![]()
Philippians 1:1–2
1. The Christian defined
It sounds strange to us that Paul should address his letter not ‘to the Philippians’ but to the saints. The strangeness, of course, arises from the fact that modern usage would lead us to expect ‘Saint Paul . . . to the Christians at Philippi’, not ‘Slave Paul . . . to the saints . . . at Philippi’. Right through the New Testament, however, saints (occurring over sixty times) is the customary word for ‘Christians’.1 Many references2 show that ‘saints’ is used to describe those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in the same way as we today use the word ‘Christians’.
An example will help us to come close to the biblical meaning. In 1 Corinthians 1:2 ‘the church of God that is in Corinth’ is described as consisting of ‘those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints’. That is to say, the church belongs to God (‘the church of God’), it is to be found in a given place (‘in Corinth’, or Philippi, or wherever there are believers) and its members are in the church because they are ‘in Christ’ and are therefore ‘saints by calling’ (as we might translate the final words of the quotation). As a title, ‘saints’ points in one direction to what Christ has done for them,3 and in the other direction to the obligation which now falls upon us to live out the new position God has given to us (cf. Col. 3:12).
Now the present verses in Philippians are no less definite. On the surface Paul is opening his letter with a conventional greeting. But when we penetrate beneath the surface and ask what he is teaching, nothing will better satisfy the verses than to say that he is defining what a Christian is, and that at the heart of the definition lies this familiar word saints.
1. The Christian’s title
What is meant by calling the Christian a saint? Behind the Greek word, hagios (which does duty both as the noun ‘saint’ and as the adjective ‘holy’) – and indeed behind its Hebrew counterpart, qōdeš – there is the idea of being ‘separate’ or ‘apart’. This immediately makes us ask, ‘Separate from what?’ But the idea the words express is rather that of ‘belonging to a different order of things’ or ‘living in a different sphere’. ‘Holy’ is therefore the Bible’s special word for describing God. Indeed the noun ‘holiness’ is the most intimate Bible word for the divine nature. God’s ‘name’ – the summary description of all that he has shown himself to be – is described in the Bible as ‘his holy name’ more often than all other descriptions (‘his great name’ etc.) put together. In Luke 1:35, the power of the Most High is the Holy Spirit and the Son of God is the holy child.
Central to the whole Bible is Isaiah 6:3, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.’ According to the Hebrew use of repetition, the repeated word ‘holy’ indicated that this describes the total divine nature and that the holiness of God is itself superlative of its kind.4 When Isaiah heard this heavenly cry in praise of God’s holiness he fell immediately under deep conviction of sin.5 In this way, using the experience of one man, the Bible underlines for us that the holiness of the Lord is not only something true of his whole nature and something unique in its kind, but also that it is a moral holiness: it is the moral perfection of his whole being.
And this is the word (and the idea) which is being used to describe the Christian.
It would have been easy for Paul to address his letter to the ‘Philippians’ (as in 4:15), but this would not suit his purpose. He is not here concerned with what they are by nature and in this world, but with what they are by grace and in the sight of God. Politically they are Philippians, and no small honour attached to this. But grace has made them partakers of the divine nature – conferring on them the honour of honours, that the holy God should give them his title and his character and call them saints.
2. The Christian’s Lord
Paul does not, however, address the Philippians simply as saints, but as saints in Christ Jesus. By itself ‘saint’ might suggest self-effort resulting in self-improvement, costly effort reaching loftier heights of living. It might, in fact, suggest the unbiblical meaning given to the word in ecclesiastical and popular use. But in reality the Christian’s position as a ‘saint’ involves a reorientation away from self and towards Christ.
The exclusive place which the Lord Jesus Christ occupies in relation to the Christian has three aspects, which Paul indicates here by the words in, of and from: a saint in Christ Jesus, a servant of Christ Jesus, and grace and peace from . . . the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall take these phrases in turn.
a. The relationship in which the Christian lives
Throughout his letters, Paul uses in Christ as a comprehensive description of every Christian. The phrase touches every aspect of what God has done for us, of what we now enjoy and of the prospect opening before us in time and eternity.6 We are not surprised therefore to find Philippians rich in what it reveals about being ‘in Christ’.
It is ‘in Christ’ that salvation comes to us. We read in 3:14 of the ‘call of God in Christ Jesus’. God’s call, as we shall see when we study 3:14, is not an invitation awaiting our response but an authoritative summons – his royal edict of conscription – bringing us into a living relationship with the Lord Jesus. The means by which he makes his call effective is by giving us the gift of faith (1:29), thus enabling us to possess something which we are privileged to call ‘[our] own salvation’ (2:12). But the call itself is issued in Christ Jesus, because all God’s saving purposes are centred in Christ and worked out by him.
In Christ we are secure and have everything we need (4:7, 19) with the peace of God as a garrison patrolling our hearts and his glorious riches laid open to meet our needs. In Christ we become new people with new feelings (1:8),7 a new mind or way of looking at things (2:5), new encouragements or incentives to live as Christians should (2:1), and new abilities to bring those incentives to fruition (4:13). In Christ we have a whole new way of looking at life, seeing his hand and his sovereign will in all things. Paul says his imprisonment is ‘in Christ’ (1:13, literally) and testifies that it was when he helped the Roman believers to see this that they came to new confidence in the Lord.
To be in Christ, then, is to possess what is often spoken of as full salvation: everything necessary to our past, present, future and eternal welfare has been secured for us by the action of God in Christ and is stored up in Christ for us to share and enjoy. But it is not only benefits and blessings that are in Christ; we are in him ourselves (1:1; 4:21). Full salvation belongs to us as a matter of objective fact, but it is through union with our living Saviour that we experience its warmth and personal reality.
b. The Lord whom the Christian serves
The phrase ‘called to be saints’ (1 Cor. 1:2) parallels another in Romans 1:6–7, ‘called to belong to Jesus Christ’.8 It is in Christ that a person becomes a saint. At once an element of loyalty or of ownership is involved. The saint is possessed by Christ and rejoices in this fact. In Philippians Paul declares as much when he describes himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus.
He actually says something stronger: ‘slaves of Christ Jesus’. The slave, ‘bought with a price’ (1 Cor. 6:20), is completely at the disposal of the purchaser, to do his bidding. A self-willed, idle or disobedient slave is a contradiction in terms. There is, of course, nothing servile about a saint. On the contrary, we are now for the first time free, free from the penalty, bondage and degradation of sin. We are now truly human, for Christ is true Man, and those who are in him possess a human nature matching their Creator’s intention (e.g. Eph. 4:24). But the saint is obedient. Great though our privileges are, they are not to be equated with dressing gown and slippers; they are staff and shoes for pilgrimage, armour for battle and a plough for the field. Responsive obedience characterizes us, for the ‘saint in Christ Jesus’ is necessarily also a ‘servant of Christ Jesus’.
No Christian can evade this responsibility. In this even Paul the apostle is no different from any other believer. What is true of him is true also of his special assistant, Timothy; and what is true of them is true of the Philippians, of whom verse 7 says, ‘all of you share in God’s grace with me’. The Lord Jesus makes different appointments in his church – some to be apostles as Paul was, some to be special assistants and envoys as Timothy was, some to be elders, some to be deacons – but it is only by grace that they are in the church at all. None can partake of grace and fight shy of service. The in Christ of gracious salvation, if it is real, issues in the of Christ of responsive, obedient service.
c. The Giver from whom the Christian receives
It is plainly no easy task to live as an obedient, serving saint. Where does such ability come from? Paul answers by pointing to a giver and a gift: Grace . . . and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Think of what Paul writes in these opening verses about our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament Moses and the prophets had a title of great honour: they were ‘servants of the Lord’.9 When we hear Paul describe himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus we can hardly help hearing an echo from the past. Here as ‘everywhere in the Epistles . . . the attitude of Paul toward Christ is not merely the attitude of man to man, or scholar to master; it is the attitude of man toward God’.10 Turning now to verse 2 we find that Paul is being practical when he acknowledges the deity of the Lord Jesus. In the phrase from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the single preposition from governs both names and has the effect of hyphenating them together into one single source of blessing. All the divine greatness of God and the Lord, all the divine love and saving efficacy of the Father and Jesus Christ, come together in divine unanimity to pour out upon the...
