Philippians and Philemon - MR Vincent - 1906.pdf

XXXvi INTRODUCTION
lives according to Christ's life, he lives it. Christ loves, obeys,
suffers, sympathises, toils, and hopes in him. Under the power
of this life his own natural affection is transfigured. He knows
not men after the flesh, but loves and longs for them in the heart
of Jesus Christ.
With the exhibition of these facts goes the corresponding em-
phasis of the apostle's personality. The letter is more distinct-
ively personal than any of the epistles to the churches except
2 Corinthians. In this lies largely its peculiar fascination. But
the personality is accentuated on a different side. Its sensitive,
indignant, self-vindicatory aspect, so marked in the Corinthian
letter, is completely in the background here. The Paul of the
Philippian letter is not the man whose apostolic credentials have
been challenged, and whose personal motives have been impugned ;
not the vindicator of himself and of his ministry against the pre-
tensions of false apostles ; not the missionary who is reluctantly
constrained in his own defence to unfold the record of his labors
and sufferings. He is the disciple who counts all things but loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord ;
whom to live is Christ, and to die is to be with Christ. What a
blending of the restfulness of faith with the tenseness of aspira-
tion ! What
an upreach of desire ! With an experience behind
him unique in its depth and richness and variety, with the mem-
ory of personal vision of Christ and of ravishment into the third
heaven, with a profound knowledge of the mysteries of divine
truth won through heart-shaking moral crises, in solitary medita-
tion and in the vast experience of his missionary career, — his
attainment is only a point for a larger outlook, an impulse to more
vigorous striving. In Christ he is in a sphere of infinite possibili-
ties, and he counts not himself to have apprehended, but stretches
forward under the perpetual stress of his heavenward calling.
for