Philippians 1:1-11--Thanksgiving and Prayer

Greeting​
1 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.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

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. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

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Paul makes a different kind of introduction here than he does in many of his other epistles.  He no longer seems to need to establish his apostleship or calling, nor the validity of the gospel that he's bringing, but instead greets them as a "servant" (that word doulos that we've already discussed that should be translated as "slave.") and adds his greeting from Timothy, one of the first Gentile converts, and a coworker of Paul's that helped lead some of the newly planted churches.  We'll get to some of the "pastoral epistles" of Paul that are written to Timothy and Titus (two of these fellow "slaves of Christ") a little later.

The letter is being written not just to the church members at Philippi, but to its deacons and elders (overseers/bishops).  So, we see that this is a very different kind of message than we've seen before as we've not yet seen something where Paul seems to single out the local church leadership to say that this message is specifically for them too.  Paul ends his "greeting" with something standard that we've seen in his other salutations and benedictions "grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Paul immediately breaks out in praise as he's writing to this church because this church is very special to him.    We can go back and read Acts 16 if we want to get some indication of why this church in particular is so important to him, but this is the first church that we know of that was started on the continent of Europe.  In Acts 16 we'd find the story of Paul meeting Timothy, his call to Macedonia (his first stop in Europe), the conversion of Lydia, and Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail where they answer the Philippian jailor's question, "What must I do to be saved?"  These are all well-known events that revolve around this group of people. 

It seems that they not only became hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word very quickly as they partnered with Paul.  Lydia opened up her home and put her business at risk to help start the first local gathering of believers in her house, they gave to the needs of Paul and other Christians out of their own poverty, and they shared the gospel with those around them and commissioned others to work with Paul and sent them out as missionaries, church planters and pastors.

Paul encourages them that the Holy Spirit would bring that which had been promised to them through the gospel to completion, and for them to not become weary or loose heart that Christ's return was not immediate even though it was imminent in the minds of the early Church--they should grow weary of serving Christ and doing good.  Paul calls them "partakers" with him and I think this probably indicates that they not only shared in the work and the blessings, but also in the sufferings.  Most likely these people who already had it pretty bad probably didn't have life get any better for them when they were the first ones in their community to come to Christ in a culture that was controlled by paganism.

Paul then says that he loves them not just like a father loves his children (we've seen that in other epistles), but like Christ loves them.  That's a very deep, strong love, and it hints at the fact that Paul knows he's about to die for the gospel.  Paul wishes not only to "pass the torch" here to Timothy and the other church leaders but to encourage this church in particular to keep going and doing what they're doing, even when he's not around any more.  Yes, this is a letter that Paul wrote knowing that he was looking death straight in the face.  He was imprisoned and knew that the sentence that would be carried out against him was the death sentence. 

Paul prays for them to continue growing in love and knowledge and discernment and that their works would show that they have conformed their lives to ("approved" of) that which is excellent (that is Christ) and that they walk pure and blameless before Him because of who they are in Him and what He has done by the Holy Spirit in and through them.  Paul desires for them to be filled with the fruit of righteousness (the fruit of the Spirit) that comes through Jesus so that they might be living sacrifices holy, pleasing and acceptable to the Lord to the praise of His glory.  What a wonderful prayer for us to pray for each other!