The Pulpit Commentaries Philippians (Joseph S. Exell)

《The Pulpit Commentaries – Philippians》(Joseph S. Exell)

Contents and the Editors

One of the largest and best-selling homiletical commentary sets of its kind. Directed by editors Joseph Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones, The Pulpit Commentary drew from over 100 authors over a 30 year span to assemble this conservative and trustworthy homiletical commentary set. A favorite of pastors for nearly 100 years, The Pulpit Commentary offers you ideas and insight on "How to Preach It" throughout the entire Bible.

This in-depth commentary brings together three key elements for better preaching:

·  Exposition-with thorough verse-by-verse commentary of every verse in the Bible.

·  Homiletics-with the "framework" or the "big picture" of the text.

·  Homilies-with four to six sermons sample sermons from various authors.

In addition, this set also adds detailed information on biblical customs as well as historical and geographical information, and translations of key Hebrew and Greek words to help you add spice to your sermon.

All in all, The Pulpit Commentary has over 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries from a total of 23 volumes. The go-to commentary for any preacher or teacher of God's Word.
About the Editors

Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., served as the Editor of Clerical World, The Homiletical Quarterly and the Monthly Interpreter. Exell was also the editor for several large commentary sets like The Men of the Bible, The Pulpit Commentary, Preacher's Homiletic Library and The Biblical Illustrator.

Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones was born in London on January 14, 1836. He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received his B.A. in 1864. He was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained as a priest is the following year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter, Wales from 1865-1870. He was rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester from 1870-1877 and principal of Gloucester Theological College 1875-1877. He became vicar and rural dean of St. Pancras, London 1877-1886, and honorary canon since 1875. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1883,1887,1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and 1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He also edited The Pulpit Commentary (48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with Rev. J. S. Exell, to which he himself contributed the section on Luke, 2 vols., 1889, and edited and translated the Didache 1885. He passed away in 1917 after authoring numerous individual titles.

00 Introduction

Introduction.

1. PHILIPPI: ITS INHABITANTS FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH.

The Epistle to the Philippians was written about thirty years after the Ascension, about ten years after the first preaching of the gospel by St. Paul at Philippi. Christianity was still young, in all the freshness of its first youth. It had come suddenly into the world. The world seemed growing old: the old religions had lost whatever power they once possessed; the old philosophies were worn out; the energies of political life had been weakened or suppressed by the all-pervading despotism of Rome. Avarice, uncleanness, cruelty, were rampant in the earth. There was little faith in God, in goodness, in immortality. "What is truth?" was the despairing question of the age. The gospel flashed upon this scene of moral confusion like, what it is in truth, a revelation from heaven. It brought before the eyes of men a life and a Person. The world saw for the first time a perfect life; not a mere ideal, but a real life that had been really lived upon the earth; a life that stands alone, separate from all other lives; unique in its solitary majesty, in its unearthly loveliness, in its absolute purity, in its entire unselfishness. The world saw for the first time the beauty of complete self-sacrifice. And this life was not merely a thing past and gone. It was still living, it is still living in the Church. The life of Christ lived in his saints. They felt it: "Not I, but Christ liveth in me." They could tell others the blessed realities of their own spiritual experience. They were in earnest; that was plain: they had nothing to gain in the world. St. Paul especially had renounced a career most tempting to Hebrew ambition, for a life of unceasing labor — a life full of hardships, persecutions, dangers, and evidently destined to end in a violent death. He was in earnest, certainly; he was consumed with an untiring zeal; in spite of many personal disadvantages, much natural timidity, the constraining love of Christ urged him to spend and to be spent in his Savior's work. And in that work, amid all its difficulties, anxieties, and dangers, he found a deep and living joy, joy among tears; "sorrowing," he said of himself, "yet alway rejoicing." Joy, he felt and taught, was the privilege and the duty of a Christian, who knew that he was redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, that the Holy Spirit was sanctifying him, that God the Father had chosen him to be his own.

No wonder that those early years were years of fruitfulness. Earnest, truthful natures soon ranged themselves with the preachers of the new religion; a chord was struck that vibrated in all true hearts; all who waited for salvation, who were longing after God, were gathered round the cross.

St. Paul had first come to Philippi about the year 52. It was his first visit to Europe. He had seen in Asia a vision, a man of Macedonia, who said, "Come over and help us;" and he came. Philippi was the first Macedonian city which he reached; for Neapolis, the port of Philippi, was generally (not always) reckoned as belonging to Thrace. The place had been called Crenides, or Fountains, a prophetic name, for it became the fountain of European Christiania. The city was founded by the well-known Macedonian king from whom it derived its name, the ἀνη Ì^{ρ Μακεδω} ì^ν of Demosthenes. The soil was exceptionally fertile; there were gold and silver mines in the neighborhood, which produced a large revenue. But the importance of Philippi was mainly owing to its situation: it commanded one of the principal routes between Europe and Asia; the mountain range which separates the East and the West sinks into a pass near to Philippi. It was this circumstance, not only the mineral riches of the neighborhood, which attracted the attention of Philip; it was this, as well as the wish to commemorate his decisive victory, which led Augustus to plant a Roman colony at Philippi.

It was a Roman city that St. Paul found when he came hither in his second missionary journey: "a Roman colony in Greece," says Bishop Wordsworth, "an epitome of the Gentile world." The settlers brought by Augustus were mainly Italians, discharged Antonian soldiers. Along with these there existed a large Greek element in the population; we may say Greek, for the Macedonians possessed, from the period when they first assumed prominence in Grecian history, many of the distinctive characteristics of a Hellenic people (comp. Mure's 'Literature of Ancient Greece,' I. 3:9). The official language was Latin, but Greek was the tongue commonly spoken. Inscriptions in both languages have been found among the ruins of Philippi; the Latin, it is said, outnumber the Greek. The colonists were Roman citizens; the ensigns of Roman rule, the S.P.Q.R.. he were everywhere to be seen. The colony was a miniature of the imperial city. Its magistrates, properly called dnumviri, were addressed by the more ambitious name of praetors ( στρατηγοι ì) they were attended by lictors ( ῥαβδοῦχοι) The inhabitants claimed the great name of Romans (Acts 16:21), the name which Paul and Silas vindicated to themselves in the house of the Philippian jailor. The Philippians possessed some of the simple virtues of the old Roman stock. Romans and Macedonians were mingled together at Philippi, and the Macedonian character seems to have resembled the Roman more nearly, perhaps, than that of any other of the subject races. The Macedonians, like the old Romans, were manly, straightforward, and affectionate. They were not sceptical like the philosophers of Athens, or voluptuous like the Greeks of Corinth. Holy Scripture gives a very favorable view of the Thessalonians and Berceans, as well as of the Philippians. There were only a few Jews resident at Philippi, for it was a military colony, not a mercantile city. There was no synagogue, only a proseuche, a place of prayer, by the river-side, and that so little known that (according to the best-supported reading in Acts 16:13), Paul and Silas only supposed that they should find a place of prayer by the Gangites. Thither they went, with Timothy and Luke, on the sabbath. They found only a few women. But that sabbath was an eventful day; that little congregation was the germ of great Churches; the gospel was preached for the first time in that continent of Europe which was destined in the providence of God to be the scene of its greatest successes. The first convert, Lydia, strange as it may seem, came from that Asia where Paul had been forbidden to preach. She, with her household, was the firstfruits of Philippi unto Christ. Afterwards, as Paul and Silas were on their way to the same place of prayer, they met a slave-girl possessed with a spirit of Pytho; she recognized them again and again as "servants of the most high God." St. Paul cast out the spirit. This led to the apprehension of Paul and Silas. It was the first direct conflict of Christianity and heathenism; hitherto, as at Lystra, Jews had been the instigators of persecution. It was the first appearance of St. Paul before a Roman tribunal, the first beating, and the first imprisonment. Then came the conversion of the jailor and his family. Thus the Philippian Church was formed — the purple-seller from Thyatira, the Greek slave-girl, the (probably Roman) jailor, with the households of the first and last. Two of them were women — one engaged in a profitable trade, the other a slave; the third remarkable for his earnest question, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" and for his kind attentions to Paul and Silas. We observe already some of the blessed results of Christianity — the Christian family, Christian hospitality, the religious equality of women and slaves. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). There were others not known to us by name; there was a Church in the house of Lydia, where Paul and Silas saw the brethren and comforted them before their departure from Philippi (Acts 16:40). We notice the prominence of female converts in Macedonia. At Thessalonica (Acts 22:4) and at Beroea (Acts 17:12) many women, and those ladies of rank, became Christians. Women formed an important element in the early Philippian Church.

2. SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE PHILIPPIAN CHURCH.

St. Paul's first visit to Philippi ended in suffering. In the Roman colony he and Silas claimed the privilege of Roman citizens. They were soon released, but the persecutions which the teachers were the first to feel did not pass away. The Churches of Macedonia, the Philippian Church especially, were called to suffer tribulation. St. Paul mentions their afflictions more than once (see 2 Corinthians 8:1, 2, and Philippians 1:28-30). It was given to them, it was their privilege, not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for his sake. Their sufferings, their "deep poverty," did not check that liberality which was characteristic of the Philippian Church. St. Paul had not left them long, he was still at Thessalonica, when they "sent once and again unto his necessities." And from 2 Corinthians 11:9 compared with Philippians 4:15 we may safely infer that his Philippian converts supplied his wants during his first sojourn in Corinth. Philippi was the only Church from which the great apostle was willing to accept help; it is a striking testimonial to their zeal and love.

St. Paul probably visited Philippi twice during his third missionary journey. After leaving Ephesus he went into Macedonia; "and when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece." It is not likely that Philippi was omitted. Philippi, with the other Churches of Macedonia, was then suffering that "great trial of affliction" mentioned in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which St. Paul wrote during this visit to Macedonia. We gather from that Epistle that he was busily employed in collecting alms for the saints in Jerusalem, and that the Macedonian Christians contributed readily and liberally; and we also learn (see 2 Corinthians 7:5 and 8:2) that it was a time of persecution and distress for himself as well as for the Macedonian Churches. After three months in Greece, he "purposed to return through Macedonia," and, St. Luke continues (Acts 20:6), "we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread." St Paul chose to keep the Passover, the greatest of the Jewish festivals, at Philippi, among those whom he calls his dearly beloved, his joy and crown. There were very few Jews at Philippi: did he keep the feast as a Christian Easter among Christians, rather than a Jewish festival among Jews? It was the last Passover for several years which he could keep where and as he pleased.

At this point in St. Luke's narrative (Acts 20:6) we notice the resumption of the first person, which St. Luke has not used since Acts 16, in which St. Paul's first visit to Philippi is related. From this circumstance it has been inferred that St. Luke was left at Philippi to carry on the work of organizing the Macedonian Churches; and perhaps remained there till he rejoined St. Paul on his way to Jerusalem. Thus it may be that the Christians at Philippi had the benefit of the teaching of the evangelist during the seven or eight years which followed St. Paul's first visit. Thus their love for St. Paul, their unhesitating submission to his apostolic authority, their steadfast adherence to his teaching, may in part be the result of the labors of his trusted friend and follower, who continued faithful (2 Timothy 4:11) when others forsook him.