The life and work of St. Paul

THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. 597
call himself an apostle, because to them no assertion of his authority was in
any way needful.1
The thanksgiving which follows is unusually full. He tells them that he
tliauks God in all his remembrance of them, always, in all his supplication on
behalf of them all, making his supplication with joy for their united work in
furtherance of the Gospel from the first day when ho had visited them ten
years ago until now ; and he is very sure that God, who began in them that
sacred work of co-operation in a good cause, will carry it on to perfection until
the day of Christ; 2 a conviction arising from his heartfelt sense that they
were ALL of them partakers of the grace which God had granted to him, and
which they had manifested by their sympathetic aid in his bondage, and in
the defence and establishment of the Gospel. God knows how much he yearns
for them in Christ ; and his prayer for them is that their love may abound
more and more in full knowledge of the truth, and all insight into its applica-
tion, so that they may discriminate all that is best and highest, 3 and be pure
towards God, and blameless towards men, for the day of Christ, having been
filled with the fruit of a righteousness attainable not by their own works, but
by Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God. 4
They must not suppose, he tells them, that he is the Apostle of a ruined
cause, or that his imprisonment is a sign that God's frown is on his work, and
that it is coming to nought on the ; contrary, he wants them to recognise that
his misfortunes have been overruled by God to the direct furtherance of the
Gospel. The necessity of his being coupled to guardsman after guardsman,
day after day and night after night, had resulted in the notoriety of his con-
dition as a prisoner for Christ among all the Praetorian cohorts, 6 and to everybody
else ; and the majority of tho brethren had been stimulated by his bonds to
a divine confidence, which had shown itself in a yet more courageous daring than
before in preaching the word of God. Some of them preach Christ out of
genuine good will, but some, alas ! tell tho story of Christ insincerely 8 out of
1 Phil. i. 1, 2. This Epistle may be thus summarised : i. 1, 2, Greeting ; i. 3 11 ,
Thanksgiving and prayer 12 ; 26, Personal details ; i. 27 ii. 16, Exhortation to unity
by the example of Christ ; ii. 17 30, Personal details ; iii. 1, 2, Last injunction suddenly
broken off by a digression in which he denounces Judaism and Antinomianism ;
iii. 3 iv. 1, Exhortation to unity ; iv. 2, 3, and to Christian joy ; 4 9, Gratitude for
their aid ; iv. 1020, Final greetings and benediction ; 21 23, The unity of the Epistle
(in spite of Heinrichs, "Weisse, &c.) is generally admitted.
2 "
It is not God's way to do things by halves " (Neander).
8 Ver. 10, 5oKifiaiv TO 8ia4>e'poiTa, cf. Rom.
"
ii. 18. Non modo prae malis bona, sed
ex bonis optima " (Bengel).
" Ut probetis potiora " (Vulg.).
*
i. 311.
5 Ver. 13, iv o\a r