New Daily Study Bible: The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians. William Barclay

When the regulations regarding the priesthood are being laid down, it is written: ‘They shall be holy to their God’ (Leviticus 21:6). The priests were to be different from other people, for they were set apart for a special function. The tithe was the tenth part of all produce which was to be set apart for God; and it is laid down: ‘All tithes from the land . . . are the Lord’s; they are holy to the Lord’ (Leviticus 27:30). The tithe was different from other things which could be used as food. The central part of the Temple was the holy place (Exodus 26:33); it was different from all other places. The word was specially used of the Jewish nation itself. The Jews were a holy nation (Exodus 19:6). They were holy to the Lord; God had separated them from other nations so that they might be his (Leviticus 20:26); it was they of all nations on the face of the earth whom God had specially known (Amos 3:2). The Jews were different from all other nations, for they had a special place in the purpose of God.

      Now these privileges and responsibilities had been given to the Church, which became the new Israel, the people of God. Therefore, just as the Jews had once been hagios, holy, different, so now the Christians must be hagios; the Christians are the holy ones, the different ones, the saints. Thus Paul in his pre-Christian days was a notorious persecutor of the saints, the hagioi (Acts 9:13); Peter goes to visit the saints, the hagioi, at Lydda (Acts 9:32).

      To say that the Christians are the saints means, therefore, that the Christians are different from other people. Where does that difference lie?

      Paul addresses his people as saints in Christ Jesus. No one can read his letters without seeing how often the phrases in Christ, in Christ Jesus, in the Lord occur. In Christ Jesus occurs forty-eight times, in Christ thirty-four times, and in the Lord fifty times. Clearly, this was for Paul the very essence of Christianity. What did he mean? In his commentary, Marvin R. Vincent says that when Paul spoke of the Christian being in Christ, he meant that the Christian lives in Christ as a bird in the air, a fish in the water, the roots of a tree in the soil. What makes Christians different is that they are always and everywhere conscious of the encircling presence of Jesus Christ.

      When Paul speaks of the saints in Christ Jesus, he means those who are different from other people and who are consecrated to God because of their special relationship to Jesus Christ – and that is what every Christian should be.

THE ALL-INCLUSIVE GREETING

      Philippians 1:1–2 (contd)

      PAUL’S greeting to his friends is: Grace be to you and peace, from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Colossians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; Philemon 3).

      When Paul put together these two words, grace and peace (charis and eirēnē), he was doing something very wonderful. He was taking the normal greeting phrases of two great nations and moulding them into one. Charis is the greeting with which Greek letters always began, and eirēnē (= shalom in Hebrew) is the greeting with which Jews met each other. Each of these words had its own flavour, and each was deepened by the new meaning which Christianity poured into it.

      Charis is a lovely word; the basic ideas in it are joy and pleasure, brightness and beauty; it is, in fact, connected with the English word charm. But with Jesus Christ there comes a new beauty to add to the beauty that was there. And that beauty is born of a new relationship to God. With Christ, life becomes lovely because human beings are no longer the victims of God’s law but the children of his love.

      Eirēnē is a comprehensive word. We translate it as peace; but it never means a negative peace, never simply the absence of trouble. It means total wellbeing, everything that makes for a person’s highest good.

      It may well be connected with the Greek word eirein, which means to join, to weave together. And this peace is always connected to personal relationships – our relationship to ourselves, to other people and to God. It is always the peace that is born of reconciliation.

      So, when Paul prays for grace and peace on his people, he is praying that they should have the joy of knowing God as Father and the peace of being reconciled to God, to others and to themselves – and that grace and peace can come only through Jesus Christ.

THE MARKS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

1. CHRISTIAN JOY

      Philippians 1:3–11

      In all my remembrance of you I thank my God for you, and always in every one of my prayers I pray for you with joy, because you have been in partnership with me for the furtherance of the gospel from the first day until now, and of this I am confident, that he who began a good work in you will complete it so that you may be ready for the day of Jesus Christ. And it is right for me to feel like this about you, because I have you in my heart, because all of you are partners in grace with me, both in my hands, and in my defence and confirmation of the gospel. God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the very compassion of Christ Jesus. And this I pray, that your love for each other may continue to abound more and more in all fullness of knowledge and in all sensitiveness of perception, that you may test the things which differ, that you may be yourselves pure and that you may cause no other to stumble, in preparation for the day of Christ, because you have been filled with the fruit which the righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ produces, and which issues in glory and praise to God.

      IT is a lovely thing when, as Charles Ellicott, the nineteenth-century New Testament scholar and Bishop of Gloucester, puts it, remembrance and gratitude are bound up together. In our personal relationships, it is a great thing to have nothing but happy memories; and that was how Paul was with the Christians at Philippi. To remember brought no regrets, only happiness.

      In this passage, the marks of the Christian life are set out.

      There is Christian joy. It is with joy that Paul prays for his friends. The letter to the Philippians has been called the Epistle of Joy. The eighteenth-century German theologian Johannes Bengel, in his terse Latin, commented: ‘Summa epistolae gaudeo – gaudete.’ ‘The whole point of the letter is I rejoice; you rejoice.’ Let us look at the picture of Christian joy which this letter paints.

      (1) In 1:4, there is the joy of Christian prayer, the joy of bringing those we love to the mercy seat of God.

      George Reindrop, in his book No Common Task, tells how a nurse once taught a man to pray and in doing so changed his whole life, until a dull, disgruntled and dispirited individual became a man of joy. The nurse showed how it is possible to use the hands as a scheme of prayer. Each finger stood for someone. Her thumb was nearest to her, and it reminded her to pray for those who were closest to her. The second finger was used for pointing, and it stood for all her teachers in school and in the hospital. The third finger was the tallest, and it stood for the leaders in every sphere of life. The fourth finger was the weakest, as every pianist knows, and it stood for those who were in trouble and in pain. The little finger was the smallest and the least important, and to the nurse it stood for herself.

      There must always be a deep joy and peace in bringing our loved ones and others to God in prayer.

      (2) There is the joy that Jesus Christ is preached (1:18). When we enjoy a great blessing, surely our first instinct must be to share it; and there is joy in thinking of the gospel being preached all over the world, so that at first one person and then another and another is brought within the love of Christ.

      (3) There is the joy of faith (1:25). If Christianity does not make us happy, it will not make us anything at all. Christianity should never be a cause of anguish. The psalmist said: ‘Look to him, and be radiant’ (Psalm 34:5). When Moses came down from the mountain top, his face shone. Christianity is the faith of the happy heart and the shining face.

      (4) There is the joy of seeing Christians in fellowship together (2:2). As the Scottish Paraphrase has it (Psalm 133:1):

      Behold how good a