Christians are often asked: "why go to your Church? why be baptized? why can't one simply be a good person?"...
Christians are often asked: "why go to your Church? why be baptized? Why can't one simply be a good person?" The detailed argument of the questioners, the "disputers" in New Testament terminology, comes down to this: since in the parable of the Last Judgment the Lord promises a better lot to those from the nations, that is, from among unbelievers, who do good to their neighbors, the Church is not needed.
In today's apostolic reading, the apostle Paul gives us a remarkable indication of how the life of a Christian differs from the life of "simply a good person." Calling his readers in Philippi to work out, with fear and trembling, their salvation, the Greek word here can literally be translated as "work out, develop, produce," the apostle says as a self-evident fact: "for God is at work in you." "God works in you both to will and to act according to His good pleasure." God, the apostle writes, έστιν ό ένεργων, is the One who acts in you, the One by whose energy both your will and your action are accomplished in you, according to His good intention. A Christian is an ordinary person, often even a weak one, but he is open to the action of God's grace, which produces in him both the good will and the action itself: the doing of good.
The difference, then, is that a simply good person has hope for a reward in the future, while a Christian already lives and acts together with God and under His rule.
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2:12 Wherefore - Having proposed Christ's example, he exhorts them to secure the salvation which Christ has purchased. As ye have always - Hitherto. Obeyed - Both God, and me his minister.Now in my absence - When ye have not me to instruct, assist, and direct you. Work out your own salvation - Herein let every man aim at his own things. With fear and trembling - With the utmost care and diligence.
2:13 For it is God - God alone, who is with you, though I am not. That worketh in you according to his good pleasure - Not for any merit of yours. Yet his influences are not to supersede, but to encourage, our own efforts. Work out your own salvation - Here is our duty. For it is God that worketh in you - Here is our encouragement. And O, what a glorious encouragement, to have the arm of Omnipotence stretched out for our support and our succour!
2:14 Do all things - Not only without contention, Php 2:3, but evenwithout murmurings and disputings - Which are real, though smaller, hinderances of love.
2:15 That ye may be blameless - Before men. And simple - Before God, aiming at him alone. As the sons of God - The Godof love; acting up to your high character. Unrebukable in the midst of a crooked - Guileful, serpentine, and perverse generation - Such as the bulk of mankind always were. Crooked - By a corruptnature, and yet more perverse by custom and practice.
2:17 Here he begins to treat of the latter clause of Php 1:22.Yea, and if I be offered - Literally, If I be poured out.Upon the sacrifice of your faith - The Philippians, as the other converted heathens, were a sacrifice to God through St. Paul's ministry, Rom 15:16. And as in sacrificing, wine was poured at the foot of the altar, so he was willing that his blood should be poured out. The expression well agrees with that kind of martyrdom by which he was afterwards offered up to God.
2:18 Congratulate me - When I am offered up.
2:19 When I know - Upon my return, that ye stand steadfast.
2:20 I have none - Of those who are now with me.
2:21 For all - But Timotheus. Seek their own - Ease, safety, pleasure, or profit. Amazing! In that golden age of the church, could St. Paul throughly approve of one only, among all the labourers that were with him? Php 1:14, Php 1:17. And how many do we think can now approve themselves to God? Not the things of Jesus Christ - They who seek these alone, will sadly experience this. They will find few helpers likeminded with themselves, willing naked to follow a naked Master.
2:22 As a son with his father - He uses an elegant peculiarity of phrase, speaking partly as of a son, partly as of a fellowlabourer.
2:25 To send Epaphroditus - Back immediately. Your messenger - The Philippians had sent him to St. Paul with their liberal contribution.
2:26 He was full of heaviness - Because he supposed you would be afflicted at hearing that he was sick.
2:27 God had compassion on him - Restoring him to health.
2:28 That I may be the less sorrowful - When I know you are rejoicing.
2:30 To supply your deficiency of service - To do what you could not do in person.