00:00:00:28 – 00:00:21:09
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us. Into the book of Philippians today. We’re just at the front end here as we move into the text conversation yesterday with yesterday about some of the background and some of the things we do and don’t know about this book. And if you haven’t had a chance to listen to that, it might be worth picking that up.

00:00:21:09 – 00:00:41:44
Clint Loveall
But today we jump into the text. Couple verses off the front end, which are very typical of Paul’s letter. So let me read them to you. We’ll stop there and we’ll just, say a few things and we’ll move on. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, who are in Philippi with the bishops and the deacons.

00:00:41:49 – 00:01:23:52
Clint Loveall
Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So, structurally speaking, Paul does this in most of his letters. He has a greeting of some kind. Most of the time, including words like grace and peace, almost always some reference to Christ. Often, as he does hear a mention of saints in Christ. Sometimes, as we also see here, an acknowledgment of who is with him or who is, also represented in the letter, as he says here, Paul and Timothy.

00:01:23:57 – 00:01:45:40
Clint Loveall
I don’t know that there’s a great deal here to study, but there are a couple of interesting things. First of all, it is, I think always worth noting that when Paul reaches for something to wish upon the church, he wishes upon it grace and peace. That is the most common formulation of what Paul says in the opening of the letter.

00:01:45:45 – 00:02:20:58
Clint Loveall
And then, Michael, help me here. I don’t I don’t read off the top of my head, which could be wrong, but I don’t remember another letter in which Paul references what we would call church officers. Right. The the idea specifically here that he is speaking to a particular congregation to such an extent, unlike the general letters where here he literally mentions overseers and and deacons.

00:02:20:58 – 00:02:36:16
Clint Loveall
In other words, what we believe we know to be early officers, pastoral staff types in the church. I can’t there may be one, but I can’t think off the top of my head of another letter where that’s the case.

00:02:36:21 – 00:03:00:50
Michael Gewecke
Actually, I was going to start there as well, because you could have a conversation about how this letter compared to other letters. But what I can speak with confidence here is that we’ve got to be careful to not fall down the trap of trying to figure out exactly what the roles and responsibilities of these people that we’re talking about had, and a lot of people are apt to do that.

00:03:00:50 – 00:03:18:21
Michael Gewecke
Well, you know, our translation that we read here today, we’ve got the bishops and the deacons. You know, bishop could also be translated overseer. Deacons could be translated help. So the language is the thing that you’re going to have to account for if you want to dig in to what these names mean. I don’t want to go there.

00:03:18:30 – 00:03:43:19
Michael Gewecke
I want to just point out for a second look at how early the church is already leveraging institutional structure as a part of it. Doing it the fulfilling its task and seeking to do its work well. That this church we have no reason to believe is by any modern standards, megachurch full of thousands and thousands of people.

00:03:43:24 – 00:04:15:59
Michael Gewecke
And yet the church is already organizing, and that’s putting people in positions of responsibility and service. And I think it is fair to say service here, because know what happens in the very opening words. In fact, in our translation, the fourth word, servants of Jesus Christ. Well, at the end of the day, the church recognized in the early church tried to live into this idea that some were called to give up some of the freedom that they were given for the sake of giving that back to the community through responsibility.

00:04:15:59 – 00:04:41:40
Michael Gewecke
And here Paul is naming these people. So this is maybe it’s a quick jump into the study. But Clint, I just want to sort of reflect out loud here so we can all see that when Paul is thinking about what it means to be church, the very first assumption of that is that it’s going to be an organized, institutional kind of structure, which does speak into our present context, where people are free, seemingly comfortable of the idea of church.

00:04:41:49 – 00:05:08:42
Michael Gewecke
Without that, that, well, I am my own church, or I experience God alone in in the woods or whatever your conception of it might be. The church has always, from the earliest letters and this is great evidence of it seeing the need and the the benefit of having structured community for the sake of safety, for the sake of service, for the sake of, its effectiveness in its mission.

00:05:08:47 – 00:05:13:55
Michael Gewecke
And here that is labeled right above the fold without we’re not even past the first verse yet.

00:05:14:04 – 00:05:48:47
Clint Loveall
Interesting that in that first verse we do get those three categories, not only bishops and deacons, but the word saints. Those who have been with us before will have heard something like this. But if you happen to be new with us, it is, I think, worth knowing that when Paul uses the word saints, unlike church traditions we might know of, say, the Catholic Church or the Episcopal Church, where a saint represents a particular individual who is thought for some reason to be especially righteous or devout or holy.

00:05:48:52 – 00:06:21:21
Clint Loveall
When Paul uses this word, it is his sort of generic word for Christians. In other words, Paul imagines that all people who are in Christ are saints. They are made holy. They are made righteous. I think that is something that would be hard to overemphasize. Michael. I think, you know, very few of us, the idea that we try to be humble and that we want to we know that we’re sinful and some of the other things that Christianity teaches us.

00:06:21:36 – 00:06:48:43
Clint Loveall
We ought to be very careful with the idea of patting ourselves on the back and calling ourselves saints. But I think it’s a beautiful theological statement that when Paul thinks of those Christians in Philippi, some of whom he knows to be struggling, he can, because of their faith in Christ, refer to them as saints, a word that literally means holy ones and holy.

00:06:48:43 – 00:07:20:03
Clint Loveall
For Paul is not some subset of the whole. A holy one is a is anyone who has, through their faith in Christ, become holy, been made holy by the work of Christ? And, I, I wish we could functionally get a better handle on that, because I think it is such a powerful statement to what Paul believes to be true of the church and the people in it.

00:07:20:07 – 00:07:40:21
Michael Gewecke
So not to bore anybody, but I think that this note from the commentator says it really well. So I’m just going to quote the one sentence. This commentary says Holy people are unholy people who nevertheless, as such, have been singled out, claimed and requisitioned by God for his control, for his use, for himself who is holy. And I think there’s wisdom in that claim.

00:07:40:21 – 00:08:14:46
Michael Gewecke
I think fundamentally, when we think of ourselves as holy, we attribute it to the moral actions that we take and held up to the scale of Jesus Christ. We don’t hit the bar by the scale of what we do, certainly by the scale of what Jesus gives us, by what we think. We don’t measure up as holy. But if you’re willing to accept that we are holy not in our moral rising, not not because of some perfection that’s happened to us, but rather because God lives in us, and therefore we participate in holiness as a gift.

00:08:14:51 – 00:08:54:51
Michael Gewecke
Suddenly. And note the the contrast here. And I think this is really important. The saints who are in Philippi with the bishops and the deacons, those things all come together here. That’s a really important connection point for us that everyone is called. Some are given special service, some are given special responsibility, but none are given a privilege. And I think that that is a fundamental understanding as we see this letter beginning, we’ve already said to you that as we go through it, we’re going to discover these themes of affection, and we’re going to see a kind of love shared.

00:08:54:55 – 00:09:13:33
Michael Gewecke
Note that in a very warm introduction to a letter, Paul is including everyone, including the leadership, but that leadership is not getting any special billing or some kind of special nod of importance. It’s all the holy ones who are called. And then fundamentally, there are some who are serving in roles.

00:09:13:42 – 00:09:35:40
Clint Loveall
I think it’s a fun idea that if Paul were designing a stained glass window, he wouldn’t put himself on it. He would put everyone else in the church. Yeah, on it, as a as a picture of the saints. And then again, I don’t want to overdo it or overstate it, but verse two, and we won’t go this slow every day, of course.

00:09:35:40 – 00:10:18:01
Clint Loveall
But as we move into this letter, it is, I think, whenever I reflect on this as a person who works in the church, I’m struck with how perfect it is that when it comes to wish something for the church, Paul wishes them grace and peace, the very two ingredients that we most often need to live out our Christian life grace both for ourself and that we offer to others and peace, both internal and external.

00:10:18:01 – 00:10:57:10
Clint Loveall
A sense of peace in our own spirit, which then flows into peaceful relationships and peace with others. Grace and peace. It is such a powerful combination of theological and faith ideas that whenever Paul thinks about what he prays for the church, what he hopes for the church, what he wants to see in the church, these are the two words that again and again and again come to the surface, and that he uses in his communication.

00:10:57:10 – 00:11:07:28
Clint Loveall
And it’s just it’s easy to read by this and think, oh, sure, yeah, hope you’re doing well. But for Paul, I think that it’s much, much deeper than that.

00:11:07:33 – 00:11:43:35
Michael Gewecke
You’re gonna have to check me on this, Clint. I think, though, that I would make the case that Grace specifically peace following closely behind, is in the upper pantheon of Christian words that we are often most in danger of stripping of their meaning because our familiarity and comfort with them. And I think that here specifically, when Paul addresses who this letter is for, for the holy ones, all of the people.

00:11:43:35 – 00:12:11:22
Michael Gewecke
Right. And then to the people who’ve been given roles of responsibilities to oversee and to care for that body, the first word that he wants to offer is a blessing. And the first and most important blessing that comes to mind is the blessing of grace. I think that we pass by far too quickly. The depths of grace, of unmerited favor, a gift that we don’t deserve.

00:12:11:27 – 00:12:45:28
Michael Gewecke
Grace. Recognizing that Jesus Christ has given us a thing, even though that was not the thing that our moral attainment going back to the holy ones. We don’t deserve grace. We didn’t get holiness because of our capacity. It’s because of the gift that comes to us in Jesus Christ, and here the gift that he wants to remind them, grace to you and peace because peace follows on the coattails of grace, that at the end of the day, overthinking and planning and worrying.

00:12:45:28 – 00:13:20:00
Michael Gewecke
This isn’t the pathway to the peace that God has designed for us. It’s the reception of the gift that we were unable to attain on our own merit. Grace is one of those faith conversations, Clint, that Christians, especially Protestants, have heard so consistently. Hopefully, that we’ve heard so frequently that it is easy for the force of it to not land on us in our psyche and in our hearts, and we have to do the work required to prepare our ears to hear again the extravagance of these words.

00:13:20:00 – 00:13:44:20
Michael Gewecke
Because grace means God’s not angry at us. Grace means that God is not seeking the proper level of sacrifice. Grace means that God’s not waiting for you to attain a particular level of your life. Grace is that God today has entered into your life in a meaningful, transformative. We even use the word salvific way that’s going to transform and renew your life from this place on.

00:13:44:31 – 00:13:59:49
Michael Gewecke
It makes peace possible. And and when Paul offers these people a gift, when he offers a blessing, it’s not an accident. These words get chosen. And if there’s any mistake that happens, it’s that we overhear it get inoculated to it. So we’ve got to slow down to hear it again.

00:13:59:54 – 00:14:26:18
Clint Loveall
I don’t think it would be unfair, Michael, to say that of all the words that Paul or that we could think of to offer the church, you know, I wish you strength or wish you courage or wish you hope for Paul. If you trace all of those, they all grow from the root of grace. And therefore, if Paul can hope one thing for the church to get right, it would be grace.

00:14:26:18 – 00:14:44:01
Clint Loveall
Both the thing we need the most, and perhaps the best measure of our response to what God has done, our grace toward others. And so, yeah, it is hard to overstate the importance and the, the scope of this word.

00:14:44:06 – 00:15:14:04
Michael Gewecke
I think, Clint, that is, we will turn here tomorrow to the very next words. I thank my God, every time I think of you, I, I think it’s worth slowing down to remember that the early church, too, was relational, and it wasn’t an accident. It was an accident that was about the real human people who lived in Philippi and Timothy and Paul, who who gave up their freedom in Christ so that they could serve and love others.

00:15:14:09 – 00:15:35:08
Michael Gewecke
And it’s not accident that when they are offering greetings to one another, they’re offering the best of what they have in the faith. Grace and peace be to you. May that be the very spirit that we enter into this study. May we hear it not just as a time locked offering for people that live in a faraway place, in a city that no longer exists.

00:15:35:13 – 00:15:54:16
Michael Gewecke
We are people here today who continue by the power of the spirit, to receive that same fellowship and communion. And, you know, may we expect that as we stay together? Thanks for being with us, everybody. We are glad to continue on the study tomorrow. I hope you’re blessed. Until then, see some.