Scripture Daily

Context No. 442 of 4322 · Philippians

Context · Reflection

Philippians 1:9-17: in context

9This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment, 10so that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense to the day of Christ, 11being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. 12Now I desire to have you know, brothers, that the things which happened to me have turned out rather to the progress of the Good News, 13so that it became evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my bonds are in Christ, 14and that most of the brothers in the Lord, being confident through my bonds, are more abundantly bold to speak the word of God without fear. 15Some indeed preach Christ even out of envy and strife, and some also out of good will. 16The former insincerely preach Christ from selfish ambition, thinking that they add affliction to my chains; 17but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the Good News.

Paul is writing this letter from prison, and he wants the Philippians, who are worried about him, to see something they might have missed. Do not assume, he tells them, that my imprisonment has been a setback. What has happened to me, he says, has actually served to advance the gospel. His chains have made Christ known throughout the whole palace guard, and, more than that, most of the believers have been emboldened by his imprisonment to speak the word more boldly and without fear. The very thing that looked like a disaster, Paul locked away and silenced, God has turned into gospel progress.

Then Paul admits something that would eat most of us alive. Some people, he says, are preaching Christ out of envy and rivalry, from selfish ambition, and, he notes pointedly, they are doing it thinking to add to the affliction of my chains. In other words, while Paul sits in prison, certain rivals are seizing the opportunity to build their own reputations at his expense, preaching in a way designed to rub salt in his wounds, to hurt him. And how does Paul respond to that petty cruelty? In the very next breath, just past this passage, he says: what does it matter? Only that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. He is more glad that Christ is being preached than he is wounded that his rivals are preaching from spite to hurt him. His own ego, his own vindication, his own place, has been so subordinated to the cause that even a rival's malicious success in that cause becomes an occasion for genuine joy.

That is a rare and freeing kind of heart, and it exposes how tightly most of us bind our joy to our own standing. If a good thing gets done, but by someone who did it to spite me, or who will get the credit instead of me, the good of it curdles and I cannot rejoice. Paul could. He cared so much more about the thing than about his own place in it that his rivals could not steal his joy. Could I honestly rejoice that a good thing is happening, even when it is being done by someone doing it from bad motives to diminish me, or is my ego so tied to my own credit that a rival's success, even in a cause I love, poisons the whole thing for me?

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