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Friday, March 20, 2015

Pastoral Ponderings ~ A Universal Love for a Unified Brotherhood


          As I continue to meditate on this verse from God’s book “Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved,”[1]the thing that draws my focus today is Paul’s reference to, “whom I love.” He is speaking of the brotherhood of believers who are beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, but personalizing it so the attention is on his relationship to the believers he was writing to.
          Paul began his letter by telling the church:
3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.[2]
          What Paul says immediately after this is, “It is right for me to feel this way about you all.”[3] My question is, what has he just said that tells us how he feels about the church?
          The three things that stand out as far as his feelings about the church are that he was thankful, he was joyful, and he was certain. Thankfulness, joy, and certainty, are essential qualities to Paul’s relationship with God’s people. In this case, he was an apostle relating to them in the highest leadership role in the church. His example was not only giving the church the framework of love in which to grow, but was setting an example for all the other leaders in how they should be giving oversight to the congregations of God’s children.
          Paul’s whole focus was external to himself. There was no personal reason for their relationship. This was not friendship. It was not family. It was not common ancestry. It was a brotherhood based on partnership in the gospel. It was God who had begun a good work in all of them, and this good work made them family because they were all adopted into the household of God, and now they had a relationship of love that was objective, and certain.
          To understand Paul’s relationship to the churches, we need to step back one more paragraph to get the full sense of what Paul is telling us about why he feels as he does for these people. He begins his letter by saying:
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.[4]
          What I see here is the shared reality of Christ in everything to do with Paul, and Timothy, and the churches. First, Paul and Timothy are “servants OF Christ Jesus.” Second, all the believers, including the overseers and deacons, are “saints IN Christ Jesus.” Third, what Paul expressed in blessing for the church was “grace to you and peace FROM God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
          First, Paul and Timothy are “servants OF Christ Jesus.” All that Paul and Timothy were doing was directed by Jesus Christ, for they were his servants. They were not merely taking a manual and seeking to pass it on through the generations. They were personal servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, serving him in personal love and devotion, but in a relationship directed by the Holy Spirit. Even their calling to go to Philippi in the first place was directed by the Spirit so that Paul knew that Jesus was personally sending him to this city, and giving him the assignment to preach the gospel to those people.[5]
          Second, all the believers, including the overseers and deacons, are “saints IN Christ Jesus.” This is the unifying description and identity of the church. There is no gathering of the church where some are Baptists, and some are Pentecostals, and some are Presbyterian, United, or Anglican. In fact, there are likely people in all denominations who are not truly born again into the kingdom of heaven. The true church is this family of God that is made up of only those people who are “saints in Christ Jesus.”
          A saint is a “holy one”, or one who is set apart unto God as holy. When we understand the gospel, that the gospel gives people a righteousness from God that is by faith in Jesus Christ,[6] we can accept that saints are the holy ones of God who have received the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ our Lord through faith in his name, not through any kind of good works.
          No one can be a saint apart from the righteousness that is through faith in Jesus Christ. A saint is not someone who has earned special status with God through good works and miraculous deeds. There is no such thing as saints who have earned their place. Our standing with God is only “by grace… through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”[7]
          This means that there is no such thing as saints who are not in Christ Jesus, and there are not Christians who are in Christ Jesus who are not saints. The identity of the brothers is that every brother, every believer in Jesus Christ, every person who has entered into the gospel of Jesus Christ, receiving Jesus Christ by faith, has become a saint in Christ Jesus.
          Third, what Paul expressed in blessing for the church was “grace to you and peace FROM God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Because Paul and Timothy were servants of Christ Jesus, and they were writing to those who were saints in Christ Jesus, the blessing they wanted to affect the church could not be from them. It had to be from God.
          On one side, Paul and Timothy were not bringing something that they had, but something that God had. They were serving Jesus Christ, and giving people what Jesus had given them, so the expectation of grace and peace that would fall upon the church, and fill the hearts of the believers, had to come from their master, not from them.
          On the other side, Paul and Timothy were not going to their friends, people they had picked as their favorite relationships. They were writing this to their brothers, to the saints, the one family of God, those who had their identity from God, not from man.[8]
          Paul would write later about how the church could experience the peace of God as we refused all anxiety, and prayed about everything instead.[9]He then added, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”[10]This was the direct overflow, or outcome, of living under the grace and peace that came from God. If we really believe that grace and peace come from God, we will put aside our anxiety, because that is just our own sarky way of relating to things and trying to work them out ourselves. Instead, we will pray in faith and dependence on God because we know that whatever we are looking for is found in him.
          When Paul directed the church in what it should think about, things that Paul had exemplified in his life, it was with the encouragement that “the God of peace will be with you.”[11]He had presented the blessing of, “grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,”[12]and then told them how they could set their minds on the right things so that the God of peace himself would be with them.
          It is interesting, and fascinating, and encouraging, that Paul would first tell the church how the “peace of God” would guard their hearts and minds as they put aside anxiety and prayed about everything, and then tell them how the “God of peace” would be with them as they fixed their thoughts on the righteousness of faith. This tells us that there is peace that is “of God,” meaning it is the peace that is in God, the peace that God has, and this comes with the “God of peace” who will be with us.
          Jesus is both the “Prince of peace,”[13] and he is “Immanuel (which means, God with us).”[14]We can expect that, when we are saints “in Christ Jesus” we are saints, holy ones, in the Prince of peace who is God with us. We can expect to have grace and peace from God “our” Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ who brings us to the Father.
          With this as the introduction to the letter, what Paul tells the believers is that he is thankful in remembering them, he is joyful in praying for them, and he is sure of God’s work in them. Everything about their beloved status in Paul’s eyes originated in the work of God that brought them into partnership with Paul “in the gospel.”
          Paul could still remember “the first day” he had found people in Philippi who entered the kingdom of God through adoption as sons, and he was confident that they were continuing in their partnership in the gospel at the time of writing this letter. When he looked into the future, he was confident about what would happen with these people because it was God who was doing it. God would not fail to complete what he had started, and so Paul was writing his letter to his beloved brothers with thankfulness, joy, and certainty.
          Since God’s word has already told us to “join in imitating” Paul, “and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example” we have in Paul and Timothy,[15]Paul’s attitude of thankfulness, joy, and certainty, leaves us with a good example of how to relate to the one body of Christ, the beloved children of God. Let’s see what happens as we put this into practice.

© 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 4:1
[2] Philippians 1:3-6
[3] Philippians 1:7
[4] Philippians 1:1-2
[5] Acts 16:6-10
[6] Romans 3:21-26
[7] Ephesians 2:8-9
[8] John 1:12-13
[9] Philippians 4:4-7
[10] Philippians 4:7
[11] Philippians 4:8-9
[12] Philippians 1:2
[13] Isaiah 9:6
[14] Matthew 1:23
[15] Philippians 3:17

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