Ver. 12. +I know both+ (kai, not de) +how to run low,[2] and how to run over+, as I do now, with your bounty; and both experiences need a teaching from above if they are to be rightly borne. +In everything and in all things+, in the details and in the total, I have been let into the secret, I have been initiated into the "mystery,"[3] +of being full fed and of being hungry, of+
Ver. 13. +running over and of coming short. For all things I am strong in Him who makes me able.+[4]
But not even this joyful testimony to the enabling presence of his Lord must divert his thought from the loving act of the Philippians. He seems about to dilate on the glorious theme of what he can be and do in Christ; the wonder of that experience on which he entered at the crisis detailed in 2 Cor. xii. is surely powerfully upon him; the "My grace is sufficient for thee"; the sense of even exultation in weakness and imperfection, "that the power of Christ may overshadow" him. But all this leaves perfectly undisturbed his delicate sympathy with the dear Macedonian converts. And so he will assure them that no spiritual "sufficiency" can blunt the sense of their generous kindness.
Ver. 14. +Yet you did well+, you did a fair, good deed, +when you joined together+ (sunkoinônêsantes) +in participating in my tribulation+, with the partnership of a sympathy which feels the suffering it relieves. +But you
Ver. 15. +know+, (to add a thought on your previous bounties, which may as it were correct (de) the thought that I needed this last bounty to assure me of your love,) you know, +Philippians,[5] that in the beginning of the Gospel+, in the early days of the mission in your region, +when I left Macedonia+, parting from you on my way south, in order to quit Macedonia (Roman Northern Greece) for Achaia (Roman Southern Greece), viâ Thessalonica and Beroea,[6] +no church participated with me+, helped me in my labours, +in the matter of giving and taking+, (they giving and I taking the needed monetary aid,) +but you alone+. But
Ver. 16. you did so; +because even in Thessalonica+; even when I was still there, in a place which was but ninety miles away,[7] and in the same province still; twice over (kai hapax kai dis) +you sent+ aid +to my need+, within the few weeks which I spent at Thessalonica.
Again he will not be misunderstood. This warmly expressed gratitude may conceivably be mistaken for an indirect petition, "thanks for favours to come." So with sensitive delicacy he pursues:
Ver. 17. +Not that I am in quest of+ (epizêtô: almost, "I am hunting for") +the gift+, the mere sum of money, in and for itself; +but I am in quest of the interest that is accumulating to your account+;[8] I am bent upon just such a developement of your generosity as will win from the heavenly Master more and yet more of that supreme reward, His own "Well done, good and
Ver. 18. faithful." +But+ (he is still anxious, lest this too should be mistaken for a personal bid for more) +I have received in full+ (apechô); you have amply discharged love's obligations, in the gift now sent; +and I run over+; the largeness of your bounty makes an overflow. +I have been filled full, in accepting from Epaphroditus what+ came +from you; an odour of fragrancy, a sacrifice acceptable, pleasing to God+, to whom you have really presented what you have sent to the man who serves Him—this evidence of your sacrifice to Him of yourselves and your possessions, a burnt offering (Lev. i. 9) of surrender, a peace offering (Lev. ii. 2, iii. 5) of thanksgiving.[9] I cannot
Ver. 19. requite you; +but my God shall fill up every need of yours+ (pasan chreian, not _p.tên chr.), making up to you in His own loving providence the gap in your means left by this your bounty, and enriching you the while in soul, +according to+, on the scale of, +His wealth, in glory, in Christ Jesus+. Yes, He will draw on no less a treasury than that of "His glory," His own Nature of almighty Love, as it is manifested to and for you "in Christ Jesus," in whom "all the