FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture References: Philippians 1:1-11

Our Great Privileges in Christ – Continued

We Are the Recipients of a Divine Fellowship

In verses 3–8, Paul speaks of the blessed fellowship that he and the Philippians enjoyed in Christ: “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now” (verses 3–5).

Although he had not seen these friends for several years, Paul remembers them and still enjoys a warm fellowship with them. He writes here to express his gratitude to them for the fine manner in which they had stood by him through the years. In the words of a well-known hymn, Paul was saying:

Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.

Paul’s fellowship with the believers was sweet; and 2,000 years removed from Paul, it is still sweet. The sweetness of the Christian fellowship has not diminished one degree with the passing of centuries.

What a blessing it would be if every pastor, long years after his ministry has ended in a certain place, could remember the fellowship with those who were once his people, as Paul did, and say of them: “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.”

But we can’t always do that. Pastors and people alike, majoring on things of minor importance, leave too many black scars rather than bright stars on their memories.

Finally, in verses 9–10, Paul prayed that the Philippians would not waste themselves on minor matters: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ.”

Paul tells them that the most excellent things in life are an overflowing love for the things of God, in other words, a sincere, dedication of themselves to God (verse 9), and an abundant bearing in their lives of the fruit produced by God (verse 11).

In conclusion I want to tell a brief story of Johann Sebastian Bach who was perhaps the greatest composer of history. Bach had two consuming loves in his life: music and God.

As with most geniuses, Bach wasn’t much appreciated in his day. His close neighbors thought little more of him than they did of the local merchant or the shoe cobbler, and his sons did little but criticize him.

When Bach died in 1750 he was buried in an unmarked grave in a Leipzig, Germany, churchyard. It took dedicated musicians forty-six years just to collect all the music he had written, and it filled sixty huge printed volumes when the task was completed.

In his book If with All Your Heart, Roy O. McClain declared that it would take a music copyist seventy years just to write down the scores the way Bach wrote them. But Bach himself also composed them as well!

“Did he really live?” McClain asked in his book. He then told how Bach began to compose at nine. Living with a tyrannical, older brother, Bach was denied the use of his brother’s musical library. Bach, however, would slip into the library after everyone else was asleep and copy music by moonlight. After he had completed copying by hand every note of instrumental music in the library, his brother found it and burned it!

But Bach didn’t give up. He continued to compose great music, living in life’s major key! He refused to major on minors, and as a result he has left to the world a musical legacy that will live for centuries.

He set a good pattern for musicians to emulate, just as Paul, by his life and teachings, has set a good example for all of us Christians to follow who would not stoop to major on minors.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: Philippians 1:1-11

Our Great Privileges in Christ – Continued

We Are the Recipients of Divine Peace

Continuing on, this is a second great privilege that is ours:

“And peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” as Paul wrote in verse 2.

Again, Paul’s words are both a prayer and an encouragement. He was reminding the Philippians that they had received the peace of God through Christ and praying that God’s peace would fill and flood their lives.

The New Testament speaks of peace with God (Romans 5:1) and the peace of God (Philippians 4:7). Peace with God comes when we are saved. The war is over. Peace has been made through the blood of Christ (Colossians 1:20). We have accepted Christ and are no longer in rebellion against God. We have been reconciled to God through Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:18).

There is something more. This reconciliation should be followed by the peace of God that fills our hearts in all circumstances of life. But no one can have the peace of God until he or she has peace with God.

This peace of God in daily life, according to Paul, is “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” They have a monopoly on it. Only God can give peace to a troubled life, and He mediates this peace through Jesus Christ His Son (Acts 4:12).

Peace with God is God’s grace gift to the unbeliever who repents and accepts Christ. The “peace of God” is God’s grace gift to the believer for all of his or her needs in life.

In his Greek-English lexicon, Joseph Henry Thayer defined “peace,” as Paul used it here, as:

“The tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot, of whatever sort that is.”

Thayer added that this is “a conception distinctly peculiar to Christianity.”

Eric Barker was a missionary from Great Britain who served more than fifty years in Portugal.

During World War II, life in Portugal became so dangerous that Barker was advised to send his wife and eight children to England for safety. His sister and her three children were also evacuated on the same ship. Barker remained behind to conclude some missionary matters.

When he stood to preach the next Lord’s Day morning, he told his congregation he had just received news that his family had safely arrived home.

It was not until later that the congregation understood what Barker had meant. They thought he meant his family was safe in England, but that wasn’t the case.

Just before he went into the pulpit to preach that Sunday morning, he had been handed a telegram telling him that a German submarine had torpedoed the ship on which his family was sailing. All passengers had perished. They had arrived safely home, not to England, but to heaven where Jesus had welcomed them!

This peace, which it is our privilege to have, is divine rest in the midst of life’s most difficult struggles. Like Barker, we can have peace in our hearts, regardless of what happens because our peace comes not from our circumstances but from our Lord. He is our peace.

There is here one final privilege that belongs to the Christian. Remembering it and taking it to heart will strengthen us against majoring on minors.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: Philippians 1:1-11

Our Great Position in Christ – Continued

We Are Saints in Christ Jesus

Paul addressed the quarreling Philippians as “saints in Christ Jesus,” in verse 1.

Every believer is a saint but all are not saintly! As we grow in grace, however, we move toward becoming “saintly saints.” It is both positional and progressive.

The word means “holy ones.” It is used in the New Testament to describe both things and people that have been set apart by God for Himself and for His service. The word is translated “saints” approximately sixty-three times in the New Testament. Everyone who has been saved is a saint. This is the word used most often in the New Testament to describe one who is trusting in Jesus.

In his booklet Live Sermon Outlines, Ian MacPherson wrote about a grocer in Edinburgh, Scotland, who was named James Saint.

A man who knew James Saint wrote a letter to him on one occasion but mistakenly addressed it to “James Saint, Aberdeen, Scotland.”

When the letter reached Aberdeen, the postal people searched diligently, but could not find anyone in their town named James Saint. So they returned the letter to the sender with a notation on the envelope: “There are no Saints in Aberdeen. Try Edinburgh.” MacPherson says this might be called “the case of the missing saint.”

Look in your telephone directory. Are there any “Saints” in your town? According to the telephone people, you may not have a single saint in your town!

But that’s according to the telephone company. According to the Lord Jesus, all who believe in Him are “saints in Christ Jesus.”

We are servants. But more than that, we are saints!

Our Great Privileges in Christ

There’s the story of a woman who one day was looking down from the Empire State Building in New York City. Seeing the ant-like people crawling along on the street far below, she exclaimed: “I guess that’s the way people must appear to God.”

Oh no! Not even remotely! That isn’t how God sees us nor even thinks of us. He sees us as infinitely important and precious and desires for us only “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” according to Paul in verse 2. Infinitely loved by Him, and having grace and peace are only two of the believer’s great privileges in Christ.

We are so precious to God that He has given us the greatest privileges in heaven or on earth available to mortals: that of being His sons and daughters, enjoying His grace and peace, and having fellowship intimately with Him.

When the magnificent truth that we sons and daughters of men have the inestimable privilege of being sons and daughters of God breaks upon us in all its glory and joy, we will determine not to spend our days majoring on minors!

Look at the three great privileges noted in these verses that belong to every believer.

We Are the Recipients of Divine Grace

“Grace . . . to you,” Paul exclaims in his writing quite emphatically.

It is in the form of a prayer. Paul is praying for the Philippian believers, reminding them that they have received God’s grace and praying that it shall continue to abound.

The word grace appears approximately 125 times in the New Testament. It is a choice word used more by Paul than by any other New Testament writer. No word in the New Testament is richer in meaning.

Before the word came into the Holy Scriptures, it was used by the Greeks to speak of a favor one friend did for another friend out of generosity, with no thought of being rewarded.

But when it came into the Scriptures, its meaning was lifted and ennobled.

God’s grace that we have received, and do receive in Christ, points back to the cross where God “so loved the world [us] that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). There God did a favor for us that far surpasses all that anyone ever did for a friend. But God did it not for those who were friendly toward Him but for those in rebellion against Him. Paul states this very clearly in his letter to the Romans: “When we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10).

Those who really see, understand, and experience what God did for them at Calvary simply cannot spend their life majoring on minors!

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: Philippians 1:1-11

Some years ago I came across one of the saddest statements I think I have ever read. The biographer of Horace Walpole, an eighteenth-century English author, wrote about Walpole: “All his tastes were minor.”

Apparently the biographer meant that Walpole stumbled through life, never seeing, even in his dreams, the things that are most magnificent and most desirable.

“All his tastes were minor.” What a sad epitaph.

When I read that sad commentary, I remembered another thing I had read about an unnamed man whose horizons must have been as low as Walpole’s.

At six months of age this man could recite the alphabet. At two he could read. Before he was three he had invented a formula for remembering important historical dates. At eleven he entered Harvard University and graduated with straight A’s. And at forty-eight he died in a rented room, barren except for the evidence of his favorite hobby: collecting streetcar transfers from all over the United States.

His biographer could have written of him, as was written of Walpole, “All his tastes were minor.”

The text of the Scriptures at which we are looking now looking at, I hope and pray, addresses us, probes our hearts, and forces us to ask ourselves, “Am I majoring on minors?”

Paul, who had not seen his Philippian friends for some time, was concerned about their spiritual welfare. He had heard of their quarrelsome, divided spirit. He feared they had shelved things of monumental importance and were majoring on minors, so he wrote to encourage them to “approve the things that are excellent.” He told them to get out of life’s minor key and major on things of major importance.

You and I must also be on guard against living in life’s minor key. It is a subtle temptation that threatens each of us. To help guard against majoring on minors, Paul showed us two things to remember: our position in Christ and our privileges in Christ.

Our Great Position in Christ

John Dewey, an American university professor and philosopher, said: “The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.”

The people to whom Paul wrote held no lofty, worldly positions. They were Roman citizens, chiefly Greeks, who lived in a lonely outpost far from Rome. Most of them were poor. Yet, as humble followers of Jesus Christ, Paul told them that they held in Jesus Christ the greatest position possible. What he said of them is also true for each of us.

We Are Servants of Jesus Christ

According to the late Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest, there are five Greek words in the New Testament translated by the English words servant or slave. Two of these words are used in verse 1 of our text. The first is translated “servants” and the other is translated “deacons”: “Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.”

Wuest wrote that “servants” translates the Greek word doulos. The doulos was a slave or servant born into slavery. He or she was bound to a master in a relationship to be broken only by death. The doulos had no will of his own, but lived only to obey his/her master. The word was used in the first century to describe the most abject, servile condition.

Paul wrote that he and Timothy were “bondservants” of Jesus Christ.” We are to understand that we, too, are servants bound to Christ Jesus.

We were born into that relationship. It’s called the new birth, and Jesus talks about it in John 3.

As a servant, our will is to be subjected to the will of our Savior. He is the Master. We are His servants. We are to place His interests above our interests.

Although the doulos was the most abject slave of the household and lived in the most servile conditions, as Christ’s servants our position is reversed: we are “kings and priests to/of God” (Revelation 1:6; 5:10; also see 20:6). But we are to live before Christ in the kind of humble spirit that characterized a first-century household slave.

The other word for servant is translated “deacons.” It is the word, diakonos, and comes from a verb which means “to pursue” or “to hasten after.”

Diakonos, which shows the servant actively engaged in his work, is also translated by the words “minister, servant” and “deacon.” It appears then that doulos more accurately describes the servant’s condition, and diakonos more describes the servant’s activity.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.