“Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at
Philippi,
with the overseers and deacons:”[1]
Sometimes
we need to back up all the way to the scenario described in Scripture in order
to purify our understanding of all the baggage that has been added over the
centuries. If we do not think about the specific things the writer had in mind
at the time of writing down the breathed-out words of God, we might box these
Scriptures into contemporary limitations before we have allowed ourselves to
see the full picture of what the servant of God was addressing.
What
Paul gives us in the book of Philippians is for people who were “at Philippi.” In Paul’s mind, there
were people in that city who were the one people of God, the one body of
Christ, with no distinction of denomination, or building, or theological
position. There were Christians in the city of Philippi, and what he had to say
was to all of them then, and all believers in any city today.
The
letter was given to “the saints in Christ
Jesus who are at Philippi.” Saints refers to Christians. It signifies that
the gospel of Jesus Christ has set us apart unto God as holy and righteous in
his sight through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord. He no longer sees us as
sinners under condemnation of our sin, but saints who are under the imputed
righteousness of Jesus Christ. We are holy ones in the Holy One.
However,
to clarify, Paul gave the letter to “all
the saints” of that city. Whatever he said in this letter was for all of
them as the one body of Christ. There was nothing in the letter, and nothing in
Paul’s thought, that would entertain the idea of this meaning all the saints in
each of their factions and divisions. We must consider this, that when God
speaks through his word, he is speaking to us as part of “all the saints” in our city or community, not just those who meet
in any particular location under any particular umbrella of association.
With
this all-encompassing designation of “all
the saints… at Philippi,” Paul now clarifies that this is “with the overseers” who “are at Philippi.” Once again, the way to
see these overseers as Paul saw them is to erase all ideas of denominational
distinctives, autonomous groups meeting in church buildings, organizing under
society acts, or anything else that would cause us to start with the idea that
Paul is speaking of the overseers of an institutional church group. He is
talking about the men who were overseers of the city-wide church.
This
means that, when Paul addresses the overseers, everything he says to them, and
everything he says to the church that they are responsible to exemplify and
lead the church in practicing, means all the overseers together. No matter what
we think of the necessity of organizing in certain locations, buildings,
denominations, or any other contemporary practices, we must first let God’s
word permeate our hearts as we think about what everything in Philippians means
when Paul saw only one group of overseers, the men who shepherded the one
church of that city.
With
the letter of Philippians addressed to both the whole church of Philippi with “all the saints,” and including all “the overseers” who were over the church
in shepherdly care, Paul also adds, “and
deacons.” We have the whole body of believers designated as saints, the
whole spiritual leadership of the church designated as overseers, and the whole
band of deacons who served the church.
To
think of all the deacons “at Philippi,”
we must not only put aside the limitations of thinking only of the deacons in
our gathering, but we also must put aside contemporary ideas of the service of
deacons. The first deacons were men who were “of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.”[2]They were given the duty of “the
daily distribution” of food to the widows.[3] The characteristic of the men, and their work to “serve tables,”[4]directs us in what to think of who these men would be in any
city-wide expression of the church.
Part
of the context for me in considering this today was that I am meditating on
what Paul said further along in his letter: “Brothers,
join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the
example you have in us.”[5]
Now,
what just popped into your head when you read the word “join”? Did you just see yourself meeting with your Sunday morning congregation,
or your care group, or your family, and working together to imitate Paul and
Timothy, and help each other keep your eyes on those who are walking according
to their example?
Or,
did you see all the saints of your city, together with all the overseers and
deacons of your city, joining together to imitate Paul in the way he related to
the one body of Christ? Are you just as prepared to join and imitate with any
and every believer in your city/community, as those with whom you are best
acquainted in your regular gatherings?
While
there is no doubt that God’s love covers over our multitude of sins,[6] even when our divisions are promoted instead of presented to God
for fixing; and that God has blessed many institutional, denominational,
societies’-based congregations because they are seeking to live by faith in Jesus
Christ, there are still things we are missing when we confine God’s word to
these manmade limitations.
We
do not even need to figure out how to do more than what we are doing in our own
groups. This is about us beginning where God begins, and waiting on him to
guide us into all that he wants us doing when we open our hearts to the picture
of the one church of saints in our city, along with the one set of overseers
and deacons taking care of this church. We don’t even need to sort out who is
really an overseer or deacon in God’s eyes. Paul is quite ready to teach the
whole church of our city how to discern and handle such things.
What
we do need to do is present our hearts to God with the confession of all our
manmade ways of thinking of his church that hinder us from seeing the one body
of saints, the one group of overseers, and the one band of deacons. And we need
to present to him that we will walk in obedient faith to whatever he teaches us
from these letters to the churches, with whomever he brings into our lives for
fellowship.
I
found great comfort in this word from Paul to his son in the faith, Timothy.
Paul wrote, “Think over what I say, for
the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”[7] What this means for us is, think over what Paul wrote about all the
saints in a city, and all the overseers over the church of that city, and all
the deacons serving the church of that city, and let the Lord give you
understanding of how to live that out as fully as he desires.
For
some time I have been thinking over how all the exhortations and teachings of
Philippians are applied through the reality of, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who
works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”[8] I must take this to include that God is working in all of us to
have a will to see ourselves as all the saints of our city, and to welcome the
work of all the overseers of this one body of Christ, and to encourage the
ministry of all the men who serve the church as deacons (in the biblical
picture of serving), and to work these things out in real relationships, with
real saints, with all the problems we have created with denominational
divisions. Right from where we are, we can work out these issues of our
salvation with fear and trembling, no matter what changes are required, since
it is God who is working these things into us just as they have been revealed
in Scripture.
In
fact, he has even given the proviso for what to do when we are confronted with
more differences than we know what to do with. His instruction to all the
saints, together with all the overseers and deacons of our city, is this: “and if in anything you think otherwise, God
will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.”[9]
You
see, even in that, if any of you saints in the city you are in, or any of the
overseers over the church of your city, or any of the deacons serving the
church of your city, “think otherwise”
from what Paul has written in this letter, “God
will reveal that also to you.” In other words, he has already revealed that
there was one church in Philippi, one group of overseers, and one group of
deacons. When we are learning this in a city where the church is divided, and
we have inherited the baggage of any manmade practices, if we will seek to work
these things out with fear and trembling, God will reveal to us how to take
steps of obedient faith so that we are working out the very things he is
working into us.
What
do I expect because of this? That God is going to do something to bring
together the saints, the overseers, and the deacons of my city in ways that
will require me to put into practice everything in the book of Philippians.[10]This will not only include seeing the church as the one body of
Christ, and all the overseers and deacons as God’s leaders and servants to the
one body of Christ, but that I put into practice with every Christian I meet
whatever God’s word says in this letter about the fellowship of the church.
And,
while we might be starting with a good dose of thinking otherwise, God is
already working in us what to will and to work to get us to his way of
thinking. Work out with fear and trembling whatever of God’s good pleasure is
revealed to you today, and you will find yourself exactly where God wants you
to fulfill his will in even greater ways.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Philippians 1:1
[2]
Acts 6:3
[3]
Acts 6:1
[4]
Acts 6:2
[5]
Philippians 3:17
[6]
I Peter 4:8
[7]
II Timothy 2:7
[8]
Philippians 2:12-13
[9]
Philippians 3:15-16
[10]
Obviously I mean everything written to the church in the New Testament. I
simply want to stay focused on the point Paul was making to the Philippian
Christians to show how we are to apply these things as broadly as Paul was
thinking when he wrote down those words.
No comments:
Post a Comment