Philippians 4:1-7 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Philippians 4:1-7

• So then, my dearly loved and longed for brothers and sisters, my joy and crown, in this manner stand firm in the Lord, dear friends. 2 I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to agree in the Lord. 3 Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life. 4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your graciousness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
• Philippians 4:1
• So then, my dearly loved and longed for brothers and sisters, my joy and crown, in this manner stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.
  • Through this passage breathes the warmth of Paul’s affection for his Philippian friends. He loves them and longs for them. They are his joy and his crown. Those whose he had brought to Christ are his greatest joy when the shadows are closing in around him. Any teacher knows what a thrill it is to point at someone who has done well and to be able to say that they were one of their students
  • There are vivid pictures behind the word when Paul says that the Philippians are his crown. There are two words for crown in Greek, and they have different backgrounds
    • Diadema
      • Royal crown. The crown of kingship
    • Stephanos (the word used in this passage)
      • It was the crown of the victorious athlete at the Greek games. It was made of wild olive leaves, interwoven with green parsley, and bay leaves. To win that crown was the peak of an athlete’s ambition
      • It was the crown with which guests were crowned when they sat at a banquet at some time of great joy
        • It is as if Paul said that the Philippians were the crown of all his toil; it is as if he said that at the final banquet of God they were his festive crown. There is no joy in the world like bringing another soul to Christ
  • Three times in the first four verses of this chapter, the words in the Lord occur. There are three great commands which Paul gives in the Lord
    • The Philippians are to stand firm in the Lord
      • Only with Jesus Christ can we resist the seductions of temptation and the weakness of cowardice. The word Paul uses for stand firm is the word which would be used for soldiers standing firm in the onset of battle, with the enemy surging down upon them
      • We know very well that there are some people in whose company it is easy to do the wrong thing, and there are some n whose company it is easy to resist the wrong thing
      • Our only safety against temptation is to be in the Lord, always feeling His presence around us and about us
      • The Church and the individual Christian can stand firm only when they stand in Christ
    • Paul tells Euodia and Syntyche to agree in the Lord
      • There can be no unity unless it is in Christ. In ordinary human affairs, it repeatedly happens that the most diverse people are held together because they all give allegiance to a great leader. Their loyalty to each other depends entirely on their loyalty to that person. Take the leader away, and he whole group would disintegrate into isolated and often warring units
      • People can never really love each other until they love Christ. Human fellowship is impossible without the lordship of Christ
    • Paul tells the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord
      • The one thing everyone needs to learn about joy is that it has nothing to do with material things or with our outward circumstances. It is the simple fact of human experience that someone living in the lap of luxury can be wretched and someone else who is in the depths of poverty can overflow with joy. One person upon whom life has apparently inflicted no blows at all can be gloomily or peevishly discontented, and another upon whom life has inflicted every possible blow can be serenely joyful
      • The secret is this—that happiness depends not on things or on places, but always on persons. If we are with the right person, nothing else matters; and if we are not with the right person, nothing can make up for that absence
      • In the presence of Jesus Christ, in the Lord, the greater of all friends is with us; nothing else can separate us from that presence, and so nothing can take away our joy
• Philippians 4:2-3
• 2 I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to agree in the Lord. 3 Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life.
  • This is a passage about which we would very much like to know more. There is obvious drama, heartbreak, and great deeds behind it; but of the characters named we can only guess
  • Euodia and Syntyche are tow women who had quarreled
    • It may well have been that they were women in whose homes two of the house congregations of Philips met
    • It is very interesting to see women playing such a leading part in the affairs of one of the early congregations, for in Greece women remained very much in the background. It was the aim of the Greeks that a respectable woman should see as little, hear as little, and ask as little as possible. A respectable woman never appeared on the street alone; she had her own apartments in the house and never joined the male members of the family, even for meals. Least of all did she play any part in public life
    • But Philippi was in Macedonia, and in Macedonia things were very different. There, women had a freedom and a place which was unheard of in the rest of Greece
    • We can see this even in the narrative in Acts of Paul’s work in Macedonia. In Philippi, Paul’s first contact was with the meeting for prayer by a Riverside, and he spoke to the women who gathered there. Lydia was obviously a leading figure in Philippi. In Thessalonica, many of the chief women were won for Christianity, and the same happened in Berea
    • We know that in many of the Pauline churches (i.e. Corinth) women had to be content with a very subordinate place. But it is well worth remembering, when we are thinking of the place of women in the early Church and of Paul’s attitude to them, that in the Macedonian churches they clearly had a leading place
  • There is another matter of doubt here. Someone is addressed as true partner
    • It is possible that it is a proper name—Sunzugos. The world for true is gnesios, which means genuine. And there may be a pun here. Paul may be saying: “I ask you, Sunzugos—and you are rightly named—to help”
    • If sunzugos is not a proper name, no one knows who is being addressed. All kinds of suggestions have been made
      • It has been suggested that the person concerned is Paul’s wife, that he is the husband of Euodia or Syntyche called on to help his wife mend the quarrel, that it is Lydia, that it is Timothy, that it is Silas. Maybe the best suggestion is that the reference is to Epaphroditus, the bearer of the letter, and that Paul is entrusting him not only with the letter but also with the task of making peace at Philippi
      • Of the Clement named, we know nothing. There was later a famous Clement who was Bishop of Rome who may have known Paul; but it was a common name
  • Two things to be noted
    • It is significant that when there was a quarrel at Philippi, Paul mobilized the whole resources of the church to mend it
      • He thought no effort too great to maintain the peace of the church. A quarreling church is no church at all, for it is one from which Christ has been shut out. No one can be at peace with God and quarreling with others
    • It is a grim thought that all we know about Euodia and Syntyche is that they were two women who had quarreled
      • It makes us think. Suppose our life was to be summed up in one sentence, what would that sentence be? Clement goes down in history as the peacemaker; Euodia and Syntyche go down as the breakers of the peace
      • Suppose we were to go down in history with one thing known about us, what would that one thing be
• Philippians 4:4-5
• 4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your graciousness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
  • Paul sets before the Philippians tow great qualities of the Christian life
    • The first is the quality of joy
      • Rejoice…I will say it again: Rejoice!
      • It is as if having said rejoice, a picture of all that was to come flashed into his mind. He himself was lying in prison with almost certain death awaiting him; the Philippians were setting out on the Christian way, and dark days, dangers, and persecutions inevitably lay ahead
      • So Paul says; “I know what I’m saying. I’ve thought of everything that can possibly happen. And still I say, Rejoice!”
      • Christian joy is independent of all things on earth because it has its source in the continual presence of Christ. Two people who love each other are always happy when they are together, no matter where they are. Christians can never lose their joy because they can never lose Christ
    • Paul goes on to say “Let your graciousness be known to everyone”
      • The word translated as graciousness is one of the most untranslatable of all Greek words. The difficulty can be seen by the number of translations given of it
        • Patience, softness, patient mind, modesty, forbearance/gentleness, forbearance, forbearing spirit, magnanimity, “Let all the world know that you will meet a man half-way”
      • The Greeks themselves explained this word as justice and something better than justice. They said that  it ought to come in when strict justice became unjust because of its generality. There may be individual instances where a perfectly just law becomes unjust or where justice is not the same thing as fairness. People have this quality if they know when not to apply the strict letter of the law, when to relax justice and introduce mercy
      • It is the quality of someone who knows that regulations are not the last word and knows when not to apply the letter of the law
      • Christians are men and women who know that there is something beyond justice. When the woman taken in adultery was brought before Him, Jesus could have applied the letter of the law, according to which she should have been stoned to death; but He went beyond justice. As far as justice goes, there is not one of us who deserves anything other than the condemnation of God; but God goes far beyond justice. Paul lays it down that they mark of Christians in their personal relationships with others must be that they know when to insist on justice and when to remember that theres is something beyond justice
  • Why should we be like this? Why should we have this joy and gracious gentleness in our lives? Because, Paul says, the Lord is near. If we remember the coming triumph of Christ, we can never lose our hope and our joy. If we remember that life is short, we will not want to enforce the stern justice which so often divides people but will want to deal with others in love, as we hope that God will deal with us. Justice is human, but epieikeia is divine
• Philippians 4:6-7
• 6 Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
  • For the Philippians, life was bound to be a source of worry. Even to be a human being and to be so vulnerable to all the chances and changes of this mortal life is in itself a cause for worry; and in the early church, to the normal worry of the human situation there was added the worry of being a Christian, which meant taking one’s life in one’s hand
  • Paul’s solution is prayer. In this brief passage, there is a whole philosophy of prayer
    • Paul stresses that we can take everything to God in prayer
      • There is nothing to great for God’s power, and nothing too small for His love. We may take anything to god, sure of His interest and concern
    • We can bring our prayers, petitions, and requests to God; We can pray for ourselves
      • We can pray for forgiveness for the past, for the things we need in the present, and for help and guidance for the future. We can take our own past, present, and future into the presence of God. We can pray for others. We can comment to God’s care those near and far who are within our memories and our hearts
    • Paul tells us that thanksgiving must be the universal accompaniment of prayer
      • Christians must feel that all through life they are suspended between past and present blessings. Every prayer must surely include thanks for the great privilege of prayer itself
      • Paul insists we must give thanks in everything. That implies two things
        • It implies gratitude
        • It implies perfect submission to the will of God
      • It is only when we are fully convinced that God is working all things together for good that we can really feel the perfect gratitude towards Him which believing prayer demands
      • When we pray, we must remember three things
        • We must remember the love of God, which only ever desires what is best for us. We must remember the wisdom of God, which alone knows what is best for us. We must remember the power of God, which alone can bring about that which is best for us. Everyone who prays with a perfect trust in the love, wisdom, and power of God will find God’s peace
  • The result of believing prayer is that the peace of God will stand like a sentry on guard over our hearts. The word that Paul uses for guard is the military word for standing on guard
  • That peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, does not mean that the peace of God is such a oyster that the human mind cannot understand it, although that is also true. It means that the peace of God is so precious that the human mind, with all its skill and knowledge, can never produce it. It can never be of our engineering; it is only of God’s giving. The way to peace is in prayer to entrust ourselves and all whom we hold dear to the loving hands of God