Philippian Studies / Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians

by H. C. G. Moule

Ver. 18. discrimination. +For there are many men walking+, pursuing a line of conduct and practice, +whom I often used to tell you of+, in the days of our direct intercourse, +but+ (de) +now tell you of actually+ (kai) +with cries and tears+ (klaiôn), (so much has the evil grown, in extent and in depth, so awfully apparent are its issues, for this world and the world to come,) +as the enemies+, the personal enemies (tous echthrous), as if in a bad pre-eminence, +of the Cross of our+ (tou) +Christ+, that Cross of whose virtues they can say much, but whose power upon the soul they utterly ignore; +of+

Ver. 19. +whom the end is perdition+, ruin of the whole being,[2] final and hopeless; +of whom the god is the belly+, (the sensual appetites, the body's degradation, not its function,) while they claim an exalted and special intimacy with the Supreme; +and their+ (he) +glory+, their boast to see deeper and to soar higher than others, +is in their shame; men whose mind is for+ (phronouten) +the things on earth+, not, as they dream, or as at least they say, for the things of an upper and super-corporeal world. No; their subtle doctrine of spirit and body—what is it when tested in its issues? It is but a philosophy of sin; a gossamer robe over the self-indulgence which has come to be the real interest of the theorist, the real occupation of his will. All is really, with them, of the earth, earthy. Far other is the doctrine we have learned, and have striven to exemplify, at the feet of Christ.

Ver. 20. For our city-home, the seat of our citizenship, and of the conduct which it demands and inspires,[3] +subsists in the heavens+, is always there, an antecedent and abiding fact (huparchei), on which we are to act in life; in that heavenly world, where the Lord is, and for which He is training us; the eternal Country of this eternal City and Home; +out of which+ (city)[4] +we are actually+ (kai) +waiting for, as our Saviour+, in the full and final sense, the +Lord Jesus Christ, who will+

Ver. 21. +transfigure+—not annihilate, not cast away as essentially evil, but wonderfully change in its conditions, and so in its guise, in its semblance (schêma)—+the body of our humiliation+, this body, now inseparably connected with the burthens and abasements of our mortality, humbling us continually in the course of its necessities, and of its sufferings, but not therefore, in its essence, other than God's good handiwork; +to be conformed+, with a resemblance based on an essential assimilation (summorphon, morphê), +to the body of His glory+, as He resumed His blessed Body when He rose, and as He wears it now upon the Throne, and in it manifests Himself to the happy ones in their bliss; +according to+, in ways and measures conditioned only by, +the forth-putting+ (energeia) +of His ability actually to subdue to Himself all things that are+ (ta panta).

So the great passage, the pregnant chapter, ends. As it began so it closes—with Jesus Christ. With Him His servant can never have done; "Him first, Him midst, Him last, and without end." Jesus Christ is the present joy, and the everlasting hope. His perfected righteousness is the believer's actual deep safety and repose. His unsearchable riches of personal grace and glory are the constant animation and ever-rising standard of the believer's spiritual progress. He is the eternal Antidote to our fears, and also to our sins. He is the infinite Contradiction to the least compromise, under any pretext, with evil; and He is this, among other ways, by being Himself "that blessed Hope"; "the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our Hope" (1 Tim. i. 1); so that the prospect of His Return, and of what He will do for us, and for Himself (eautô), when He returns, is to be our mighty motive in the matter of practical, aye of bodily, cleanness and holiness of life.

The whole passage now before us is strongly characteristic of the New Testament way of dealing with sin. In the first place, there is no lack of urgent and explicit warning. The moral and spiritual evil is labelled unmistakably. It is pointed out as a danger not hypothetical but actual; not floating in the air, but embodied in lives and influences: "Many persons walk whom I tell you of with tears as the enemies of the cross of Christ." And of these persons, as such, it is unflinchingly said that their end is atôleia, "ruin," "perdition"; dread and hopeless word. In all this lies a lesson for our day. In many quarters the solemn utterance of warning is now almost silent; it is regarded as almost unchristian to warn sinners, even open sinners, to do anything so much out of the fashion as "to flee from the wrath to come," "the wrath which is coming upon the children of disobedience." But this is not the apostolic way, nor the Lord's way.

Yet this passage, this heart-searching appeal, while it deals with warning, does not end with it. Its strongest and chosen argument is not fear but hope; not perdition but "the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him." St Paul has to guard the Philippians against a most subtle form of sensual temptation, a masterpiece of the Enemy. In passing, and with bitter tears, he points to the gulph where that path ends. In closing, and with his whole heart, he points to the coming Lord in His benignant glory, and to the unutterable joy of our being then, finally and even in our material being, transfigured for ever into His likeness.

For our own blessing, and for that of others, let us follow this example. Whether in the pulpit to a listening throng, or in more individual approaches to other men, or when we turn in upon ourselves, and, like the Psalmists, speak to our own souls, in the most secret possible hour, let us seek to speak thus. Let us not take an opiate against the ideas of judgment, wrath, perdition—unless, with our Bibles quite open, we are quite sure that such things are only dreams of a past religious night. Let us take urgent heed, above all for ourselves, lest we lose faith in the warnings of God. But all the while let us present to ourselves, and to others, as the great argument of all for saying "No" to specious sin, "that blessed Hope." Let us consider Jesus Christ, till He shines upon us in something of the glory of His Person and His Work. Let us wait for Him from heaven. More and more, as the years roll, and the suns set, and "that day" is approaching, let us take our place among those who "love His appearing." And as for our bodies, and His call to be pure in body as in spirit, let us continually remember that "the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body" (1 Cor. vi. 13). Let us not merely try to reason down temptation, or to order it down, in the name of abstract rightness, or of concrete peril. Let us recollect as a glorious fact that the body is the purchased property of the Lord Jesus; that He cares for it, as His dear-bought possession; that He can, by His own Spirit, sanctify it now, through and through; and that He is coming, perhaps very soon indeed, to "transfigure it to be conformed to the body of His glory."

The whole genius of the Gospel tends to connect together, as closely as possible, holiness and happiness. They are to act and react in manifold ways in the Christian life. Holiness lies at the root of happiness, as its deep condition. But also happiness, from another point of view, waters the root of holiness, and expands its flowers, and brings its sweet fruit to fulness. "The joy of the Lord is your strength"—your strength to say to temptation a "No" which shall be entirely willing and simple. Never shall we so tread down the tempter, and the traitor, as when we are "rejoicing in Christ Jesus," and "in the hope of the glory of God."

Then let us cultivate this blessed secret. Let us prove the power of Christ loved and looked for. In a very special sense let St Paul teach us here to apply to our present needs the force of a heavenly future, the future of His coming, and of our meeting Him and being transfigured by Him. In many directions, in the Church, this rule is being practised now with great earnestness, and with happy issues; the looking for the Lord's Return is indeed a reality to many. But in many directions it is otherwise. Christian thought and labour too often seem to limit themselves to the sphere of the present, and to forget that the goal of the Gospel is not a state of social bien-être developed by philanthropy under the auspices, so to speak, of Christ, but an immortality of holy power and service, won for us by His merits, prepared for us by His exaltation, while we are prepared for it by His Spirit working in us. Again and again we need to remember this. The Gospel showers along its path, upon the mortal life of man, personal and social blessings of the philanthropic kind which nothing else can possibly bring down. It makes to-day infinitely important by connecting it with the eternal to-morrow. But the path is towards that to-morrow. "We look at the things not seen, for the things which are not seen are eternal." We "desire a better country, that is, an heavenly." "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."