Philippians 1: The Cheerful Letter Was Written Before the Verdict

Anil on my team sent me a message Thursday, right in the middle of a thread about retry limits. "Isn't Philippians the one where the guy is in jail and keeps telling everybody to be happy?" He'd seen a verse from it stitched on a pillow at his mother-in-law's house and had been turning it over ever since.

I told him I'd get back to him. I read chapter 1 again this morning with his question in my ear, and the man in it isn't telling anybody to be happy. He's telling them what he's glad about. He's also saying it while he has no idea how his trial will come out.

What is Paul actually worried about?

The word joy turns up early, in verse 4, where he prays for the Philippians "with joy," and it comes back in verse 18 and again in verse 25. So the pillow isn't lying. But look at what sits between those verses. In verse 19 he says he knows his situation "shall turn to my salvation" through their prayers and the Spirit's supply. In verse 20 he says what he's hoping for, and it isn't release. He hopes that "in nothing I shall be ashamed," and that Christ will be magnified in his body "whether it be by life, or by death."

That is a man who has considered the possibility of dying and decided that the thing he's afraid of is something else.

He's afraid of flinching.

I've read verse 20 a lot of times and I think it's the most human thing in the chapter, a prisoner who isn't asking to be spared so much as to not embarrass the one he works for.

Then comes the line everybody knows.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Philippians 1:21

Did Paul want to die?

Verse 21 gets read at funerals, usually all by itself. Verse 22 starts with "But," and that one word undoes the tidy version. "If I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not." Wot is the King James word for know. He's saying he can't tell which he would pick.

For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.

Philippians 1:23-24

A strait is a narrow place, a pass with a wall on each side. He wants to go and says so, and he calls it far better. Then he looks at the Philippians and says staying is more needful for them. By verse 25 he's confident enough to write "I know that I shall abide and continue with you all." He still can't say what he'd choose, but he's decided what he thinks will happen, and he leaves the choosing out of it. I find that more believable than either a man who is eager to die or a man who won't admit he's tempted.

What did the guards have to do with it?

Verses 12 and 13 are the part I'd like more people to slow down on. "I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel." Somebody had to have been worried, or he wouldn't open with that. The Philippians had heard he was locked up, and the natural reading is that it all went wrong. He writes to correct that.

His proof is that his "bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places." The word translated palace is the Greek praetorium, and it can mean the guard as easily as a building. Acts 28:16 tells us how it would have worked in Rome, where Paul "was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him." One soldier, then another, then another. A man chained to somebody for hours at a stretch is going to be asked what he did, and he's going to answer.

Verse 14 adds a second result, and it's the one I'd have missed. Other believers "waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear." The sight of him still talking made them less afraid. I wrote about the other letter from this same period, in Ephesians 1 and the small word that changes the pronoun, and it has the same quality: a man who can't go anywhere writing as if the whole world were his parish.

Notice that he never says the imprisonment was good. He says what came out of it. The chapter gives you no basis for thanking God for the chains, and the thanks he does give, back in verses 3 to 5, are for the Philippians.

Does it matter why somebody preaches?

Four verses here are harder than the rest of the chapter put together. "Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will." Verse 16 says the first group do it "supposing to add affliction to my bonds." They want to hurt him. They've looked at a man who can't answer back and decided to compete.

He sorts them, contention and pretence on one side and love and the defence of the gospel on the other, and then declines to let the sorting decide whether he's glad. "What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice."

I don't read that as approval of the envious ones, and I doubt Paul would want it read that way. He called what they were doing contention, and he said what they hoped it would do to him. What he won't do is hold the message hostage to the messenger, which is a discipline I'd like to have and mostly don't. He had a better reason than I'd usually have, though. He's in a cell and the news is getting out.

What does "conversation" mean in verse 27?

In the English of 1611, conversation meant the way you conduct your life and wasn't limited to talking. So "let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ" is about how they live. Paul's reason is that he won't be there to see it: "whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs." Whatever the Philippians were being asked to do, they were being asked to do it with nobody watching who could check.

He wants them standing "in one spirit, with one mind striving together," and in verse 28 not "terrified by your adversaries." That's a letter written to people who are under some pressure of their own, and it's why I think the happiness at the start is carrying so much.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Paul when he wrote Philippians?

The letter doesn't name the city. The usual answer is Rome, going by the guard and the "bonds" and the way Acts 28 ends, with Paul "two whole years in his own hired house." Some scholars have argued for Ephesus or Caesarea. I lean toward Rome, but nothing in chapter 1 depends on it.

Does verse 6 promise that God will finish whatever he started in me?

It's a good promise and I take comfort from it, but read the grammar. "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it" is addressed to "you all," a congregation Paul has just called his partners in the gospel. I'd say it's a promise to a group first, and only after that to any one of us in a bad week.

Why does verse 8 say "bowels of Jesus Christ"?

In 1611 the bowels were where a person felt tenderness, the way we'd now say heart. Paul is saying he misses them with something like Christ's own affection. It reads oddly now, and I don't think we need a better translation so much as a footnote.

Can I put verse 21 on a plaque?

Sure. It's his sentence and it's true to him. Just know that he keeps going for three more verses, and the next ones are where he admits he's torn.

Verse 29 is where I part company with this chapter, and it comes right at the end. "For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." Paul says it from a cell, to people who watched him get beaten in their own city, and coming from him I can hear it. I still don't like the word "given," and I wince when it's handed to someone in the middle of grief by a person who isn't suffering anything. I don't know a way to read it that doesn't sound like a gift nobody asked for.

— D.