Philippians - Lesson 17

I. Call to Rejoice

In the lesson today, we're going to be looking at Philippians chapter 4, looking at verses 4 through 9. You probably won't be surprised, but this passage also includes the call to rejoice. This is a theme that we've seen throughout the letter. Paul rejoices when he is in prison, while he is in prison. He rejoices that Christ is preached regardless of motives. He rejoices with the Philippians that they are exercising their faith. This is in chapter 2, verse 18. And he imagines the Philippians' future joy when they receive back Epaphroditus healthy in their community. This is at the end of chapter 2. He begins chapter 3 with a call to rejoice. And that same call to rejoice is then what echoes here in our passage today. He is filled with joy as he prays for them. Paul is encouraged by their growth in the gospel, and he hopes that they have even greater joy. This, he says at the beginning of chapter 2, as they grow together in unity and as they stand firm in their faith. So chapter 4, verse 4 starts out, "Rejoice in the Lord always."

In fact, we see something similar to this call when Paul writes to the Thessalonians in the first letter, chapter 5, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing." Interestingly, both of these passages speak about church unity right before Paul says "rejoice." I think our tendency when we hear Paul say "Rejoice in the Lord always" is to individualize the message, but Paul is speaking here to the church and maybe imagining a worship context as everyone together rejoices, not in circumstances, rejoices in the Lord always. We rejoice in the Lord always. He says, "I'll say it again: Rejoice." Let's not lose sight of the fact that Paul is saying this to the Philippians while he is imprisoned. So Paul's call to rejoice is not based on having a good day, his retirement savings going up, or his kids getting a new job, or whatever circumstances, which might be really joyful circumstances. It's not why he's saying rejoice. He's saying rejoice because of what the Lord has done and because of what the Lord will do. He's so confident that you think about it. Rejoicing is saying, "My hope is in the Lord."

II. Gentleness & Presence of God

Paul continues then in verse 5, "Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near." So let's first look at that, at his call for us to let our gentleness be known. Most likely, when Paul says gentleness here and that your gentleness be evident, Paul wants the Philippians to regard their neighbors—not only in the church, but then the neighbors outside the church—to be viewed with compassion and to be treated with mercy. It is possible that Paul sees this as kind of a missional tactic, but I don't know that Paul is being so utilitarian here. I think when he says, "Let your gentleness be known," that that demeanor of gentleness is to be a reflection of the believer's transformation, whether or not someone looking on thinks that it's a good thing that they have grown in their gentleness. The reason I say that is Paul, when he's talking to the Corinthians in chapter 10, verse 1 of 2 Corinthians, Paul mentions Christ's own meekness and gentleness. And so as we are being molded into Christlikeness, this gentleness is an aspect of Christ's character that Paul says we also should make evident.

It's possible that this gentleness will be received by others on the outside as a cause of ridicule. They won't necessarily be attracted to it, but they'll think the person is like a doormat or someone who just lets people take advantage of them. That's a false way of understanding gentleness. Christ's own meekness and gentleness is expressed in his compassion and mercy for those in need, and that's what Paul is driving at here. And he wants them to express gentleness because he says, "The Lord is near."

Now, "near" can mean at least two different things. Paul can be thinking near as in temporal, like closing time is near, meaning it's going to come soon. And near can also mean spatial, like this computer is near to me, it's close. In our letter back in chapter 1, verse 10, Paul mentions the day of Christ. And then at the end of chapter 3, we saw Paul saying that the Savior, Christ, will return from heaven. So there is a sense in which Paul is thinking about time when he mentions the day of Christ, the return of our Savior. There's a future date. When is that future date? Is Paul saying Christ's return is near, therefore, let your gentleness be known?

But it may also be that Paul is saying here, because the Lord is near to you, like imagine him standing next to you, you can present your requests. You see, Paul may be looking back on the letter and reminding them the Lord's coming is soon, and he may be looking forward to the next couple of verses and saying the Lord is right next to you, so pour out your heart to him. I think you could sum it up: The Lord is near, and so we rejoice that he's coming, or the Lord is near, so we don't need to be anxious. And I think the genius of Paul, then, it might be both. We don't need to pick either one. Both work for Paul's overall message, so maybe we want to hold both of those as true.

III. Overcoming Anxiety Through Prayer

And then Paul goes on to say that not only is the Lord near, but then he goes on in verse 6 to say, "Don't be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." So what is Paul talking about here when he says don't be anxious for anything? Paul is talking about an attitude reflected in this term. It can also be translated as concern. He uses the same noun, actually, when he talks about Timothy in chapter 2, verse 20, where Timothy has a genuine concern for them. So this same noun can be both a concern that makes someone anxious or a concern that leads them fruitfully to care for and pray for another. Paul himself talks about his concern for his churches using this term; we find it in 2 Corinthians 11. He also uses this term again to the Corinthians when he wants the Corinthians to show concern for each other. That's in 1 Corinthians 12. The point to make here is that in both these cases to the Corinthians, the focus is on Christ, the focus is on care of the other. We get into trouble, I think, and it becomes anxiety in a negative sense when we start to do the "what ifs."

When I was writing my commentary on Philippians, a very dear friend of mine was struggling with cancer, and she talked about her feelings of what ifs. You know, she would say, "Well, what if I die? What will happen to my three school-age children? What about my husband? What about my elderly mom?" And she said, "When that happens, I realize that I've shifted my gaze from the Lord Jesus and it's just swirling all these events, you know, swirling around." So she says, "I have to lift my eyes. I have to keep my eyes focused on the throne of grace, on the figure of Jesus who intercedes on my behalf." This is a powerful teaching moment, and I think it captures what Paul is saying here about anxiety. "Anxiety is addressed," Paul says, "through daily prayer." Right. It's Paul, that's what we do. We keep our eyes on Jesus, and then we pray. Prayer and petition with thanksgiving, that's the approach that Paul encourages.

And that's different than what the wider culture might have said. The larger Greco-Roman culture, which was steeped in Stoicism, they would have said just self-mastery—apatheia is the technical term. We get our word apathy from it, but our term apathy tends to mean you don't do anything, whereas in the ancient world, apatheia meant that I'm not influenced in any way by circumstances. Nothing matters to me. I'm indifferent. I mean, I'm indifferent to these situations. So if I'm indifferent, it doesn't really matter. Let me go back to my example. My friend could have said, "Well, it doesn't matter to me what happens to my kids. It doesn't matter to me what happens to my mom. It doesn't matter to me what happens to my husband." Now, I'm not anxious. Now, that is not at all what Paul is encouraging here. He's instead saying these people matter, but you can't fix it. Who can? God. So present your requests to God. In other words, the goal for Paul is not to be divorced from suffering or somehow float above suffering. You can embrace the reality. My friend who had the cancer, she's now with the Lord. That's the reality, but in that reality, we see the Lord's provision.

Now, having said all of this, let me also be clear that Paul is not addressing the mental health category of anxiety. Paul is not arguing—and please don't hear me argue against going to counselors, I'm not saying just tough it out in prayer, right?—that if you are in mental distress, please seek out healthcare providers. That's not an either/or; it's a both/and. But also don't forget the power of prayer as Paul is magnifying the message to the Philippians to do, to pray prayer and petitions with thanksgiving.

Why? Because the peace of God then guards our hearts and our minds. This peace of God is transcendent. It's not from the created order. We can't generate it from our own happy thoughts. We can't create a peace through managing circumstances—not the peace of God, not this peace that becomes impossible to explain sometimes to others because they look at our situation and say, "How can you not be anxious? How can you be peaceful?" And it's because we have the peace of God, and that peace of God guards or protects our hearts and our minds, our being in Christ Jesus. This is a gift from God. This peace of God is a gift. It exists for the believer, but it is shared in the community. Paul has talked to the Ephesians about the peace, the peace of Christ; that peace of Christ brings the Jew and Gentile together in one body. That's a miracle. And so, too, it will bring—this peace of God will bring—the Philippians together in one mind with a singular love. Of course, and this is all in Christ Jesus, this peace that is experienced guarding our hearts and minds. All of this happens in Christ Jesus.

I want to emphasize this because in different times in church history, there's been a sense of all you really need to do is meditate, and certainly there are forms of religion today, or spirituality, that just emphasize meditation, and then that meditation will allow you to feel calm. Well, it might allow you to feel calm, but it's not the peace of God. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which says we just pray to God and God's going to give us, you know, what makes us happy, that also is not what Paul is talking about here. In Jesus Christ, that peace is the peace that is based on the future hope of our transformed, resurrected, glorified bodies that will live in the new heavens and the new earth forever with God. It's that peace that we receive through our prayers and petitions as we live in Christ.

IV. Meditating on Virtues

And Paul will continue then in a passage where he invites the Philippians to think about certain things: what's true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy. This list of excellent virtues, what are they doing here in this part of the letter to the Philippians? Is Paul baptizing Greek philosophical categories here? Perhaps. Maybe he is asking the Philippians to carefully examine their own culture's values and goals and line them up with the gospel truths. Do they line up? Is there any overlap? How would we know? How would we know the answer to the questions that I just asked? How would we know if Paul is critiquing the wider use of these virtues to reshape them in Christ or is trying to build bridges to the pagan culture where he finds agreement with the Christian gospel?

One way we can answer this is to look at the verb that Paul uses here, which, although it can be translated to "think," also carries with—and I think it does here—the sense of to discern and to deliberate. So Paul is asking the Philippians here maybe to put on their gospel glasses and then evaluate the culture and the values of their culture. And I think let's just remind ourselves where we've been in the last couple of verses. Paul first speaks about the Lord being near, then about the peace of God in Christ Jesus, and when we finish with this list, Paul will again say that the God of peace is with us. So all of our interpretations, then, of these values—the true, noble, right—all of that should reflect this wider context. And I should note, only one of the four cardinal virtues, the wider Greco-Roman virtues, are found here: whatever is right or just. Paul doesn't mention self-control, he doesn't mention prudence, he doesn't mention courage here. So I don't think Paul is trying to baptize culture or necessarily making links with the culture through their own values. I think he starts with Christ, and then he looks into the culture. Paul doesn't often use these—he doesn't often express himself in this form of lists, list of virtues. It's not uncharacteristic of Paul. We don't find something exactly like this in his other letters, but something similar we could find in 2 Corinthians 6, so it's not unheard of for Paul to do this, but it's distinctive here in Philippians.

So let's look at what Paul might be driving at here, how he wants them to discern, what he wants them to discern. So he first says, "Whatever is true." How do we know what's true? This is certainly a question that different generations, and certainly our own, have asked, and I love the scene in the Gospel of John when Pilate, who is interviewing Jesus, asks that very question, "What is truth?" This is in chapter 18, verse 38. Ironically, of course, truth, the person Truth, is standing right there in front of him. Earlier in John's Gospel, Jesus had declared himself the way, the truth, and the life. But we know Pilate scorned the kingdom that Jesus preached, rejected God's true message of grace. So whatever is true, I think the first thing we should think of is Jesus. He is the truth. Secondly, we want to think about the claims of Jesus' work: the cross and resurrection. To the Corinthians, Paul insists that the resurrection of Christ is true. This is in 1 Corinthians 15, the opening verses.

And then Paul goes on to say, "Whatever is noble." Paul is probably thinking here of Proverbs. In Proverbs chapter 8, verse 6, the term is used actually alongside truth and righteousness, the context of speaking rightly. Also, we find a little later in Proverbs chapter 15, verse 26, the term is used to describe those gracious words that are pure, and we'll see the word "pure" a little bit later as well in this list. Whatever is pure in God's eyes. If you look at the Pastoral Epistles, this adjective noble is used in talking about character traits of those serving in leadership positions, both 1 Timothy 3 and also Titus chapter 2. So I think that's probably what Paul is drawing on, although it is the case that Aristotle used that term noble, and he defines it as being in between obsequiousness, kind of groveling, and stubbornness. I'm going with Proverbs here as the background.

Paul continues, "Whatever is right." This term is related to the cognate noun righteousness and the verb to justify. So in our English, righteousness and justify can feel like two very different concepts, but for Paul, for the Jews at this time, there is a way in which the righteousness of God expresses God's good justice, seeing the world correctly and fairly. Twice, Paul will quote from Habakkuk 2:3-4, "The righteous will live by faith." That is also actually quoted in Hebrews as well. So clearly this term right does a lot of theological heavy lifting for Paul here. I think what we're to be thinking about as we look locally here in the Philippian letter, at the beginning of the letter in chapter 1, verse 7, Paul says, "It's right for me to think this way about all of you." So I'm probably going to do a both/and here. I think in chapter 4, then, when we find this term, probably Paul wants us to think about the theologically rich texture that this word group has in this notion of the character of God, the gift of righteousness, God's justice, but also then just the meaning of being right or being just, as Paul uses it to refer to their own interactions between each other.

The next term that we look at is the term pure, and this term has both a moral but also a ritual connotation. Both Jews and Gentiles recognized a sacred space. For the Gentiles, it could be a pagan shrine or a pagan temple, and then for the Jews, of course, it's the one temple in Jerusalem. Those were pure spaces, ritually pure, or maybe we would hear the language of "ritually clean," like a sacrificial animal that has no blemish. Paul's frequent description of the church as a temple of God—we see that in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians—or more personally, believers as God's temple—you see this also in 1 Corinthians—I think that signals for us the importance of purity. Paul expects the community to be pure because God lives in and among them, and so purity is an important characteristic.

Paul also speaks of whatever is lovely or pleasing, whatever is admirable. We don't find either of these nouns in the New Testament, although there's a similar noun that's used in 2 Corinthians 6:8, when Paul defends himself and his conduct as an apostle. But these words, not only might they have a moral connotation, they have a moral focus, but also they might have aesthetic overtones. Aristotle uses excellent to speak of virtue as a whole and praiseworthy as that which is approved by all. So Aristotle ends up joining these terms, excellent and praiseworthy, to say that what is worth approval is excellent. However, Aristotle should never be our final guide; our guide is Christ and his gospel. But I think the idea of excellent and praiseworthy are Paul's way of saying that you will know that something is good or excellent as the community helps you evaluate the posture, the disposition, the behaviors—that which is worth approval, one should keep doing.

V. Practical Application

So Paul will go on to talk about then in the next verse, verse 9, what his intentions are in giving this list. These virtues should be done in the context of the life of the church, and that they judge all things based on the gospel message. They have to, though, practice also these virtues. It's not enough to just say it. We have the phrase "virtue signaling" today, which tends to mean that you get on some kind of social media platform and you say something that sounds appealing to whatever group you're a part of. Doesn't mean you actually change your behavior, it just simply means that you've said something that others like. That virtue signaling is anathema to Paul; that would be exactly opposite of what he's encouraging here. Acting on these virtues will cost something for the community, and Paul's well aware of that. He wants the Philippians to think about, to discern, true and noble and right and pure and lovely. He wants them to discern those attributes in their own actions, in the actions of others, and in their response and outreach to the community. All of this is discerned through the light of Christ, as Christ's work is used as the lamp to light up these virtues. How are they living into it? And if they do, Paul says in verse 9, then the God of peace will be with you.

So this life of joy and peace, of choosing the noble and the admirable, it is not the simple or the easy life. It does take discipline to be thankful, to pray to God, offering prayers and petitions with thanksgiving. That takes discipline. The theologian Stephen Fowl comments that the joy that Paul speaks about here in our passage overall actually is a byproduct, he says. "It's not the end in itself. It's not the joy of achievements or accomplishments, but it's the joy of abiding with God no matter what." Right. It's the abiding with God no matter what. That's what Paul encourages the Philippians to embrace. They're enjoined to make discerning judgments by having a robust prayer life, by recalling Paul's own example and teachings, which we also talked about in chapter 3 when Paul mentions imitation there. They do this privately and they do this as a united church so that we experience the joy of abiding with God no matter what. So especially verses 4 through 7 are things that we can apply to our lives and that the Philippians could apply to the church in general.

Student: Could we also say that that still connects with what Paul started out with, with his instructions to Euodia and Syntyche in how to resolve the conflict that they're in? Because it talks about be gentle, pray about things, don't be anxious, which happens when you have a conflict, and then also to seek the peace of God. So is there an element of possibly of that, too? 

Dr. Cohick: Yes. Yes, no, that's a great insight. Yes, I had not seen that before. Their names are in the Book of Life. "Rejoice in the Lord always." Yeah, their salvation is secure in Christ. This disagreement that they have, how are they going to sort it out? The community is involved. The community is praying. And that's an excellent insight as well about the role that anxiety can play in conflicts. And sometimes anxiety is manifested in worry and sometimes it's manifested in anger. And both of those responses, as you try to be right or you try to get your way... and the going to God in prayer, thinking about what's true, about what's noble, about what's pure, can kind of be releasing—that it's not about you, but you allow for your own mind and heart to be transformed for the good of the church and then, by extension, the good of God's ministry overall in the world. The goal is to be transformed each and every day into the likeness of Christ. That's our promise. We don't do it by our own strength. The Holy Spirit working in us, Christ living in our heart—all of these various images, right, are at work. And we're invited to just open our hands to that.