1.
Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
2.
Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
3.
I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
4.
Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy,
5.
For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now;
6.
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:
7.
Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace.
8.
For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.
9.
And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
10.
That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ;
11.
Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.
12.
But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel;
13.
So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places;
14.
And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
15.
Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will:
16.
The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds:
17.
But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel.
18.
What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.
19.
For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,
20.
According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.
21.
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
22.
But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not.
23.
For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
24.
Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.
25.
And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith;
26.
That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.
ARGUMENT 3
SECOND IMPRISONMENT
26. “ In order that your rejoicing may abound in Christ Jesus, in me through my coming again unto you. ” I believe with Dean Alford and the abler critics, that Paul passed through two distinct imprisonments at Rome. All the Roman authorities in Judea, Lysias, Felix, and Agrippa, pronounced a verdict of innocence in behalf of Paul, certifying to his legal manumission so far as the criminal charges against him were concerned, as they consisted only in accusations of disharmony with Jewish laws and customs, which had no criminal signification in Roman jurisdiction. The only reason for which he was carried a prisoner to Rome, was because he had appealed to Caesar. This he did, not because he cared anything about Caesar’s tribunal, but that he might verify his long-cherished aspiration of preaching the gospel in the world’s capital and metropolis, that the light of God’s truth, radiating from the center, might shine out into every land. His rights as a Roman citizen entitled him to an appeal to Caesar, thus forcing his enemies to defray his traveling expenses all the way from Jerusalem to Rome, a journey at that time greater than the circumnavigation of the globe at the present day. When finally he stood at Caesar’s tribunal, as he was charged with nothing criminal in Roman law, they could but acquit him. This took place about A.D. 63 or 64; after which he returned to Asia, visiting the Churches the last time. Having crossed the Aegean Sea again, he lands in Greece, where he wrote the first letter to Timothy and Titus, expecting to spend the winter of A.D. 68 at Nicopolis, in Southern Macedonia. About that time a great fire sweeps over Rome, wrapping the city in an ocean of flame six days and seven nights. When I was there my guide showed me the old tower on which Nero sat during the conflagration, playing his fiddle, and singing the destruction of Troy.
Though all the people believed that the wicked emperor had ordered the conflagration, he charged the Christians with that dark iniquity, lighting on it as a pretext for issuing that bloody edict which caused them to bleed and burn three hundred years. Though Paul was not at Rome during the conflagration, when this high crime is saddled on the Christians, they have him arrested about Nicopolis in Greece, because he was a prominent leader of the Nazarenes. Upon his second arrest and transportation to Rome, he was incarcerated in that loathsome old Mamertine prison, not as a mere disturber of the Jewish religion, as in the first imprisonment, but as “an evil doer.” (2 Timothy 2:9.) Kakourgos, from kakos, evil, and ergos, work, is the word here applied to him in his second imprisonment. It is because they accused him of burning Rome, which was a crime of the darkest dye. From this prison led out, he was tried by Nero, and condemned to decapitation. This locates his martyrdom about A.D. 68.
27.
Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;
28.
And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God.
29.
For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;
30.
Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.