative pottery was thin and therefore could easily crack in the firing or drying process.  Less then honest dealers would fill those cracks with wax and repaint.

Honest dealers would put a sign marking their pottery as “sine cera,” without wax.

The Greek term for “sincere” is eilikrines, a compound word consisting of helios (“sun”) and krino, “to judge.”  When you take something out into the light of the sun it makes it easier to judge whether there are any cracks or smudges.  The sun exposes stains and blemishes in materials, or cracks in pottery, even beneath the wax.

God wants our lives to pass the test of exposure to the light, to the truth.  God wants us to live blameless lives.  The word “blameless” here is aproskopos, meaning “not stumbling.”  God wants us to be able to stand or walk without stumbling, without falling.

It makes a difference both where we walk and how we walk, according to Psalm 1.

1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

When we traffic in the ways of sin (v. 1), we are bound to stumble.  Later in Psalm 1 David describes their lives as like chaff, so insubstantial that a breeze blows it away.  But the man who delights in God’s law and consistently meditates on it will be as strong and stable as a vibrant tree.

Now, you and I both know that we sometimes fall.  We do sometimes stumble into sin.  But Scripture gives us clear instructions on how Christians are to deal with their sins.  Although judicially all our sins were forgiven at the cross, relationally we must come to the Father and confess our sins (1 John 1:9).

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Not only are we not to stumble, but we shouldn’t cause others to stumble.  Paul talks about this in terms of the strong not causing the weak to stumble, in Romans 14, by choosing NOT to do things which are lawful to do, but which would damage the conscience of weaker Christians.

Likewise, Jesus speaks of causing children to stumble and how damnable that is.

6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!

The reality is that children practice in excess what their parents excuse in moderation.  So watch your life.  Not only do you not want to stumble, but you don’t want to cause others to stumble.

Whereas “sincere” focuses primarily upon our own character, “blameless” focuses more on the result of my character.  Will my life result in blame?

Notice that Paul qualifies this with “until the day of Christ” (cf. v. 6).  He is referring here to the day Christ returns and we stand before the Bema seat to give an account for our lives.  To be sincere and blameless before our fellow man is one thing, but to stand before Jesus Christ sincere and blameless must be our goal and our desire.  This requires more of us.  It makes our choices in life much more serious.

The emphasis here shows that the future coming of Jesus Christ should be much more than a prophetic curiosity, but a truth that has significant impact on how I live my life each moment.  Knowing that Christ may return at any moment and I may have to give an account of my life should lead me to make different choices and live completely committed and pure.

1 John 2:28-3:3 says…

28 And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. 29 If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. 1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

Christ may appear at any moment.  So every moment I must live as if it were the moment and live so that “when he appears I may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.”  Since Jesus is sincere and blameless, and we will be made like him (3:2), we should want to “purify ourselves” (3:3).

So live today as if it were THE DAY.

Paul indicates in Philippians 2:15 that we need to be “blameless and pure” in the midst of a “crooked and depraved generation.”  This means it certainly won’t be easy.  Everything around us will have a great attractional pull on our lives.  It will be difficult to be “blameless and pure” but if we can, we will “shine like stars.”

The third aspect of authentic living that Paul speaks of here is that we would be righteous.  But Paul indicates that this righteousness is based not so much on our own efforts, but in cooperation with and dependence upon God to produce this kind of righteous life.

In three ways Paul emphasizes this dependence upon God.  When Paul says we are to be “filled with fruit” he uses the passive voice, indicating that we are being filled by someone else, not ourselves.

Now, to “be filled” with something is a picture of being controlled by something.  When someone is “filled with anger” or “filled with fear,” it means that anger or fear controls them.  Thus, to be “filled with the Spirit” means to be controlled by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and here to be “filled with the fruit of righteousness” means that righteousness is controlling our lives, it dominates our lives.

Using the perfect tense here, Paul is indicating that this filling was completed in the past BUT has still continuing results of producing more and more righteousness in our lives today.  I believe Paul is referring to the gift of a righteous life that we received when we were united with Christ.  When we believed in Christ and the Spirit baptized us into Christ, we were united with Christ and received all His benefits.

Thus, His perfect righteousness was credited to our account.  Now, positionally, or definitively, when God looks at believers He sees not their sins, but Christ’s righteousness.  In God’s eyes were stand perfectly righteous.  That is the completed part in the past.

But that righteousness is now manifested in our practical, daily lives—again through faith—as we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, believing that the Christ who lives in us will live His righteousness through us.

Also, by using the imagery of “fruit” Paul is again emphasizing that this kind of life comes from our connectedness to the source of life.  It reminds us of Jesus’ teaching in John 15 that we cannot produce fruit on our own, but simply through abiding in Christ.

1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

Every good thing that comes from our lives is produced out of our regular communion with Jesus Christ.  When we fail to “tarry there,” we cut ourselves off from the source of life.  We are like a hose that could produce water, but we have failed to turn the spigot.  But the real power is not in the faucet, but in the vast reservoirs of Jesus Christ.

You’ve heard of Lawrence of Arabia.

After the Great War, Lawrence was in Paris with some of his Arab friends.  He showed them the sights of the city: the Arch of Triumph, the Louvre, Napoleon’s tomb, and the Champs Elysees, but none of those impressed them.  The one thing that did interest them the most was the faucet in the bathtub at their hotel room.

They spent much of their time in the room, turning the water on and off.  They found it amazing that one could simply turn a handle and get all the water he wanted.  Later, when they were ready to leave Paris and return to the Middle East, Lawrence found them in the bathroom with wrenches trying to disconnect the faucet.

“You see,” they said, “it is very dry in Arabia.   What we need are faucets. If we have them, we will have all the water we want.”

Lawrence had to explain to them that the effectiveness of the faucets did not lie in themselves but in the vast reservoirs of water to which they were attached.  And even beyond that it was the rain and snowfalls of the Alps that produced the water for the reservoirs.

Are you attached to the source of spiritual power, Jesus Christ?  And do you access that power through daily communion with Him?

Now, the end result of increasing and intelligent love and an authentic life that shines with righteousness is that we glorify God.  Paul says all this is “to the glory and praise of God.”

This is the great goal of all of life.  This is what all creation exists for—to bring glory and praise to God.

Adam Clarke says…

“Every genuine follower of God has his glory in view by all that he does, says, or intends.  He loves to glorify God, and he glorifies him by showing forth in his conversion the glorious working of the glorious power of the Lord.”

What an excellent prayer this is!  In our day, when we tend to voice prayer requests for physical needs primarily, we need to follow Paul’s example of putting the spiritual needs of others high on our prayer lists.  Christians still need God’s supernatural enablement to value highly the things of greatest importance as revealed in Scripture.  Only then will we make choices that will prepare us to give a good account of ourselves at the judgment seat of Christ and bring maximum praise and glory to His name!

Choices, choices, choices.  We are inundated by so many choices.  From television programs, to food choices, to books, to music.  We have so many choices to make every day and what we need is insight into how to make the right choices, choices that will help us live lives that bring us greatest joy, greatest joy in God—because that is the greatest joy.

Some people don’t take the choices they make very seriously.

And that reminds me, a very important man died about a decade ago.  His name was Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote the song “Hokey Pokey.”  He died peacefully at age 93.  The most traumatic part was getting him into the coffin.  They put his left leg in…and then the trouble started!

Well, here’s the serious question, “What if “hokey pokey” was what life was all about?”

Yet, I think that is the way some people live, as if life didn’t have a purpose, didn’t have any real meaning, so you can just “do the hokey pokey” through life.

In our text here in Philippians 1, vv. 3-11 is all one paragraph.  In this paragraph Paul first explains that he prays for the Philippians with thanksgiving and joy because of his gratefulness for their participation with him in the gospel ministry.

In vv. 9-11 he tells them what he prayed for them.

Sometimes we tell people that we’re going to pray for them, but then we don’t.  Perhaps we forget, or are too busy, or just don’t really pray that much, or maybe we don’t really know what to pray.

This prayer of Paul, as well as prayers such as Ephesians 1:15-18 and 3:14-19 and Colossians 1:9-12 are great prayers for you and me to pray for one another.  These prayers also give us keys to the spiritual formation of God’s people.

Listen to Paul’s prayer here in Philippians 1:9-11:

9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

In this prayer Paul focuses on two strategic things that the Philippians needed in their lives—a love that was abounding (1:9-10a) and a life that was authentic (1:10b-11), with the ultimate purpose that God would be glorified.  That, of course, that God be glorified, is the primary purpose of our lives and therefore the highest purpose of our prayers.

Both of the clauses in these three verse begins with the Greek conjunction hina, which introduces the content of Paul’s prayers.  It almost functions like a quotation mark, introducing what Paul actually prayed.

In other words, if you were to ask, “Paul, what are you praying for the Philippians?” he would identify these two objectives—abounding love and authentic lives.

Now, it is also quite likely that the second objective is built off the first.  In other words, we can only live authentically when our lives are guided by love that is abounding.

So first notice that Paul is praying that their love might be increasing, then notice that he wants their love to be intelligent.

9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment

The first characteristic of the love Paul is praying for is that it is super-abundant.  It exceeds any attempt to measure it.  It overflows in our lives.  It goes beyond expectation or capacity.  It’s like trying to pour the ocean into a Big Gulp cup.

When he says “your” love he is addressing everyone at the church in Philippi.  He is praying that everyone’s heart would be filled to overflowing with love for one another.  He knows that when love is expressed it is most normally reciprocated.  Thus, your love affects my love and my love affects your love.

Another thing to notice is that Paul is speaking about agape love.  I don’t know if you noticed the New York Life ad in the Super Bowl last week which explained the four Greek words for love—philia, storge, eros and agape.

They said…

“The fourth kind of love is different. It’s the most admirable. It’s called ‘Agape’ – love as an action,” the ad continues. “It takes courage. Sacrifice. Strength.”

Agape love is the willingness to do whatever it takes to serve the needs of someone else, even if they don’t deserve it and even if it costs you dearly.  It is a choice to put another’s needs above your own and to expend yourself—your energy, your time, your concern, your finances, your life—in order to help them.

It is, of course, the type of love Jesus showed to us by sacrificing Himself on the cross.  He demonstrated His love by dying for people like you and me who were “still sinners.”  We weren’t good people; we didn’t deserve it in any way, but Jesus sacrificed His life to save ours.

Now, Paul is not scolding them, as if they weren’t loving.  He’s not pointing out a deficiency in their lives, but rather challenging them to raise the bar and love even more.

It’s like when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes so much that not only did everyone have enough, but 12 baskets were left over.  It was to prove to the disciples that Jesus always had more than enough to provide for their needs.

Many things we need in moderation.  Many things in excess can kill us.  But this is one thing we can never get enough of.

Now, Paul does not ask them to direct their love at anything specifically, although informed by the Old Testament, Paul was probably thinking of love for God first and then love for others.

He is praying for them that they would overflow in love in all directions.

The fire in the apostle never says, “That’s good enough.”  There must be move love, more love,  more love, a ceaseless overflowing of love.

When a person is overflowing with love, it will affect others, just like when a bathtub overflows you can’t fix it without getting wet.  Abounding love is contagious love.

Our love should be like a geyser shooting up to God and like a flood spreading out to others.

Paul further emphasizes this by adding the words “more and more.”

Don’t let your love be under-developed.  It needs to experience compounding growth.

Growing love, always growing, never plateauing—is a key mark of the Christian life and a key indication of spiritual growth in our lives.  When we stop growing in love we stop growing in maturity.

Step one in developing the kind of abounding love is to recognize the gap between your ability to love and God’s ability to love.  Transformation in our lives begins by immersing ourselves in the amazing, extravagant, passionate, unending, unquenchable love of God for us.

Just listen to these verses:

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

God doesn’t just love you; He likes you.  He rejoices over you and delights in you.  He is your troubadour, singing love songs over you.

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

John, the apostle of love, is astounded at the “kind of love” that calls former rebellious enemies children.  The Greek is literally “Take notice of the out-of-this-world love the Father has given to us…”

There are passages which call us the “beloved” of God just as Jesus was called the “my beloved Son” at His baptism.  And in the last verse of Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, notice the words of Jesus…

26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Jesus prayed that we would experience the same amount and kind of love from the Father as the Father had been showing His Son throughout eternity!  The Father loves me as much as He loves His Son Jesus Christ!

Let this wash over you, flood over you as Romans 5:5 says.

So our love should flood out to more and more people with greater and greater sacrifice precisely because that is the way we are loved.

Let’s not be like the priest and Levite, whose love was at best a trickle when they ignored the wounded man beside the road.  And let’s not voice the pious “be warmed and be filled” mantra when we have the means to help someone…even if it costs us.

By the way, you will notice that Paul is not commanding the Philippians to increase in their love.  He could have, as he does the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4:9.  He is praying for them because He knows that this kind of love is not natural.  It doesn’t come from trying harder to love.  It comes from being filled with the Spirit and basking in the Father’s love for us and meditating on Jesus’ love for us.

So Paul prays that this will be the result of their cooperation with God’s working in their hearts.

Second, not only should our love be increasing more and more, but it should be intelligent.

9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment

This is the only limit Paul places on their love.  Yes, it is to be boundless, but it must have boundaries.

Some of you remember the 60’s when “all you need is love” and you know what that has led us to!

We know that Paul is not talking about sappy or sloppy sentimentalism because he used the word agape.  But he doesn’t want a sloppy agape either!  He wants our love to be discerning, to be based upon knowledge.

The Greek word for knowledge here is epignosis, a compound from gnosis (to know) and the preposition epi– which serves to strengthen it.  The general consensus is that it means something like “full knowledge” or “exact knowledge.”

It is the kind of knowledge that comes not only from careful study or experience, but from revelation.  It is a deep and personal, intimate knowing.

Of course, God wants to be known like that (as He knows us).  And it is in knowing God more and more that our love for him grows.  Likewise, our love for others grows because of our willingness to get to know them on a deeper and deeper level.

Tim Keller, in his book The Meaning of Marriage shows why these two facets are both important:

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.  To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.  But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.  It is what we need more than anything.  It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”

But notice that Paul is not talking about being known and loved as the recipient, but rather knowing and loving as the active agent.  Like God took the initiative with us, so we are to take that initiative with others.

The other discipline which must guide our love is “discernment.”  This is the only time this word shows up in the New Testament but in the Septuagint in occurs 22x in the book of Proverbs.  It has the idea of “moral discrimination” or “ethical judgment.”

In Proverbs discernment is the skill that allows us to navigate between life’s question marks.  People slumbering through life have no ability to distinguish between right and wrong, truth from error, good from bad.

“Discernment” is what allows us to make the best choice, the right choice, out of many options.

Discernment is developed by having our senses honed through consistent study of God’s Word.  The author of Hebrews says…

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Paul knew the danger of an undiscerning love. He rebuked the Corinthian church that seemed to glory in their “love” and “openness” which lacked any sense of knowledge and discernment (1 Corinthians 5:1-7).

The Corinthians apparently thought it was the loving thing to allow this man to continue in sin.  Paul says that they should deliver this man to Satan “for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor. 5:5b)

Paul was making a judgment that the kind of love they were showing this man was the wrong kind of love.  Love also rebukes and disciplines.

But notice that even in this dire case, Paul’s ultimate goal for this man was loving—despite the potential that his life may end, he wanted his “spirit…saved.”

What our culture touts as the highest virtue today is tolerance.  Of course, what is meant by this word is “you must turn a blind eye to anything wrong in me [you can’t even call it “wrong”], but I can hate you without remorse.”

Paul says that our love must be discerning.  We can be socially tolerant in that we can treat people with respect and honor, even if we disagree with them or even if they are living in sin, but we cannot be rationally tolerant of what goes against truth.

The mood today is that if you are critical of anyone’s doctrine or personal life, no matter how unbiblical it may be, you are not loving and you are arrogant to judge this person.  Jesus’ words, “Judge not, lest you be judged” (Matt. 7:1) are wrenched out of context and misapplied.  If people would just keep reading, Jesus goes on to say, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine” (Matt. 7:6).  How can you determine if someone is a dog or swine if you don’t make discerning judgments?

A few verses later He warns us to beware of false prophets who come as wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15).  It takes a discerning sheep to see that this isn’t a fellow-sheep whom we need to embrace, but a ravenous wolf we need to avoid!

The kind of love Paul is praying for is both increasing and intelligent.  It is boundless, but discernment guides its expression so that the outcome is for the genuine best of the other person and not necessarily what feels good.

May our love grow and be smart!

Last week we were looking at Paul’s declaration of his joy in praying for the Philippians.  We noted how Paul’s relationship with them was warm with affection and genuine love.

I think all of us yearn for at least a few relationships in which we take great joy in one another’s affection and love and partnership.

So last week we noted three principles for developing warmer relationships:

The first principle was:  focus on the best and forget the rest. It is difficult to have warm feelings for someone when all you think about are their faults and failings.

If those cannot be overlooked, then they need to be talked about and resolved.  But most of the time, our thoughts towards others should be on things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent and praiseworthy.

Believe me, when you’re in a conflict with someone, it takes discipline to turn your mind to positive qualities in your opponent.  We naturally bring up all their faults.  But Paul shows us that we need to focus on the best and forget the rest.

The second principle for warm, affectionate relationships is to pray for others.

Prayer for others can change them, and change us as well.  When we pray for others, thanking God for the good qualities we see, and praying that God would fill them with love and the knowledge of His will (1:9-11), then our relationship will definitely grow stronger and warmer.

The third principle is to minister together.

Nothing creates camaraderie like working hard together on something vital.  We noted soldiers in World War II and the story of the Fellowship of the Rings by Tolkien as examples, both real and fiction, of the deep bonds that men experience in wartime or on an important mission.

One of the best ways to draw close to someone is to get involved on the front lines of ministry with them in the battle for the souls of people.

Today we want to look at three more principles for growing closer to friends or family.  But let’s read these verses together first:

The fourth principle is to be patient with their progress.

6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Verse 6 is perhaps people’s most favorite verse in this opening section.  Paul says, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

All of us are in progress.  Paul was in progress, the Philippians were in progress.  Every Christian is in progress of becoming more like Jesus Christ.

John Bunyan, of course, wrote the famous Pilgrim’s Progress showing the dangers Christians face on life’s journey.

Actually, we can either be transformed and become more like Jesus, or deformed and become less like Jesus.  The choices we make each day determine the direction of our “progress.”

Paul, however, is not hesitant in affirming his confidence that the Philippians were making good progress towards Christlikeness.  He knew that they were “saints” by calling and that God would make sure that they complete the process.

The way the Greek expresses it, Paul’s confidence had begun and was now continued.

Paul was not only patient with their progress, but he expressed his confidence that what God started He would finish.  Paul’s confidence was less in them than in the God who was at work in them.

And this is what we can be confident of in others—that God is at work in them.  And what He has started, He will finish.

Paul’s confidence was not in their faithfulness, but in God’s goodness.  He had started a “good work” in them, which reminds me of Genesis 1 and every time God created He pronounced it “good.”

They are not yet all God intends them to be, but having begun that “good work” in them, He will complete.

In the context, Paul was assuring the Philippians that the work of the long-term fellowship of the gospel that God had begun in them would be brought to glorious consummation when Christ returns.  Though Paul was in prison, he was absolutely confident that the good work of their gospel partnership would succeed gloriously.

The fellowship of the gospel in Philippi began individually with God’s sovereign choice of Lydia as the first convert in Europe.  Of Lydia, Luke writes, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14).  God chose Lydia in Christ before the foundation of the world (cf. Ephesians 1:4).  God had begun his “good work” in her, and her salvation was part and parcel of the great work in Philippi.  God’s sovereign initiative and sovereign faithfulness would see them both through to the end.

Notice that God is the starter, the continuer, and the completer.  As he will express in Philippians 2:13, the spiritual life is always a matter of responding to God’s initiative, every step of the way, from justification to sanctification to glory.

My salvation is by God’s gracious initiative in choosing me; my present sanctification is by God giving me both the desire and power to do His will in my daily life, and my future completion will be all because of God’s amazing grace!

As I reflect on my fifty plus years in Christ it is indeed God who has kept me.  It is not my grip on God that has made the difference, but his grip on me.  I am not confident in my goodness.  I am not confident in my character.  I am not confident in my history.  I am not confident in my “reverend” status.  I am not confident in my perseverance.

But I am confident in God.  I am confident in this word to Lydia and to the jailor and to all the saints in Philippi — and to me: “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (v. 6).  This is a promise for every man, woman, and child who turns to Christ, and it is a promise for the great fellowship of the gospel!

So when we look at others, we can be patient with them because they (and we) are still in process.  I can remember that old saying, we saw in sometimes on bumper stickers, “Please be patient with me, God is not finished with me yet.”

But we can also look at others with confidence.  What God has started, He will finish.  He doesn’t leave projects half done.

The question, of course, is: “Has God made a start in your life?”

He wants to.  If he has, have you responded?

If you have responded in faith to God’s gracious provision of forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus Christ, then a “good work” has already begun in you, a work that no one else can take credit for, but because God has initiated it, He will complete it.  You can be sure of that.

What this means is that Paul entrusted the Philippians growth into God’s hands.  This has two great benefits:

• First, it takes the pressure off Paul (and any minister) to make sure his followers “get it” and make it to the finish line. God is the one who makes that happen.
• Second, it removes any space for pride on the part of the Philippian converts. All of us make it to the finish line only because of what God has done in our lives.

Now let’s look at a fifth principle for developing deeper, warmer relationships:  Look forward to being with one another.

In vv. 7-8 Paul bares his heart to the Philippians:

7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Did you notice all the words of feeling? Of affection?  Paul was not afraid of feelings, and he wasn’t afraid of expressing his feelings.

For years we’ve been taught the image of the train from Campus Crusade—that the engine is facts, the car is faith and the caboose is feelings.  The point of the illustration is that we are not to depend upon our feelings, but on the facts and put our faith in the facts.

However, the unintended message of this illustration is that feelings are not important.  Jonathan Edwards and John Piper would certainly disagree.  Although they refer to them as affections, it is true that few of us do something that we don’t want to do.

Thus, in the gospel, we are given facts to believe in, but our heart is opened up also to fall in love with Jesus Christ because we see Him in his sweetness and supremacy and satisfaction.  As Jesus expressed in the gospels, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44).

Here Paul acknowledges that because they had served alongside him in gospel ministry (though sometimes from afar), it was “right” for him to “feel this way about you all.”  These feelings are the appropriate response for their camaraderie in the gospel.

The word “feel” (phronein) is a Greek word that spans both thoughts and feelings, both the heart and the mind.  Thus, not only does he feel joy and confidence in them, but he will mindfully express that through his prayers in vv. 9-11 that they will have a “smart love” that brings glory to God.

The phrase “hold you in my heart” again emphasizes that the Philippians didn’t just come to mind on a whim, but that Paul disciplined his mind to consistently think about them and put them in his heart.  This phrase is very similar to “because you were very dear to me.”

Because Paul held them in his heart, his inner person, he is saying, “You are a part of me; you’ve been woven into the warp and woof of my deepest being, my heart.”

The “grace” that they share in is the grace of participating (same word as in v. 5), together in the gospel ministry.   As we’ve noted, when you’ve been through the fire of ministry together, you feel strong and deep bond.  It knits you together.

The “grace” that Paul mentions in the middle of v. 7 is not the grace for salvation, but the grace for suffering.  Proof of this can be seen in 1:29 where the verbal form of charis (“grace”) is used: “For it has been granted [graced] to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.”

Paul then says that “I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.”  Paul is using a strong word that expressed intense longing.  Just like Jesus deeply longed to share Passover with His disciples one last time, so Paul deeply longed to be with them.

It was a longing that came from deep within—the word “affection” is literally “bowels,” the Greek word splangxna.

But these are the affections “of Christ Jesus.”  He longed for them on the same level of intensity as Jesus longed for them.

Paul longed to be with them.  He looked toward to the time when they would be reunited.

Some people think they can do without church—they can watch TV preachers or listen to them on the radio or internet—and they can give financially to various ministries.  But the problem is that they are missing something very vital.  They miss the very essence of church by not availing themselves of the supportive fellowship there.

Charles Spurgeon was once visiting a man who had not been to church for some time and expressed how he thought he really didn’t need to be in church.  Spurgeon pulled a red-hot coal out of the fire with the poker and set it aside, away from the other coals, without saying a word.

It didn’t take long for the red-hot coal to become grey and then smolder.  The man nodded, understanding the meaning of this visual parable, and said, “I’ll be in church next Sunday.”

Several years ago, studies were conducted among former American POW’s to determine what methods had been the most useful in breaking their spirits.

Findings revealed that it was not physical deprivation or torture that broke them down as quickly as they did from solitary confinement or the disruption of friendships caused by frequent changing of personnel.

They drew their strength not from their loyalty to country or faithfulness to their cause, but rather in the close attachments they had formed with their fellow comrades.

It’s one thing to attend, another to look forward to attending—to having great expectations of the joy you will have in seeing friends, serving alongside them, worshipping with them and listening to and obeying God’s Word together.

If you don’t belong to a church fellowship, I encourage you to get involved.  Come try out Grace Bible Church.

Finally, if you want deeper, warmer relationships at church or in your family or with your friends, don’t be afraid to voice your affections for one another.

Paul was not hesitant about voicing his deep “affection” for them.  He didn’t fear impropriety.

Paul was moved inside whenever he thought about the Philippians.  They meant a lot to Paul.  His affection for them was deep and real.  He genuinely loved them.

The genuineness of Paul’s affections for them is reinforced by calling God as witness.  Paul used this convention to establish the fact that what he said about his affections for them was absolute truth.

Paul wasn’t afraid to express his affections.

Now, this is difficult for our culture, but especially for men.  We are not used to voicing our feelings.  Most of the time we cannot even name our feelings!

But this is one thing that will improve your relationships, not only with your wife and children, but with other men.

Let me ask you this:  Have you voiced your affection, your love for someone this week?  This month?

Our church would grow much warmer if you did.  Your marriage would improve if you did.  Any relationship with deepen if you did.

For years I’ve been asking the congregation at Grace Bible Church, “What kind of church do we want to be?”  I’ve trained them to answer, “An ‘I love you’ church.”  Then I tell them that I love them.

Last year, after having seen several expressions of love I’m instead asking, “What kind of church are we?”  Sometimes it takes awhile for love to become a deep part of the culture in any relationship.

Don’t give up.  Keep at it.

For any love to be genuine, it has to be the “affection of Christ Jesus.”  It is only as we bask in the abundant, amazing love of Jesus Christ for us, that we then have the security and power to go out and freely and genuinely love others.

The love we are to have is a genuine devotion, like Romans 12:10 says.

This world can be a cold, cold place.  It needs churches that express warm, deep affection for one another.  If you are dying inside, then pursue a relationship by focusing on the best, praying for that person, getting involved in ministry together, being patient and confident with their progress, looking forward to every interaction together, and expressing your affection for them.

Just watch the news for a few minutes and you’re bound to come face-to-face with some pretty grisly, stomach-turning news—from shootings, to pedophilia, to terrorists beheading captives, to immorality proudly displayed.

While, for the most part, we can turn off the TV or pocket our phones and be shut off from the reality of these terrible events, but Paul was not so fortunate.  When Paul penned his letter to the Philippians, it was a pretty cold, hard, brutal world.

You’ve heard of Nero.  Well, Nero’s mother murdered her own husband.  Her ambition was to rule Rome through her son, Nero.  But Nero had his own ambitions.  He moved his mother out of the country away from the center of power and when she allied herself with the younger Brittanicus, Nero had him assassinated and then later had his mother clubbed to death.

He divorced Octavia and had her executed.  His new mistress he kicked to death.

Then, when in A.D. 64 fires broke out in the Circus Maximus and quickly spread through the city, Deo Cassius reports that Nero watched Rome burn while playing his lyre.

When it died down he spent excessive amounts of public funds building a huge palace.  When he started to come under suspicion as an arsonist, he found a scapegoat in the new sect called Christians.

In Rome Christians were being wrapped in fresh animal skins and fed to wild animals.  Others were crucified, burned or impaled.  Around A.D. 67 both Peter and Paul were executed.  Nero eventually committed suicide in A.D. 68.

When Paul penned Philippians in A.D. 61 it was already evident that Nero was cruel, brutal, hateful and unpredictable.  This had a chilling affect on the whole empire.  It was a “darker, colder place.”  When Paul talked about living in a “crooked and depraved generation” (2:14) he wasn’t exaggerating!

It is remarkable then, that in this epistle, but especially in chapter 1, vv. 3-8, there is a breath of warm affection and genuine compassion.

There Paul says…

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Can’t you feel Paul’s passion and pride for the Philippians.  They had helped him before through their generosity and Paul is brimming over with affection and love.  In these few verses he thanks God for them and their partnership in his ministry.

This is a very personal, heart-felt thanksgiving from Paul for the Philippians.  There are several principles here which show us how to increase the warmth of our relationships and our churches.  I want to focus on six principles that will help you better enjoy the people in your life.

Are you ready?

The first principle is this:  focus on the best and forget the rest.

Paul begins verse 3-5 by saying that every time he thought about them (remembrance), he gave thanks to God for the good things he had seen in their lives.

Pleasant memories are a choice.  That is why Paul, in the conflict situation between Euodia and Synteche in chapter 4, we tell them to concentrate on things that are true, and honorable, and just, and pure, and lovely, and commendable, excellent or praiseworthy (4:8).

You have a choice:  you can focus on the negatives you see in someone, or you can focus on the positives.

When Paul says that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” in 1 Corinthians 13:8, that is only possible if we focus our minds on the positives.

I talk about this in premarital counseling.  Of all the couples I’ve married, almost every one of them has been opposite personalities.  Why?  Because we are drawn to someone who has strengths where we are weak—structured people marry spontaneous people, talkative people marry quiet people, spenders marry savers.

We do that because God in the beginning made Eve to complement Adam, to “fill in the gaps.”  So we are drawn to someone who has strengths where we are weak.

But inevitably, those very qualities that you saw so endearing while you were dating, become sources of frustration after you are married.  Now, “she’s always late.”  “He never tells me when he’s going to invite someone over.”  Or, “she never shuts up.”  “He never talks to me.”

In marriage, and in all relationships, we have to realize that other people are not weird, they are just wired differently than we are.

The key to making relationships work is to accept that you are different, affirm the strengths God has given the other person, and adjust your interactions so that you can play to their strengths.  If you do that, they will likely reciprocate and adjust to your strengths at times too.

Paul could think of some very positive things about the people in Philippi:

• He could remember the conversion of Lydia and her hospitality.
• He could remember God’s deliverance of a demon-possessed slave girl.
• He could remember the jailer’s conversion and his medical care.
• He could remember how the Philippians had sacrificially provided finances for his ministry in Thessalonica, just a few weeks after he had been chased out of Philippi.
• He could remember how the Philippians had supported him while in Corinth.
• And now, they have sent Epaphroditus with a gift.
• And it was not just their gifts that he appreciated, but their hearts of love for him that motivated them to give.

Paul not only focused his thoughts on the positive things, but he gave thanks to God for them.

The quickest way to change your thinking about another person (and to change your relationship with them) is to start thanking God for that person.  Whenever a negative thought pops up in your mind, start thanking God for them and the good things you see in them.

Paul enjoyed people.  God wants us to enjoy one another, not endure them.  He doesn’t want us to just be nice and civil to someone, but to genuinely love them.

So start focusing on the good in others.

That doesn’t mean that we ignore problems.  We will have to deal with relational conflicts.  We need to “speak the truth in love” and sometimes confront a person with their sins.

But we don’t need to dwell on the negatives.  Confronting someone will be more effective if we can affirm the good we see in them before presenting their misbehavior to their attention.

When negative things happen between people—and they do happen!—deal with it immediately.  Work toward forgiveness and reconciliation.  But all the while keep focusing on the best that you see in them.  Remind yourself: “He is a saint; God has been working good things in her life.”

So, let me ask you:  What do you tend to remember about people?  Do you have pleasant memories?  Pleasant memories are a choice.  If you’re going to really enjoy people, you’ve got to focus your mind on the good and eliminate the bad.  Focus on the best and forget the rest.

Or, do you have a joy deficit in your life because you have a tendency to focus on the negative?

Change your thinking.  It’s your choice!

The second principle for warm, affection relationships is to pray for others.

Verse 4 tells us the context of Paul’s thanksgivings—it was in the midst of the prayers that he prayed for the Philippians.  Intercession is praying for others and this is what Paul regularly did.  Whenever he thought of them, he prayed for them.

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy (Phil. 1:4, NIV)

In your Bibles underline the words “all,” “all,” and “always” in verse 4, and go back to verse 3 and underline “every.”

Let’s highlight four things from this principle:

• First, notice the intensely personal nature of his prayer. These are “my prayers…for you.”  They came from Paul’s heart and were specifically directed towards them.  These were not general “bless them all” prayers, but were very personal and focused and specific.
• Second, the constancy of Paul’s prayers for them is picked up in the words “always” and the Greek present participle for “making” prayer. It was a continuous activity in their behalf.  Paul said to the Thessalonians, “pray without ceasing” and the adverb there depicts a “hacking cough.”  So like an asthmatic or someone with a bad cold, Paul was consistently praying for them throughout the day.
• Third, notice that no one is excluded from Paul’s prayers. It was for “all of you.”  Not even the troublemakers at Philippi were excluded from Paul’s prayers and thanksgiving.
• Fourth, the spontaneity of his prayers is indicated in that he “always pray[ed] with joy.” Paul didn’t view intercession as a chore or duty to get through, but a sheer delight.  He enjoyed praying for them.

Now, I have to tell you.  When you start to pray for someone, and you do it like Paul did—specifically, continuously, inclusively and with delight, someone is going to change—either the person you are praying for or you…or both.

That is what makes prayer such a powerful force for increasing the warmth of love and affection in a church, or a family, or a workplace.

Paul realized that one of the best ways to improve relationships and increase relational warmth within a church was to regularly pray for them.

The primary responsibility of spiritual leaders in a church is to be continuously involved in the “word and prayer” (Acts 6:4).  The greatest impact leaders can have on the level of warmth and growth at Grace Bible Church will occur through prayer.

So let me suggest that you make a list of all those you want to deepen your relationship with and begin praying habitually for them, for God’s love and God’s will in their lives.  Thank God for the good things you see Him doing in their lives.

Joy delights in seeing God bless others.

If there is one thing that is clear in these verses (not to mention the rest of the book), it is that Paul is a happy, joyful Christian.  His present circumstances looked less than promising, but Paul was jubilant and joyful.

John Piper has written many excellent books, but one that changed my life is, Desiring God: The Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.  Piper’s thesis is that it is not wrong for a Christian to experience great pleasure in this life, so long as his pleasure is in the right things.  To take pleasure in God is a good thing.  To take pleasure in one’s fond remembrances of a dearly beloved church is a good thing.

Now let’s get to the third principle which will help you better enjoy the people in your life.

And that is, enjoy ministering together for the gospel.

Verse 5 signals for us the cause (not the word “because”) of Paul’s joy-filled prayers for them “because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”

Their partnership with him in the ministry of sharing the gospel with others was what gave Paul great joy.

This word “partnership” is koinonia.  It represents a joining together for a cause.  In this case, it was Paul and the Philippians working together in the gospel ministry.

Of course, Paul is referring to the financial gifts that the Philippians had sent to him in Thessalonica, Corinth and now Rome.  They had been amazingly generous, even when they couldn’t afford to give.

But in a broader sense Paul saw them as genuinely and actively with him whenever he shared the gospel with others.  They played a vital part in his ministry, equal to what he was doing.

He didn’t view them as passive or insignificant, but vital partners in the gospel ministry.

When theologian Broughton Knox was serving as a young chaplain in the British navy on a ship preparing for D-day and the invasion of Normandy, he noted that the minds of all hands on board, regardless of rank, were focused on the invasion’s success. No one thought of his own interests, but only on how he could help his shipmates in their commonly shared task.  He says, “I remember noting in my mind how I had never been happier” (Tony Payne, ed., D. Broughton Knox, Selected Works , Vol. 1 (New South Wales, Australia: Matthias Media, 2000), p. 58).

After the invasion and return to England, everyone noticed a difference in the atmosphere on ship.  It was still friendly because it was a well-run ship.  But several of the sailors, sensing the difference, asked the young chaplain why things had changed.

Knox reflects, “The answer was quite simple. During those months that preceded and followed D-day, our thoughts had a minimum of self-centeredness in them.  We gave ourselves to our shared activity and objective. . . . Once the undertaking was over we reverted to our own purposes, as we do normally” (Ibid)

Broughton Knox was, of course, reflecting on his ship’s experience of the fellowship that people experience in pursuing a common goal. Human friendship is a wonderful thing, but fellowship goes beyond friendship. Fellowship occurs among friends committed to a common cause or goal and flourishes through their common pursuit of it.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring rides upon this reality.  The fellowship of the Ring is made up of individuals of disparate origin and ridiculous diversity that exceed any of our ethnic or social differences: four hobbits, tiny beings with large, hairy, shoeless feet — Frodo Baggins and his friends Merry, Sam, and Pippin; two men, warriors of the first rank always dressed for battle — Boromir of Gondor and Aragorn, son of Arathorn II, King of Gondor; one wizard, Gandalf the ancient nemesis of evil and a repository of wisdom and supernatural power; an elf, Legolas, from a fair race of archers of the forest with pointed ears; and a dwarf, Gimli, a stout, hairy, axe-wielding creature from the dark chambers under the mountains.

The nine members of the fellowship bore few affinities.  The elves and the dwarves were like the English and the French because both had an unspoken agreement to feel superior to the other.  However, the nine very different individuals, bound together by their great mission to defeat the forces of darkness and save Middle-Earth, became inseparable and their covenant indissoluble.  The man Boromir, despite his lapses, gave his life for the hobbits.  And the elf and the dwarf came to form a great friendship, so great that Gimli was inducted into an honored order reserved only for elves.

This is the deep kind of partnership that brought Paul great joy.  As he thought about the Philippians, he thanked God for them and prayed with joy for them because they were his partners, his comrades.

This brought Paul joy not only because they were partnering with him, but because what they were doing was very significant.  They were involved in the “gospel,” in bringing the good news of Christ’s victory.  God has intervened and won our deliverance from sin and Satan and death and now reconciles us to himself through Jesus Christ.

For Paul, the gospel was not merely a proclaim with liberating content, but a real power that liberates its readers.  It itself brings the power to change people’s lives (Romans 1:16).

One of the things that brought Paul such great joy was the constancy and faithfulness with which the Philippians had stood by him—“from the first day until now.”  From the moment of Lydia’s conversion to the latest gift sent through Epaphroditus, the Philippians had been loyal to help Paul through “thick and thin,” through successful times and hard times.

If you’re not actively involved in gospel ministry with someone else, get involved.  Enlist!

One of the best ways to draw close to someone is to get involved on the front lines of ministry with them in the battle for the souls of people.

So far in Philippians we’ve seen that if you want to experience real joy, you have to submit yourself to Christ’s lordship as “slaves” of Christ Jesus, live in the reality of your true status as “saints” in Christ Jesus, and you have to position yourself relationally with others so as to honor them.  Today we get to Philippians 1:2, where Paul blesses the Philippians with a fairly familiar salutation:

1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul is saying here that another foundation for joy is experiencing and remembering the grace and peace that come from God.

This is the most familiar formula of greeting from Paul.  He always places grace before peace and acknowledges that they do not have their source in this world or within ourselves, but in God.

It was common for Greek letter writers, or even in public, to start with the greeting xaipein.  It was almost like our hello.  But Paul infused it with much deeper theological significance.

Grace and peace are more than mere greetings: they are two of God’s greatest gifts through the gospel. Grace (God’s unmerited favor or undeserved lavish blessing) and peace (restored, non-hostile relationship with God) come only through Christ’s self-sacrificing work on the cross and his subsequent resurrection.

Paul was also combining a Greek greeting (“Grace!”) and a Hebrew greeting (“Peace,” shalom).  Perhaps Paul combined the Greek and Hebrew greetings to show that in Christ there is no distinction between Gentile or Jew.  We are all one in Christ.

When Paul begins his greeting with “grace to you” he expressing the idea, “May you experience the great gladness of receiving undeserved favor from God, freely given to us not because we deserve it or could earn it, but simply out of God’s sovereign joy in bestowing it—because He wanted to!”

Grace is, quite simply, God’s unmerited favor, shown to those who actually deserve His judgment.  If you earn it, it’s not grace, but a wage that is due.  God’s grace is extended to the ungodly who know it, not to those who think they’re deserving (Rom. 4:4-5).

God’s grace is the only way to be reconciled to God. If you think you deserve a place in God’s kingdom because you’re a pretty good person, you don’t understand and have not laid hold of God’s grace.  If you think things are right between you and God because you do good things for others and try to live a clean life, you have not grasped God’s grace; you are, in fact, alienated from God.

God resists the proud (those who think they’re deserving), but He gives grace to the humble (James 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5). The only way to receive God’s unmerited favor is to see yourself rightly as an undeserving sinner and call out for His grace. If you don’t know grace, you don’t know God!

Grace is what allows us to come boldly into God’s presence, to the terrifying throne…of grace.

Romans 5:2 says that because we’ve been justified by faith we “have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…”  This means that believers live in an atmosphere of grace.  We are surrounded by grace in every interaction with our Lord.  He never treats us as if we deserve something—good or bad—but lavishes every interaction with grace.

Peace is the result of experiencing God’s grace.  The order is important: You cannot know God’s peace without first appropriating His grace.  Where God’s grace is lacking, peace will also be in short supply.  Peace points to the inner well-being that comes from being reconciled to God through what He provided in Christ.

Romans 5:1 says

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is peace with God (Romans 5:1) and the peace of God (Philippians 4:7).  Justification by faith secures the first and supplies the second.  We do have peace with God and we can have the peace of God.

Peace with God means that although we were formerly enemies of God—rebels against His will, spitting in His face with our sins—through the cross God has been reconciled to us and we are urged to be reconciled to him through faith.

Through the cross once enemies are now made friends.  Ephesians 2:14-16 proclaims:

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

And 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 says…

18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.  We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

So although our sins had hid His face from us, through the cross God is reconciled to us and through faith in the gospel we are reconciled back to God.  Thus, now we are closest friends.

But we can also experience the peace of God—a calmness and wholeness—in our daily lives.  Anxiety can be replaced with that sense of calm and serenity that comes from the heart of a God who is never pacing back and forth, never wringing His hangs wondering what this world is coming to, but is in total control.  We’re not in control; but God is.  When we rest in that truth, we can experience peace.

Now, Paul includes no verb here.  In our minds we supply the word “be,” “grace be to you and peace…”

But I like the way Peter puts it.  He begins both his letters, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” Paul would be very happy with this verb.  It’s what he means when he says thirteen times, “Grace to you and peace.”  The verb behind be multiplied is used twelve times in the New Testament and always means increase — move from lesser to greater.

John Piper references seven important implications in these words for our lives, that I just want to quote today.

1. Grace and peace are experienced.

Grace and peace are not only the objective status we enjoy before God. They are also the experiential enjoyment of that status. It is gloriously true that God made an objective peace between him and us by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:14–15). And he did it by a historical act of divine grace that was firm and unchangeable (Ephesians 2:8).

But Peter says that grace and peace are “multiplied” to us. They are not static. They are not only a status. Peter is offering to us, and praying for us, that we experience an increase of grace and peace.

He does not mean that God is variable, as if he were a gracious God some days and not others. Nor does he mean that the objective status of peace between us and God comes and goes. If we stand in the unshakable grace of God (Romans 5:2), and if we are reconciled to God in unchangeable peace (Romans 5:1), then what is multiplied to us is an increased and deepened experience of grace and peace. This reality is not simply status. It is the overflow of status in serenity, strength, and sweetness.

2. Grace and peace vary in measure in our lives.

That is what the word “multiply” means. “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” May there be an increase of grace and peace in your experience. Grace and peace are not static. They go up and down in our lives.

Hour by hour, and day by day, our enjoyment of grace and peace changes. It ebbs and flows. One moment we are carried by a wave of grace into a harbor of peace. An hour later, after a painful phone call, we are storm-tossed out of sight of land again. That is reality. We need to own it and seek continually to receive the gift of these words: “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” New measures for new moments.

3. There is always more grace and peace to be enjoyed.

Paul and Peter never assume your present experience of grace and peace cannot or should not be increased. They assume the opposite. They do not say, or imply, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you, unless you have all there is to have.” You never have all there is to have. That’s why this prayer is at the beginning of every letter. You always need more grace, more peace.

Since Paul doesn’t use a verb (“grace to you and peace”), you might try to water down his meaning to something like: “I pray you are now enjoying grace and peace.” No increase implied. You would try in vain. The word “to you” implies movement. Grace and peace are on the way. More is coming.

With Peter, there is no doubt what he means. He assumes we need more grace and peace. And we do. In this life we will never be able to say, “I have arrived. I have all the grace and peace I can use.” No you don’t. If there is more coming, you can have more. And you need more.

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). The Christian life is not static. It is movement. We are growing in grace and peace, or we are going backward.

Real life in a fallen world is a river. You go upstream with growth, or you go downstream. There’s no standing still. Your anchor is not straight down. It’s in heaven (Hebrews 6:19) — the headwaters. And it is pulling you in.

4. Grace and peace are multiplied by God.

Peter uses the passive voice, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” The implied actor is God. We are stewards of “God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10). Grace does not just happen, it comes from God. “God gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). Peace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Peter’s prayer is that God act. “May God multiply grace to you and peace!”

5. Grace and peace are multiplied by God through human means.

If God did this multiplication without respect to human means, Peter would not say these words. They would be pointless. He says them because he believes his words are God’s means of multiplying grace and peace.

We need to see this truth because of how common it is today to think of grace only as unconditional. There is unconditional grace and there is conditional grace. Paul speaks of those who are “chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5). That grace is unconditional. God’s election is not a response to conditions we can meet.

But there is grace that is a response to conditions we meet: “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (1 Peter 5:5). God responds to humility with more grace. Humility is a condition of receiving this grace.

Of course, humility itself is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23). But the fact that “God is at work in you to do his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13) does not lessen your responsibility to “work out your own salvation” (Philippians 2:12). In other words, to say that receiving some grace has conditions does not mean we are left to fulfill the conditions by ourselves. “Command what you will, and grant what you command” (St. Augustine).

But it is a serious mistake to bring in the doctrine of justification at this point in a way that says, “Christ fulfilled the conditions of God’s blessing, so we don’t have to.” Christ performed some conditions in our place — namely, the ones necessary for God to be 100 percent for us in spite of our sin. But when he died, he also obtained for us the gift of the Spirit by which we fulfill other conditions for multiplied grace and peace. That is what Peter and Paul are praying for.

6. One means of multiplied grace and peace is prayer.

The unique thing about a spoken blessing is that it is bi-directional. It is addressed both to man and God. When we say, “The Lord bless you and keep you” (Numbers 6:24), we are asking the Lord (vertically) to bless you (horizontally). So it is with Peter’s words, “May grace and peace be multiplied (by God) to you.” God is being addressed. And the church is being addressed.

And these words are not spoken in vain. Peter speaks them because he believes they matter. They are a means of bringing about what they aim at. They aim at more grace and more peace. So Peter believes that asking God to do this work will in fact be an instrument in bringing it about. God answers prayer. We should believe that too when we say these words over ourselves or others.

7. Another means of multiplied grace and peace is the epistle these words introduce.

It is astonishing that Paul begins every letter with some form of “grace be to you,” and ends every letter with some form of “grace be with you.” To you at the beginning. With you at the end. This pattern is unvarying. Why?

My suggestion is that at the beginning the letter is about to be read. And in being read, grace and peace will come to us. The letter itself — the word of God — will be the means of multiplying grace and peace to us. Then, at the end of the letter, Paul sees us leaving our encounter with the word and going out into the world, and he prays that grace go with us.

Peter confirms this understanding. In 2 Peter 1:2, he says explicitly that grace and peace are going to come “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ.” “May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:2). In other words, not only am I praying for grace and peace to increase, I am writing a letter to give knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ as kindling for the fire of this increase.

God always has more grace and more peace for you to experience. He has appointed that you experience it “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ.” He has inspired Scripture to bring you this multiplied grace and peace. Therefore, to experience these overflowing increases of grace and peace in your life, give yourself to this book. And as you listen to him, pray.

Now, it is important for us to realize that Paul was not thinking merely individually about this experience of grace and peace, but that it was a corporate outpouring of grace and peace that would meld them together.

Paul writes that the grace and peace are not from him, not from the world, and not from themselves, but from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Now, it would have been pleasantly startling for Paul’s readers to have received a greeting like this from God.

It is even more startling for us today, in light of what we know about Paul’s monotheistic Jewish heritage, to see Jesus functioning in the same capacity as the father.  Both of them, according to Paul here, are the authors of the grace and peace for the Christian.  Thus there is at least the implication, in light of the ease with which Paul allows the statement to flow from his monotheistic pen—unencumbered—that he regarded Christ as deity as well.

O, that we would celebrate and honor and praise one another like the three persons of the Trinity, never worrying about whether we “get ours” because we trust one another and know that it really doesn’t matter.

Grace and peace are such powerful theological truths that they give us the confidence we need to relax and allow others to get the credit or get their way.  They allow us not to have to cling to titles or rush promotions, not to need applause or demand our way.  Rather, they allow us to experience the joy of having settled confidence that God will fulfill His promises and purposes and rewards in our lives.

When we experience grace and peace from God, we can express grace and peace to others.

Through the New Covenant, we now have God as our Father and Jesus as our Lord, and they are continually multiplying grace and peace to us.  That is good news!

End Notes

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/may-grace-and-peace-be-multiplied-to-you