In that exemplary humbleness the Lord Jesus lived prophetically, looking to the Resurrection, even beyond; throughout his life preparatory to the Crucifixion, the Lord and Savior endorsed for his own primarily the first covenant promise, the resurrection life. Paul, too imitating the Lord and Savior, lived prophetically; from out of his central core he strove for entry into the Commonwealth’s totality. Simultaneously, the Apostle intended that all believers at Philippi follow him. Both the emphatic “brethren” and the imitation summons served to motivate everyone actually in Christ to pursue from the heart the Christian tradition of grateful living—the gratitude flowing out of salvation. From that workable beginning the Apostle called the living members of the Philippian congregation to acknowledge unity in mind and love, producing predictive evidence of salvation, thereby with him setting the eschatological pace.
Forcefully, then, Paul incited the Church at Philippi to copy the example, which he, Timothy, Phil 2:19–24, and Epaphroditus, Phil 2:25–30, placed before them, to replicate the thankful response to the Gospel as intensively. Therefore, the exhortatory, “. . . mark those who so live as you have an example in us.” With supportive companions Paul willed the entire Philippian congregation to duplicate them in Christian believing and living.
The Militant Way
Paul, for the commanded emulation cited two rivals, anti-Gospel forces, both endangering that congregation.
First: Approximately four hundred years earlier the Church—returning post-exilic to Jerusalem—consciously slipped away from the gratitude of the Return and the covenant promises the LORD God thereby reinitiated. Once more, rather than attributable to pagan deities, they received life, food, and space on his terms. And from out of gratitude the summons to honor the Commandments. However, in place of gratitude the Church originated the Second Commonwealth, considering David’s rule the first. This Commonwealth formed a kingdom motivated by the Tradition of the Elders and energized by the Oral Law, the Oral Law whereby adherents gained self-righteousness. In effect, the Second Commonwealth in imagination replaced the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus. The leaders of the Second Commonwealth, initially the Pharisees, later with the Sadducees, invented a self-righteousness only superficially similar to the gratitude shaped through living the Commandments.
To escape misidentification: Paul distinguished Christ’s Commonwealth from what the Jews called the Second Commonwealth, a kingdom and a communion intended to crowd the Kingdom out of existence. The post-exilic Jews, arrogant, imagined themselves capable to create another Davidic reign, as extensive and as glorious. However, they founded only another anti-messianic rule. In that large-scale disparagement of the covenant promises, they worked with life, food, and space against the Lord Jesus; they took the promises for growing the tough Oral Law tradition. In and throughout this post-exilic process of covenant breakage, the Church misrepresented the Old Testament tradition of gratitude inspired at the Sinai and moved by the Holy Spirit. That misrepresentation unconverted Jews in the Church at Philippi sought to synthesize with the original commitments of Christianity; these Jewish members wanted re-imposition of circumcision and lead all into achieving self-righteousness, the very self-righteousness the Lord and Savior had with awesome finality condemned on the Cross. Because of the long tradition of the Oral Law the congregation at Philippi had no example in Christ to follow and became easy victims for the unbending pharisaically hearted; earning self-righteousness appeared more attainable than in the Faith bowing before the Lord Jesus.
In that complex cultural interplay of competition the Head of the Church at Philippi incited Paul to make his exemplary living the new norm for Christian sanctity, until first stirrings in the covenant tradition gained purchase. Therefore, Paul exhorted the congregation to scrutinize closely the way of living he created, since yet no such tradition of the Christian life existed; effectually, the Apostle with companions had to start living in Christ anew, for themselves too and as example for the congregation—against virtuous-in-appearance only pressures to Pharisaic conformity. Many of the congregation whom the Christ had drawn out of the Tradition of the Elders remembered the striving for self-righteousness and easily enough found the simplicities of the old way appealing.
To dispense with the Jewish danger the apostolic precedent intensely and intensively inspired the believers in Philippi to walk in Christ Jesus with heart, soul, mind, and strength, always within the circumambience of the Commandments. Despite pressures of succumbing again to self-righteousness the Lord Jesus willed the covenant way for the Church entering the New Testament millennia.
Second: To consolidate the Philippian congregation in replicating his believing and living the proprietary Apostle solidified also other wavering members—those drawn out of Hellenism—to withstand and overcome another revolutionary elemental force on the loose in that covenant communion. Even though imprisoned, Paul remained on constant alert for the well-being of Christ’s Church, also in Philippi. Therefore he called the faithful to beware of rebellious members who attempted to ease the congregation by a process of synthesizing again into the libertine ways of Hellenism; these adaptors sought measures of accommodation with the world from which the Christ had drawn them and import into the congregation/Commonwealth ways of Hellenism to decrease the time-eternity tensions; such members sought less emphasis on the not of the world and more on the in the world. Discomforts of residing in two worlds at once proved irritating. The Apostle’s militant call to arms came none too soon.
“For many,” Paul declared, had betrayed the Christ by becoming a confrontational menace to the integrity of that congregation. The Apostle concentrated on those who, spurning the Lord Jesus’s reformation, sought excesses germane to Hellenism, to cater along with the world to the demands of the flesh, such as the seven deadly sins; prideful, envious, angered, slothful, greedy, gluttonous, and lustful, they compelled Christian liberty onto different stages of immoderation. Gal 5:13. Those members still wanted what Hellenists assumed as freedom, thus to eat away at the life in Christ Jesus and the destruction of the Faith. While bearing the name of the Savior, Hellinizers cherished sins of self-indulgence. Under the guise of Christianity these hypocritical souls aggravated the covenant community with libertine lusts, whether Epicurean, or Stoic, Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonic, Aristotelian, Gnostic, Mithraic, etc., the whole of Hellenistic religiosity controlled and commended by Caesarianism. This Hellenism encircled the Church and through neo-Hellenists penetrated into the Church at Philippi.
Often, Paul claimed, while founding this congregation he had alerted the first generation followers of the Christ to the execrable afflictions deformative of the Faith from among which the Savior had forcibly drawn them. Were many and more now to return to those deadly sins? Such evil men, imposters, members in the congregation, advocated synthesizing, agitating for antinomian living under the name of Christ. The Lord Jesus, unerring Head of the Church, drew those antinomians into the communion of the Philippian congregation to reveal his dominion. With all authority over heaven and earth the Christ willed a number of these evil workers into the community to display his omnipotence over unbelievers and to test the commitment of believers. On account of this admixture—unbelievers among believers—the Philippian congregation fought internally also against old-world religiosities and philosophies; in that Roman city Jesus Christ gathered as his own, in addition to Judaists, also men of habitual wickedness, inclined to all evil in libertine ways. These connoisseurs of sinfulness proved themselves for all in Christ to see and judge a source of grievous tribulation, and for the congregation also public humiliation, unless through the office bearers the living members called those sinners to account, either repentance or excommunication. Such enemies of the Cross, men with constricted hearts, and insensitive, mocked the Savior in his work as they, tempting, sought assimilation for the congregation to Hellenism, at that time the other illusive face of covetousness. Singly as well as collectively those men presented detrimental exampling to budding generations, to say nothing of the Christ’s reputation in the City of Philippi and surrounding territory to the north and to the south. Sworn-to-evil trouble makers intended to live in the world and compel all of Christ to synthesize with the ways constitutive of Hellenism.
The Tearful Way
Paul, composing this letter while confined to Roman imprisonment, with urgent entreaty wept at the internal