Philippians - Lesson 11

I. Response to Truth in Christ

In our lesson today, we're going to look at Philippians chapter two and specifically look at verses 12 through 18. In this passage, we're going to see Paul focused on how believers can respond to their own environment based on the truth that they are in Christ. To set us up, remember that Paul has just finished a beautiful hymn or poem of Christ, and he has finished by saying that God has highly exalted Christ, given him the name that is above every name, every knee will bow, and God will receive the glory.

Knowing that phenomenal truth, what do we do today? And this is where we enter into our lesson for today. Paul will encourage the Philippians to live into this truth. So the call for steadfastness, holy living, these things follow not because Paul likes to scold his people or expects a holier-than-thou attitude, but it's as a result of the holiness and goodness and purity and kindness of God seen in Christ, including Christ's obedience that Paul will pick up on and say, "Okay, you Philippians, you're in Christ. What does that mean? Let me show you." So that's where we are with Paul here.

All of this is done, Paul recognizes, in the context of some hostility, some of their neighbors in Philippi, maybe some of their family members are pushing against these Philippian believers and their faith. So Paul is trying to encourage them in that setting. At the end of chapter 1, Paul had also talked about this struggle that they were facing. And if you recall, we talked about how Paul said that it's not just for you to believe, but also for you to suffer for Christ. And now we pick up, we can see a little bit more about what Paul intended there, but he's going to say a phrase—and we'll get to this in a minute—but he's going to use a phrase, "work out your salvation." And I want us to remember that phrase in connection with Christ being obedient, obedient to death, even death on a cross, and Paul's call that we are called not only to believe, but also to suffer for Christ.

So let's pick up our texts. I hope you have scripture open in front of you as we walk through this passage. So Paul, to start in verse 12 of chapter 2, he starts out by calling the Philippians his friends, or even more literally, the beloved, "my beloved." I emphasize this because he is going to be specific in encouraging them to proper behavior, but he does so not in an antagonistic way, but as one friend to another friend, he is encouraging them. The Philippians are to obey God. We saw Christ in his own obedience, even unto death.

II. Meaning of Obedience & Salvation

When we think about the word "obey" or the concept of obeying, we should just note that in the ancient world, many people obeyed someone else; their livelihood or their social status depended on it. Think of slaves obeying their owners, wives obeying their husbands, clients obeying their patrons, sons obeying their fathers. The idea of obeying in all of those categories that I just mentioned, that's the language that is used in the Greco-Roman world; all of these people needed to have an obedient attitude and they were praised for demonstrating this obedience. I want to underline this next statement: Paul is not condoning a hierarchical social structure. He is not. When he says "obey," he is not reasserting the kind of Aristotelian structure that has the inferior obeying the superior. That is not the context of Scripture. Instead, what Paul is asking when he talks about the Philippian believers obeying is that one obeys God, one follows the gospel. So obeying God, obeying the gospel teaching. And then by extension, if a messenger of the gospel comes, one can also obey that person inasmuch as they are obeying the gospel that that person speaks.

So Paul invites them to obey, and as he does, he extends this line that I remember when I first read it as a new believer, I underlined it and put some question marks by it: "work out your salvation." And I thought, well, I mean, we don't work for our salvation, do we? You think of Martin Luther and his call, "justification by faith alone." Paul, when he says this, "work out your salvation," I think it kind of shakes the earth a little bit, but that's only because we're not following what Paul is really getting at here. He and Martin Luther are not in an argument right here. Paul's not speaking here about salvation as the same thing as the doctrine of justification by faith. Rather, Paul is looking at that part of salvation that happens once the believer steps through that gate and onto the path of being conformed to the image of the Son. If I want to use the language of Romans chapter 8:29, a person is saved from sin and to be a member of God's family. It's a both-and scenario.

This is probably worked out most clearly in Paul's letters in the second chapter of Ephesians, where one is forgiven of their sins and becomes a member of Christ's body, a member of God's family. All of this happens. That's what the cross does: forgiveness of sins and creating one new anthropos, one new humanity from chapter 2 of Ephesians. We're here in Philippians, but as I mentioned in the introduction, I want to pull all of Paul's thoughts. I want to use all of Paul's thoughts as we try to understand most clearly what he's saying to the Philippians. So here, when Paul says, "work out your salvation," he's talking to those whose sins have been forgiven in Christ and now are members of the body of Christ. And so each and every day they want to act in a manner that befits someone who is part of God's family.

So let's focus our attention on the term salvation in that phrase, "work out your salvation." Again, salvation here does not equal justification. Justification, though, as we think about justification in Paul's wider work, doesn't always refer to a past or singular event, but it can have future reference. For example, again, let's go back to Romans eight verse 33, "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies." We also find in Galatians when Paul is speaking to them in chapter 5 verses 4 and 5, Paul will talk about through the Spirit, "For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope." Righteousness and justify are part of the same root in the Greek—the Greek verb "justify" and the noun "righteous." In Romans 7, Paul highlights that not only can we agree that God's will is good, but Paul says there, we actually also have to do God's. And Romans eight then highlights that we can live in the Spirit and thus live a holy life. So when Paul says, working out your salvation, it may be—I think Paul would be okay with me saying this—it's like he's saying, "live out your life in the Spirit, in the Holy Spirit." I draw from Romans 8, verses 12 through 14.

It is also the case, and we won't have time to get into it now, but for your further studies, you may also want to explore that Paul talks about believers being evaluated by God based on their works, what they've done. You can see this in 2 Corinthians 5:10, 1 Corinthians 3:15, and then in Romans 14:10-12. None of those references refer to earning one's salvation. They're all talking about how one has lived in the Spirit, not whether one earns their salvation.

III. Divine Power & Human Effort

Let's take a look now, again keeping with this phrase, "work out your salvation," but now let's look at the verb, "work out." The verb actually occurs in the last place in this sentence. And the verb itself is used about 20 times in Paul. The idea of working out, there's nothing mysterious about that term, but the fact that Paul connects it with working it out in fear and trembling, why would he nuance this idea of working out with fear and trembling? Well, that phrase "fear and trembling" is found in the Old Testament. Most of the time it's used to describe reactions to the supernatural powers of God. In Paul's own writings, in 2 Corinthians 7:15, for example, Paul praises the Corinthians for welcoming his coworker Titus. They welcomed Titus with fear and trembling, even as they had obeyed Paul's call to repent. And so I think what you see in this example is fear and trembling is a way for Paul to say respect, right? That they respected Titus. And so they greeted him with an honor that Paul really appreciated about himself. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:3, that he took a posture of fear and trembling when he first met the Corinthians. And again, this is a way for Paul to express in kind of shorthand, Old Testament shorthand, that when he met the Corinthians, he had a posture of honoring them. This fear and trembling is honoring them.

So I think then when we see it here in verse 12 of chapter 2 here in Philippians, we want to imagine that Paul is referencing a position of awe, a position of reverence in the presence of God. So this fear and trembling is not like being scared while you're watching a horror movie but rather is a sign of respect towards another—sometimes a person, but I think more so in this case, it will refer to God. So in verse 12 and 13 here, as Paul is asking them to work out their salvation in fear and trembling, it's this notion of working before God. In verse 13, Paul starts with the term, "God." Theos, God, is in the emphatic position. So why does this matter when we look at the phrase, "work out your salvation"? Well, it matters because Paul will be insisting here that it's God's power that believers rely on in order to both will and to do these works that fulfill God's purposes. So Paul doesn't expect these Philippians, nor should we expect ourselves, to kind of generate good feeling or a human level of strength in order to do the good works that God prepares for us. God also empowers us. So it's important to keep in mind because I think, at least I know I do, and perhaps you do, it's hard to keep a distinction between God working in us and us working to earn points with God.

So if I could just dig a little bit deeper into that, Paul insists that it is God who empowers us. It's God who can renew our minds and our wills, strengthen our hands, work with our community to have a community that does God's work. It is also the case that it's Paul that throws his legs out of bed and stands up and meets the new day. It's Paul who's hungry. It's Paul who's cold. It's Paul who is sore. It's Paul who is tired. Paul lives into the strength, the courage, the joy, the love that Paul gets from God, that God supplies Paul. So it's God working in us. Paul never imagines that we are working in order for God to love us more or to secure our salvation by earning it. Nevertheless, there is, if I can use this term in a limited way, a partnership, because Paul is actually doing; he's living out the strength that God provides him.

As we think about this confusion that sometimes happens when we are trying to understand the difference between God working in me and me working for God, earning points for my salvation, maybe an example might help us understand this more. Again, limited analogy here. God delights, and Paul tells us this, God delights in us doing his good, fulfilling his good purpose. As Paul says here, fulfilling God's good purposes that he gives us strength to accomplish. I have a friend whose daughter was hoping, had always dreamed of being a doctor, and she pursued getting into medical school and she got in. And my friend was absolutely delighted to see that her child had worked so hard to achieve this. Now, would she have been as excited if—my friend, would she have been as excited if she had actually paid off the medical school admissions team? No, she would have just bought her daughter the seat in medical school. Instead, the joy was even greater because of the efforts that she saw her daughter put forward in achieving those goals. Moreover, her daughter had such a sense of, well, relief for sure, but also of personal satisfaction. This picture that I'm drawing for you here is I'm trying to show you how God can delight in our achievements. And we can delight in those as well as we draw on the strength that God gives us.

I can give you another analogy here: parents and homework. God doesn't do the good works for the Philippian believers any more than a parent should do the homework for their children. But God is making it possible for the Philippians, resourcing them with everything they need in order for them to step into the work that God has for each and every one of them and for the church as a whole, even as parents try to provide their child with a good meal, a quiet place to work with few distractions, encouraging comments about how they can, you know, they can do it. But the child themselves, the student gains a certain level of satisfaction of enjoyment in accomplishment that pleases the parent. Now, obviously this is a very limited analogy in trying to describe God's own joy at his children succeeding in the works that he has laid out for them to do. But this may give you a bit of a glimpse into what Paul is trying to describe here and why it is that God just doesn't snap his fingers and everything happens—why he invites us to step into the works that he's doing in the world, because it actually transforms us and it increases our joy, it increases our trust in our Savior, and it builds community between believers.

IV. Old Testament Imagery & Community Witness

Paul then continues. We can look at verses 14 through 16. Here's where he gets even more specific by quoting or drawing on pictures from the Old Testament as he's playing out the wrong way to work out your salvation. Initially, in the first two verses that we looked at, 12 and 13, we get the picture of how it's done. Now we're getting the picture of how not to do it. Paul references several stories in the Old Testament. He also uses some particular terms that we're going to focus on: "grumbling," a phrase "without blemish," another phrase "crooked and perverse generation," and then the final phrase "shining like stars." All of these are coming out of the Old Testament context as Paul is drawing on the history of Israel as a way of us understanding today, and certainly for the Philippians back in Paul's day, how to live well and what to avoid in order to live well.

So this Old Testament backdrop is important in another way. The Old Testament emphasizes God's concern for holy living, not just at the individual level, but also at the community level. And this public witness of holy living was not only so that the community's own life would be one filled with joy and peace and contentment, that neighbors would be neighborly, that justice would be done fairly—not only so the community could enjoy this, that's what holy living is about—but that it would be a witness, also a strong witness to the world. Paul is steeped in the language and the ideas of the Old Testament, and so he's going to see his own experience and the church's experience through the light of the Old Testament. But Paul is also going to reframe, given that the Messiah has come and we now are in the age of the Spirit, looking forward to the new heavens and the new earth. So Paul will also reframe some of the verses in the Old Testament so that they more directly pertain to the experience in the church. And that's what we find here.

So first Paul says, "No grumbling." I confess that I would have started, I think, with something like no sexual immorality or no idolatry. And I mean, at one level, Paul would certainly agree with me on that, but it's interesting that he starts with no grumbling. Paul has an insight here that I think the West has forgotten or downplayed. The grumbling Paul is probably referring to here goes back to, or he's thinking in his mind at least to cases of grumbling in the history of the Israelites during the Exodus. So you could take a look, for example, at Numbers chapter 20. There's no water yet again, and so the whole community is complaining. They're complaining against Moses and Aaron, and that in that complaint, they say, "It would be better if we had died in Egypt. We don't want to die here in the wilderness." This is in chapter 14. And so there's all this complaining that infects the whole congregation and they can't move forward.

Let me give you another example. This is from Numbers chapter 12. Here, Aaron and Miriam, brother and sister—brother and sister with Moses—they become very frustrated that Moses married a Cushite woman and they started grumbling against him. They spoke against him and they were kind of building themselves up by saying, "Hey, God can speak through us too." God's answer to them was to declare that though he spoke to prophets in visions, he spoke to Moses face to face. And so God chastised Aaron and Miriam. In fact, Miriam was infected with leprosy for seven days, not because she was worse than Aaron, but because Aaron as the high priest, if he had leprosy, he would not be able to offer any sacrifices. He could not go into the tabernacle and it would be catastrophic for the whole community. Aaron realizes this. He knows Miriam is also carrying his guilt with the leprosy. So he confesses their foolishness. He apologizes to Moses. Grumbling in these cases, especially in Numbers, is often done to the human leader of the group, like Moses and Aaron and Miriam, but by extension, it's actually a grumbling against God. And that is why Paul puts "don't grumble" as one of the central commands not to do for any group that is seeking to impact the world and to be transformed themselves into Christ.

So it may be when Paul says stop grumbling that there is actually a problem in Philippi with certain members of the community grumbling against leaders. You know, I don't know. Some people have looked at chapter 4, verse 2, when Paul talks about two of his coworkers, Euodia and Syntyche, and that he asks them to have the same mind, which is a phrase we saw in chapter 2, verse 2. Is it that Paul has heard maybe from Epaphroditus that there's a group within the church that is grumbling against Euodia and Syntyche? Or maybe these two have cliques around them that are creating a dissension? Possibly, are these two leaders competing against each other like Aaron did towards Moses? All that I just said is speculation. I mean, not the Aaron and Moses—that's in Scripture. I don't know whether Paul is asking them to not grumble because he knows of a particular situation or whether he recognizes that grumbling is probably the number one concern for any community that's trying to be unified, having the same mind so that they can grow themselves and also be effective evangelists.

Today, I think we underestimate the damage that grumbling can cause. It is the case though—and it's not just here in Philippians—that the New Testament speaks strongly against the promotion of self in a way that fosters rivalry. So think about, for example, the letter that James writes. And in the first chapter he says, "Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger." That cuts to the root of grumbling, doesn't it? Or later in chapter 3, James will say, "How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire and the tongue is a fire." He continues with it: "With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. Brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so." So it's that kind of situation that Paul is trying to avoid or to correct here in Philippi. And you think back to Moses, Aaron, Miriam as they're wandering in the wilderness: wilderness living is hard. And in a way the Philippians, centuries after the Israelites are wandering in the Sinai, they also have their own, if you will, their own wilderness. It stretches you and it calls for faith. And the Philippians are being invited by Paul to think differently, to draw on God's wisdom, to have a distinct mindset that doesn't embrace how they've been raised in the Roman way of thinking but think as God thinks.

Paul argues that in stopping, it's not just enough to stop grumbling, but that the goal in all of this is that you will be blameless and pure. The idea of being blameless is to be faithful or to be sincere; it does not mean sinless. Blameless is simply that you're faithful. And then pure—pure here is not a private kind of purity. The purity that is mentioned here is speaking against sin that destroys lives. It's—I would say an example in our own day would be pornography that some argue is just a private matter, a personal taste of an individual. But we know, and even broader studies have shown, that pornography is actually not a private matter. It destroys families, certainly destroys those who are involved in the industry. The porn industry exploits, it objectifies, it humiliates those who are caught in its web. So while we might initially think pornography is private, it's actually very public. And it's that public aspect that Paul gets at when he talks about this term purity.

We also, and my example shows today, we think of purity primarily in relation to sexual immorality. It would have been a broader term for Paul. The purity that he talks about here is one that has a love of the other that isn't contaminated by a utilitarian mindset that wants to use the other. Maybe an example would be the pure love of a father to his baby, a mother to her baby. There's a purity there in the sense that it just delights in the other. And so that's, I think, where Paul is going when he encourages them to be blameless and pure. He also, when using this language, is drawing on Old Testament instructions that refer to sacrifices, animal sacrifices, and an animal sacrifice needs to be without blemish, without fault, a spotless animal. And that picture then is used metaphorically in the Old Testament to describe the faithful and sincere Israelites. So the psalmist in Psalm 15 will say, "O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, who do what is right, who speak truth from their heart." That's the attitude that Paul is enjoining to the Philippians here when he talks about them being blameless and pure. Paul will say the same thing, actually, or something very similar to the Colossians in the end of chapter 1. To the Colossians, Paul will say, "And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, Christ has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him."

All of this is important, not only for your own spiritual health, but also, Paul says, "because you face a generation, a people, a group, a culture, a society that is crooked and perverse." Now, Paul is drawing this language from Deuteronomy chapter 32. This is an evaluation, in other words, that from ancient times with Moses on up through—we'll also see Jesus reflects on this—this idea that the faithful of God live in a culture, a broader culture that is perverse and crooked and does evil. So Jesus uses this phrase, "crooked and perverse generation," in Matthew chapter 17. He comes upon his disciples who have been trying to heal a man's son and the disciples aren't able to do that. And Jesus responds, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you?" He heals the boy, but the disciples ask him later, "Why were they unable to do what Jesus did?" And he answers them that they lacked faith. Jesus says, "For truly I tell you, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it would move, and nothing would be impossible for you."

So as we see this phrase, "perverse and crooked generation," and we look at it through the lens of what Jesus meant with it, the condemnation of this generation, meaning the wider culture, is that they lacked faith. And I think with Jesus' words—and Paul will be getting at this, I think, with the Philippians—even believers are or can be drawn into the same struggles that their broader culture faces. Jesus' disciples were unable to affect a healing because of their lack of faith. It's this faithless generation, but we also sometimes can actually live like that too, without faith. So Paul to the Philippians is saying to them, "be blameless and pure, live out your faith. You can do this. Don't slide into the attitude, the mindset, the faithlessness of those that are around you."

Rather, Paul says, "shine like stars." Now here, Paul is drawing on the book of Daniel, specifically chapter 12. Daniel promises to the righteous that they will shine like stars. It's a promise Daniel makes that is looking forward. He's saying to his generation, this is what awaits us, that you will shine like stars. But Paul, when he uses this, he uses the present tense, not the future. So he's indicating that the Philippians now, in Christ and their life in the Holy Spirit, they can shine right now. It's interesting: the only other place in the New Testament where we find this phrase from Daniel used is in Revelation chapter 21, verse 11. And John here is describing the heavenly Jerusalem that descends with its beauty and its radiance. I am not saying that Revelation and Philippians are connected in some kind of specific textual sense, but rather that both Paul and Revelation are picturing the end, the victory over evil, where believers shine like stars. And Paul is saying that even now, because of our life in Christ, our participation with Christ, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we can shine like that now.

"So hold firm," Paul says, "hold firm, hold fast, hold fast to the word of life." This particular phrase, "the word of life," is found only here in Paul, but there are similar phrases that occur throughout, even in, let's say 1 John. The very beginning of 1 John, that letter, we find John writing, "We declare to you what was from the beginning concerning the word of life." Of course, Jesus is called the Word in the Gospel of John, and the term in Greek has an elasticity, and certainly within the Christian community, "the word of life" is both Jesus himself and the gospel that gives us life based on his work.

V. Paul’s Ministry & Sacrifice

We have come through Paul's injunctions to the Philippians, and now Paul refers to himself. This is in verse 16, towards the end of 16, where Paul says, if you do all of this, then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I've not run or labored in vain. And it may be surprising to us that Paul says he hopes to boast. That's not good, is it, to boast? Certainly, both now and also back then, self-boasting was obnoxious, but that's not what Paul is talking about. In Paul's day, you were allowed to boast if you were defending yourself against accusations. I mean, I think today we wouldn't call that boasting; we'd call that explaining. But the word to describe someone defending themselves against accusations would be boasting. That's how in Paul's day they would speak of it. Sometimes also self-praise had the goal of encouraging the audience. And so sometimes you could boast, as Paul is here, "then I'd be able to boast on the day of Christ," as a way of encouraging the Philippians. "If you do all of this, then just think, me as your apostle, the one who instructs you in the faith, I'll be able also to say, 'Look at them, how great they are, right?'"

It is the case that in Paul's day, when someone spoke in a way that included self-praise, they also should include stories of misfortune. They don't want to incite envy in the listeners. So Paul uses this basic social convention, but he fills it with gospel truth. So all boasting must be done in the Lord, to the Lord, right? Thus, he can take pride. Paul does boast in his own weakness because when he experiences his own weakness, then that provides for him an awareness of God's strength that works through him, and God receives all the glory. Paul describes this in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, where he initially is frustrated that he has something, he calls it "a thorn in the flesh." We don't know what that is, but he initially sees that as holding him back in his ministry. And then God says to him, "My grace is sufficient." So Paul says, "Okay, now I see my situation in a different way. And so I'm going to rejoice in my weaknesses. I'm going to rejoice in and boast in my weakness because in my weakness, God's strength is made ever more clear. So boast in Christ Jesus and not have any confidence in the flesh." I mean, that's what we'll see in the next chapter in Philippians verse 3, "We boast in Christ Jesus, we don't have confidence in the flesh." So Paul's language of boasting here is not to aggrandize himself, but rather to encourage the Philippians and to give all the credit to God.

Paul also uses this interesting phrase that he hopes he has not run in vain. Well, at one level, I mean, in referencing the Philippians and their faithfulness, Paul knows he's not running in vain. He knows because he's told them in the first chapter that he is confident that the God who began a good work in you will carry it on into completion. So at one level, Paul is confident in their walk with Christ. But he also recognizes this when he says, maybe, "that I not be seen to have run in vain"—he recognizes the importance of the Philippians' steadfast faith and witness, and Paul recognizes his own ministry effectiveness is tied to the Philippians' faithfulness. And I think this is an example of Paul's vulnerability in saying, you know, I want to encourage you and I want you to do well. And in a sense, I have what we might say, skin in the game. Your faithfulness is an encouragement to me also, and I want to encourage you in that faithfulness. Paul is invested in a healthy way; he is invested with the Philippians' continual maturation in the faith.

We've got two more verses to go in this section. Verses 17 and 18 use some interesting language that draws on sacrifices. Paul describes himself as being poured out like a drink offering and being poured out on a sacrifice. He also references the service coming from your, that is the Philippians', faith. When Paul talks about being as a drink offering and he talks about their service to the Lord as a sacrifice, the picture that we get here is of a liturgical experience. Both Jews and Gentiles thought about sacrifices, not just as an animal sacrifice that we referenced earlier in the lesson, but also as a libation, or oil or wine being poured out. Gentiles did this as well as Jews, obviously in very different contexts, but the picture of a drink offering would have been familiar to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. And what Paul describes here is complementary acts of worship: a sacrifice, a drink offering, all have in view praise of God. The Philippians give a sacrifice, they make an offering. And that term that is translated offering, it's not used extensively by Paul, but we'll find it used again at the end of chapter 2 in describing Epaphroditus' work. We see it used again in chapter 3, verse 3, where Paul distinguishes the believer's worship from the worship of his opponents.

Paul, using this language of sacrifice, not only in Philippians, but also he can speak of believers being living sacrifices, which is at one level an oxymoron because sacrificing an animal results in their death. But he describes believers being living sacrifices in that they give their lives in a daily way to the service of God. He can talk about his own ministry as—and he'll say this to the Colossians—"In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, the church." Now, Paul is not saying that Christ's death and resurrection was in any way insufficient for the forgiveness of sins, for defeating death for all time. But rather, the lack is Paul's way of describing the importance of members of Christ's body, believers, followers of Jesus, embracing the suffering that is part of the Christian walk, because we live in a perverse and crooked generation. So sacrifice, service, these are terms that Paul uses to help us understand in fullness that our union with Christ will include personal suffering for the sake of Christ. I mean, Paul is writing from prison, so he is personally now even experiencing an aspect of suffering because of his testimony to the gospel.

In fact, I think of Paul meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus. This you find in Acts chapter 9, and then repeated twice in later chapters. So three times Acts tells this story, which means it's important. As Paul is going to Damascus, he's going to arrest those who follow Jesus. There's a large Jewish community there in Damascus, and some of the Jews in it are following Jesus, and he's going to arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. When the bright light shines and a voice speaks, Christ asks Paul, "Why are you persecuting me?" I think that's not by accident that Jesus asks it that way, as Paul's actually not going to persecute Jesus—at least that's not what he thinks he's doing. He's going to persecute and arrest people who follow what he considers at the moment to be a false messiah. But Jesus says, "Why are you persecuting me?" And that indicates, I think, that Jesus sees his followers as members of his body. That's how Paul talks about it in Ephesians at the end of chapter 1, and how he is describing it to the Philippians here, that we participate in Christ's life. That's what he's inviting us to think: the imitation of Christ. This is Paul's burden.

I've mentioned the Old Testament quite a bit here, and you might be thinking, "Well, these are mainly Gentiles who are listening to this. Would they have known the Old Testament?" It's a good question. It's possible that some of the Gentile Philippian believers would not have picked up initially the kind of subtle intertextual argument that Paul is making here. But we have to remember that this letter would have been read over and over again to the community, and Timothy might have read it to them at one point, Epaphroditus is going to be there reading it, and others who would be able to highlight for some of the members in the congregation who wouldn't have known that much about the Old Testament—they'd be able to highlight Paul's allusions and Paul's teaching. So we should never think that they just read the letter once, or that they read it by themselves. They would have—well, many of them wouldn't have been able to read. So they would have had one person who would have read or, we might say, performed, you know, really read the letter in a way that instructs the community.

VI. Joy, Perseverance & the Path of Faith

In closing, Paul, in his last verses here in our section, verses 17 and 18, he uses the term "rejoice" four times. In verse 17, we have the verb rejoice—sometimes it's translated as "I'm glad"—and in verse 18, he also has the verb rejoice, and he adds a prefix that indicates "with," or we could say like, "I co-rejoice with you." We don't pick it up so much in the English, which is fine, but the Greek listeners would have recognized that Paul is joining with them in his call to rejoice, to rejoice in the midst of the suffering, the imprisonment, the afflictions. In their rejoicing, they are declaring that this perverse and crooked generation doesn't have the last say, that Jesus has defeated evil, and on the day of Christ, all evil and sin will be defeated, and Christ's reign in fullness will be established.

As I close, I'll close with this story from a couple of years ago during a communion. There was a father with his young son—I don't know, maybe four years old—who were in front of me in line to receive communion. And we received the bread, and we received the wine or juice, and okay, then we're ready to go back to our seats. And in that interim space, I heard the boy—he kind of stage-whispered to his father, "Can I have another?" And I thought, "Wow, like, that's what Paul's about here. 'Can I have another? Can I have more of Jesus?'" That's Paul's hope, and that's what we see in chapter 2, verses 14 through 18.

So as you're beginning this passage, you mentioned the imagery of the gate and the path, and that even though Paul emphasizes that our salvation is by faith alone, and Luther elaborates on that, that there's also an element of perseverance. And even though he doesn't use the word here, that that's the thought that he's talking about. So can you talk about like the imagery of the path or the gate and the path, where that came from, and the importance in this passage and overall in Paul of the idea of salvation by faith alone, but also perseverance?

Sure, sure. I'm not entirely sure where gate and path—I don't know that it's something that came to my mind, or if it was something that I read and then just incorporated. But what I like about that image is that it recognizes that each and every day, we are encouraged to know Christ more. And each and every day, God wants to love on us even more. I think of Bonhoeffer and his phrase, "cheap grace." Cheap grace is that which pictures God's salvation as kind of a once-and-done, sort of a get-out-of-jail-free card, our ticket to heaven. I just—I decide, you know, "Jesus, you died for my sins, that's great." And then, you know, "I'll meet you in a couple decades when I die and go to heaven." Like that. I mean, that's quite overstated. I don't think sincere Christians think necessarily that way. But I think Bonhoeffer's warning against cheap grace is this idea that grace is only for a moment to kind of clean up our sin. And for Bonhoeffer, obedience is so important in our understanding of salvation; obedience is a way for a relationship to deepen.

And maybe obedience in our mindset today takes us into a social world where you have a superior and an inferior. So the superior says, "do this," and the inferior one says, "yes, I'll go ahead and do it." But let's change the dynamics and think of a marriage relationship. In my case, I'm not—I don't think in terms of obeying, but rather in finding out what delights my spouse, and then trying to do things that would increase their joy. You know, and so I think of—yeah, it doesn't—obey can sometimes feel constraining. And I think what Bonhoeffer, what I'm trying to get at, is obedience is not like a list that you accomplish. It's a relationship to deepen. Obedience happens as you listen more closely.

So for—as you are at the gate and you meet God, or to use the biblical image, Jesus is standing at the door and he knocks and you open the door and you let him in. Now, what—or do you just stand there, you know, or does he just walk away? No, he comes into the house. He does that. I think, especially if you are thinking of conversation as prayers. Prayers are our conversation with God, and hopefully in our prayers, God's conversation with us—certainly conversation as we read Scripture and we hear God speaking to us. So listening to the Spirit. I think in worship as well. I don't have any musical abilities at all, but my husband does; he's been on worship teams at church, in choirs, all of that. And listening, of course, to sacred music, I just—it can lift me up to heaven where the angels continue to worship and praise in the throne room. So I think the gate and the path, Jesus knocking on the door, you open it, you invite him in, and then you begin your relationship. That, I think, is what Paul invites us to think about when he says, "work out your salvation."