Status Updates From Paul's Letter to the Philip...

"...in Paul's hand conventions are never merely conventional. Eventually everything...is brought under the influence of Christ...To live is Christ; to die is to gain Christ; & for the sake of such 'gain'...all else is merely refuse. Thus, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all the readers of this letter, & with those who use this commentary to help better understand it as the Word of Christ" (462),

"The uniqueness of this passage in the corpus comes into focus here. For in Philippi he did accept their material support once and again. This says something significant about his relationship with this church, and here it is hard not to see the hand of Luke (and Lydia?) at work. Thus he gladly acknowledges their gift, but even here one finds the demurrer" (448).

"Just as with 'being humbled' in v. 12, so 'everything' in this sentence should be understood more broadly as well, as long as it is understood within Paul's theological frame of reference...his singular focus on Christ,..already dictates what 'all things' means for him. To take this sentence out of that singular Christ-focused context of his life is to doom it to serve for lesser, more often selfish, things" (434).

"The most common response to such a culture is not discrimination, but rejection. This text suggests a better way, that one approach the marketplace, the arts, the media, the university, looking for what is 'true' and 'uplifting' and 'admirable'; but that one do so with a discriminating eye and heart, for which the Crucified One serves as the template" (421).

"Thanksgiving is an explicit acknowledgment of creatureliness and dependence, a recognition that everything comes as gift, the verbalization before God of his goodness and generosity. If prayer as petition indicates their utter dependence on and trust in God, petition 'accompanied by thanksgiving' puts both their prayer and their lives into proper theological perspective" (409).

"'Joy,' unmitigated, untrammeled joy, is - or at least should be - the distinctive mark of the believer in Christ Jesus. The wearing of black and the long face, which so often came to typify some later expressions of Christian piety, are totally foreign to the Pauline version; Paul the theologian of grace is equally the theologian of joy" (404).

"The gospel is...always at stake in our world, & the call to God's people, whose 'names are written in the book of life,' is to live that life now in whatever 'Philippi' & in the face of whatever opposition it is found. But to do so effectively, its people, especially those in leadership, must learn to subordinate personal agendas to the larger agenda of the gospel, 'to have the same mindset in the Lord..." (397-8).

"Although Paul's language will not quite allow the translation, 'we are a colony of heaven'...the point of the imagery comes very close to that. Just as Philippi was a colony of Rome, whose citizens thereby exemplified the life of Rome in the province of Macedonia, so the citizens of the 'heavenly commonwealth' were to function as a colony of heaven in that outpost of Rome" (379).

"...this passage helps to tie together several items in the letter , especially the theme of joy in suffering and Paul's reasons for the narratives about Christ (2:6-11) and himself (3:4-14). At issue throughout is living a cruciform existence, discipleship marked by the cross and evidenced by suffering on behalf of Christ" (363).

"Here is the offer of friendship; they may freely disagree with him at points - on many matters - and if any matter counts for something, Paul trusts God to bring them up to speed here as well. What both the immediate and larger contexts of this letter...disallows is that 'something differently' can refer either to their living a cruciform lifestyle or to the vigorous pursuit of the heavenly prize" (359).

"Paul finds life meaningful precisely because he sees he future with great clarity, and the future has to do with beginnings - the (now redeemed) realization of God's creative purposes through Christ the Lord. There is no other prize; hence nothing else counts for much except 'knowing Christ,' both now and with clear and certain hope for the future" (350-1).

"While believers' sufferings do not have the expiatory significance of Christ's, they are nonetheless seen as intimately related to his. Through our suffering the significance of Christ's suffering is manifested to the world, which is why in 1:29-30 Paul describes such suffering as 'on behalf of Christ'...it is difficult to imagine that Paul is not here reflecting the teaching of his Lord..."(332-3).

"Thus, as usual in Paul, the contrast is between 'works' and 'faith,' not so much referring to forensic 'justification' - there is no hint here (including vv. 3-6) of a juridical setting, and therefore of God's 'justification' of those who have 'broken the law' - but referring to the means to and expression of one's relationship with God. Such righteousness comes 'from God'...in contrast to being 'my own'..." (326).

"...'knowing Christ' does not mean to have head knowledge about him, but to 'know him' personally...and relationally. Paul has thus taken up the Old Testament theme of'knowing God' and applied it to Christ. It meas to know him as children and parent know each other,or wives and husbands - knowledge that has to do with personal experience and intimate relationship" (318).

"Paul's present point, of course, is not his sinlessness, but his being without fault in the kind of righteousness that Judaizers would bring one to, by insisting on Torah observance. But what has that to do with righteousness at all, is his point. He has excelled here, he says, and found it empty and meaningless; hence he insists for the Philippians' benefit that there is 'no future in it'" (310).

"In turning Torah into 'laws to be observed' God's people thus turned them into merely human regulations, missing their intent as revelation of God's likeness to be lived out among God's people, hence the need for a circumcision of the heart, effected by the Spirit, to replace that of the 'flesh'" (300).