Category: Philippians

“If the Lord Jesus is willing, I hope to send Timothy to you soon for a visit. Then he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along. I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares about your welfare. All the others care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ. But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a son with his father, he has served with me in preaching the Good News. I hope to send him to you just as soon as I find out what is going to happen to me here. And I have confidence from the Lord that I myself will come to see you soon.”

In today’s verses, Paul brags on his number-two guy who has proven himself to be a worthy servant. My husband, Joshua, is a modern-day Timothy — serving as Executive Pastor at our church and sharing his work with other associate pastors. His life’s work and calling really embraces all that Timothy modeled, and it serves us well as we consider what it means to have total freedom in every way we follow Christ.

Perhaps you have felt less-than at times because you are not the type to be an out front leader. You are never going to be the one to run the show and perhaps you have wondered how much God can really use you. Maybe you have physical or emotional limitations that prevent you from serving in ways that others easily can. No matter what your situation, God can use you in mighty ways.

Timothy received this praise from Paul because he genuinely cared for others. He served others and was willing to serve under Paul rather than be in charge. Serve in the role that you were designed for. Don’t worry about whether you are making a big splash — simply do the thing God makes it easy for you to do. If you have been discounting what you are good at as “not enough” for a while now, embrace the you God sees.

“Meanwhile, I thought I should send Epaphroditus back to you. He is a true brother, co-worker, and fellow soldier. And he was your messenger to help me in my need. I am sending him because he has been longing to see you, and he was very distressed that you heard he was ill. And he certainly was ill; in fact, he almost died. But God had mercy on him—and also on me, so that I would not have one sorrow after another. So I am all the more anxious to send him back to you, for I know you will be glad to see him, and then I will not be so worried about you. Welcome him in the Lord’s love and with great joy, and give him the honor that people like him deserve. For he risked his life for the work of Christ, and he was at the point of death while doing for me what you couldn’t do from far away.”

I’ve never risked my life for the Gospel, so when I read passages like this one I approach it from a learning perspective. We all make sacrifices and give up worldly things when we follow Jesus, but it’s a different thing to press so far into the mission that you almost die. Paul also references his own repeated experiences of sorrow, and he is glad that he did not have to add yet another loss to his life experiences. I can relate to the experience of grief and the ways in which following Jesus can take people out of your life at times. Particularly in ministry, sometimes you do feel loss after loss after loss and you press ahead.

If you want to find out more about Epaphroditus, you can read this article. My first observation was that his name sounded very Greek, which in fact it was. He was named for the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the god of love, beauty, and fertility. What a contrast to how he lived out his life, surrendering pleasure and embracing suffering for the cause of Christ. We can see that he found the true God of love, and it produced a willingness to risk even his own life.

It’s radically counter-cultural in America to embrace suffering. We’re constantly trying to get rid of all things unpleasant. Yet freedom comes when we humble ourselves and become servants. We talked earlier in this series about becomes slaves to Jesus. That doesn’t give us an easy life, but it gives us supernatural and eternal freedom. It’s time to shake off the chains of pride, greed, self-focus, and vanity. You may not be ready to risk your life for the Gospel, but what about risking these idols that feel central to your life? You just might find exactly what you’ve been searching for.

“Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. I never get tired of telling you these things, and I do it to safeguard your faith. Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved. For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort, though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!”

Circumcision is a big deal in the Bible. It all goes back to Genesis 17 when God made a promise to Abraham. At that moment, God chose Abraham and his descendants to be his special people. They would be set apart from all the other people groups on earth. In the ancient world, that meant that Abraham would worship a very different God than the other gods in the cultures around him. As a sign of that special relationship, God told Abraham to be circumcised and to have all males circumcised just after birth. Any male who was not circumcised would be excluded from God’s promise.

So why is Paul saying here that evil mutilators are pushing circumcision to be saved. Isn’t that the exact system God set up? Jesus seemingly came and disrupted a system that was thousands of years old and established by God himself. Now worshiping the Holy Spirit reveals who is “truly circumcised”? You are either circumcised or you aren’t. And what does any of this mean for us today, particularly for those of us who are women?

It’s true that God set up a system of circumcision as a sign of his promise with Abraham and Israel. But that’s all it was ever supposed to be: a sign. A reflection of a deeper reality. Circumcision wasn’t the saving grace. It was God’s love and his heart for humanity that held that promise in place. The Jewish teachers who were preaching salvation by circumcision had missed the whole point. Kind of like focusing on the letter of the law rather than the spirit. In the Old Testament, God required blood and sacrifice to atone for sin. In the New Testament, God offered the permanent and everlasting blood of Jesus as a sacrifice to atone for sin. Death could not be overcome without an exchange — a payment of death. God ripped himself apart, Father from Son, to seal the promise of salvation. You may see quite easily how your own effort is really ridiculous compared to that. Jesus is the only hope for men, women, and people of all nations.

“I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. “

What does it mean to be a Christian? You might get a wide range of answers depending on who you ask. Perhaps even more difficult, what does it mean to be connected to God? For Paul, connection with God was understood as strict obedience. He did everything right according to the Jewish Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament that were consider God’s law). He was so devout that he killed early Christians because Jesus was seen as a threat to the Jewish law.

Paul had a change of heart. (You can read more about it in Acts 9). He was righteous before, and Jesus had befriend a whole bunch of sinners. Jesus challenged religious leaders who were so strict about the law that they didn’t truly understand it. Ultimately, if you are all about following strict rules, then you are all about yourself. Your own effort matters and that’s it. (And you have a great excuse for judging everybody else who isn’t keeping up…)

God gave the Jewish people his perfect standards as a way to show them they couldn’t make it to him on their own. They needed a rescuer, which the Old Testament describes as the “Messiah.” This savior was going to make everything right. Some people like Paul (when he was named Saul) believed that following the law was the way to salvation. Jesus came along and said, “I am the way.” Now we have a choice: try to save ourselves or believe that Jesus is the way to God. When we have faith, it’s not about trying to be perfect in order to get God’s approval. It’s about sitting with my own brokenness. If I cry out for a savior in faith that Jesus is willing to save me, then that’s all the “righteousness” I can muster. Beyond that, I’m simply just desperate.

“I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.”

Do you want to know Jesus? Do you want to experience his death-defying power? Paul has some tough first steps for us in the process: (1) suffer, (2) die. Perfection comes when we embrace suffering and death as Jesus did. It’s counter-intuitive to embrace something in order to overcome it, but that’s how it works. The power is in our victory through suffering and death, not around it or over it or by way of a back door.

Paul was driven by mission. When suffering got hard, he looked to a prize of eternal significance. He already saw the fruits of his labor as the early church was spreading. The name of Jesus was becoming known around the world. How could he give up at that point? Even when things got hard and he was thrown in prison (where he was writing this letter), the ground the Gospel had gained was too much to lose.

Have you suffered for some part of God’s mission to spread the love of Jesus to the world? What have you given up in your life? What has made you uncomfortable? What suffering have you endured for the sake of eternal glory? American Christians sometimes adopt a false martyrdom when people find them offensive or don’t celebrate their holidays. That’s not suffering for the Gospel. Altering your life in some way, taking the hard road when easy would be, well, easy. That’s suffering. Risking your friends, your family, your job, your home for the sake of helping others find Jesus. It’s a challenge to me and I hope to you as well. It’s in those kinds of hard choices that we find maturity and freedom.