1 Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons: ² Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ³ I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, ⁴ always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, ⁵ in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶ For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will accomplish it  until the day of Christ Jesus. ⁷ For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me. ⁸ For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. ⁹ And this I pray, that your love may overflow still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, ¹⁰ so that you may discover the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and blameless for the day of Christ; ¹¹ having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God.

Moving on to Paul’s letter to the Philippians, the opening greeting is from Paul and Timothy, but the text being in the first-person singular is obviously Paul’s. The church at Philippi appears to have been an assembly with whom the apostle was well pleased – as he was with Rome and Ephesus – less so the Galatian church for reasons considered in an earlier post. The verse I will briefly focus on is v6: “I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will accomplish it  until the day of Christ Jesus”.

Recalling my time as an Evangelical (1970-1998), this verse tended to be used as a proof-text for the doctrine of “perseverance of the saints”. In fact it was virtually the only text utilized, there not being many (if any) more to choose from. As I have been affirming in earlier posts, if Paul were teaching “once saved always saved”here it would contradict quite a lot else that he has set out, as well as contradicting the teaching of Jesus and His other apostles, especially whoever penned the letter to the Hebrews. No, Paul’s confidence in verse 6 pertained to the assembly he had founded rather than any individual. This is perhaps most clearly identified from the last phrase “until the day of Christ Jesus”. That “day” can only be referring to the Lord’s second coming, and no individual believer in the first century would live to see that.

In terms of what we know about the church founded at Philippi, the city was largely destroyed by earthquakes around the 7^th century CE, but the church is represented today by the  Metropolis of Philippi, Neapolis and Thassos, a part of the Greek Orthodox Church, that I have come to regard as the eastern flank of the true Body of Christ.

Paul’s prayer for them was not merely that they should function as befits “an assembly of justified sinners”, but  that  “their love might overflow as they grow in knowledge and  discernment,  discovering the things that are excellent”. Thereby God would complete the good work he had begun in them so that they might be blameless until the day of Christ; filled with the fruit of righteousness  through their ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ. And as Paul will go on to expound in chapter two, such progress would be through a careful imitation of their Lord’s life and character.

Author’s Facebook page HERE