NOTES for Php 1:18

At first glance, the apostle's words can appear strange. Indeed, preaching Christ and the Kingdom is too important a matter to do it with impure motives. And how can a person be a true witness if, inwardly at least, he does not support what he is witnessing to? Yet apparently witness really can be different. In the biblical books there are examples of people far from the God of Abraham who nevertheless witnessed to His power or wisdom when they encountered the obvious. Evidently Paul also understands that if someone mentions Christ, if he cannot simply keep silent with indifference, then Christ has touched this person; and if so, his reaction itself becomes a witness, even if not always a positive one. The enemies of Christ and the Kingdom, by bearing witness to their hatred, prove the reality and power of what they hate. Hypocrites who attach themselves to the cause and try to make witness into a profitable business for themselves thereby testify to the Kingdom as something on which one can try to live parasitically; after all, even parasites choose objects for parasitism that can give them food. Of course, such a "witness" gives the "witnesses" of this sort nothing; it only moves them farther away from Christ and from the Kingdom. But it draws the attention of those who may look at Christ and the Kingdom in a completely different way, truly becoming a witness of which the "witnesses" themselves never even thought.