00:00:00:21 – 00:00:29:06
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for, hanging in there with us as we continue today. Finishing up the text of the letter to the Philippians, we will likely spend at least a day, kind of unpacking some things about this book to to be honest. Today is, short and sweet. A couple verses, which I’ll read here at the very end and then, we’ll, we’ll see what we find in them.

00:00:29:11 – 00:00:45:58
Clint Loveall
Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The friends who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you. Especially those of the Emperor’s household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

00:00:46:03 – 00:01:20:06
Clint Loveall
Fairly typical in Paul’s letters that at the end he has this moment where he confers wishes on the people he writes to generally grace, sometimes grace and peace. It is, it is telling that the take away at the end of Paul’s letter is always to wish those who are reading at grace in Jesus Christ. And for Paul that matters not only grace, but for Paul.

00:01:20:11 – 00:02:05:04
Clint Loveall
Grace isn’t is never dis attached, is never unattached to Jesus Christ. So he doesn’t wish them grace in the sense of generic. Hope you’re doing well. Take care. But Paul’s wish for people is always rooted in his own faith in Christ. Their faith in Christ, and ultimately the work of Christ. And you know that maybe that sounds like splitting hairs, but it does matter to Paul and the way that he signs off on every letter is deeply embedded in the name of Christ here, in this case even using it more than once.

00:02:05:09 – 00:02:31:42
Michael Gewecke
So this is a temptation that we have in the modern world, where I think we are increasingly comfortable putting a descriptor with Christian. So you might be willing to say, I’m an Episcopal Christian, a Presbyterian Christian. You also might say, I’m, contemporary worship Christian or I’m not. We we’re willing to modify Christian in a way because of our willingness.

00:02:31:42 – 00:03:07:16
Michael Gewecke
I think Clint, to think of Christian as a is a broad thing. The early church being Christian alone was a defining identity trait that transformed everything in your life. It had implications for your family, have implications for your business, your profession. This was a a chief Lee unique descriptor of the value structure of your life. And so when you see the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, greet every saint, greet all the holy ones, greet those people.

00:03:07:21 – 00:03:32:21
Michael Gewecke
Paul is not talking about this broad, general thing which you might be comfortable driving by for churches on the way to the one that you go to. But when Paul’s writing to the Saints, it’s a small group of people defined by this indented identity and grace is a word that only they understand. It’s a word that is shared in the vocabulary of what it means to be Christian.

00:03:32:25 – 00:03:53:18
Michael Gewecke
And the fact that you were Christian means that either you lived within that vocabulary, you lived within that group, or you were entirely outside of it. There really was no concept of what do we call lukewarm Christian or how hybrid people describe that. People who are kind of in, kind of out. This is an interesting time in the life of the church.

00:03:53:18 – 00:04:13:28
Michael Gewecke
And I really think, Clint, that the communal greetings in these letters are not some kind of nice sign off. I hope to see you again. I think they are a heartfelt expression of connection, and the theological words in them are not trite, but they are intrinsic in what that connection is.

00:04:13:33 – 00:05:01:48
Clint Loveall
Yeah, well, and they’re a beautiful reminder of our own connectedness. You know, Mark is with us today, who I know from my time in another congregation in Texas. And those connections to those believers in that time and place continue to be a blessing for me. And each of us would have people that we are spiritually connected to or would not know, except for, our experience in the faith, our experience in the church, youth group, kids and Sunday school teachers and, and fellow worshipers who then have this tapestry of being connected and who lift us.

00:05:01:48 – 00:05:23:43
Clint Loveall
And so Paul says, the friends here, the brothers here, the friends here, they they greet you, I greet you, you greet us, all the saints greet you, even those in the Emperor’s household. And, there’s a note here. That emperor doesn’t necessarily mean the ruler of Rome. It could mean the Imperial guard or a member of the imperial family.

00:05:23:56 – 00:05:48:16
Clint Loveall
We don’t know exactly what that means, but certainly we understand what an encouragement that would be for these Christians facing their own struggles to think there are people in the highest circles of government who have come to faith in Jesus Christ. And so there’s a lot going on here. This this seems like just a simple goodbye, but wish you well.

00:05:48:21 – 00:05:55:14
Clint Loveall
But but I think when you look at it through a theological lens, there is more happening here than that.

00:05:55:19 – 00:06:27:09
Michael Gewecke
I think we need to remember, as we come to the end of a letter, some of the things that we’ve seen, the ground that we’ve walked, some of the difficulties we’ve encountered, and certainly we have these women that Paul names and you have this thoroughgoing request to bear up with one another, support one another, help each other, and denouncing of some of those people who are proclaiming Christ even unto their own benefit.

00:06:27:14 – 00:06:53:07
Michael Gewecke
It’s clear in this letter that community is not an afterthought. As Paul sits down to write to the Philippians, he wants to nurture and to encourage the growth of some aspects of the Philippian church. There’s other aspects of the church that he knows to be a place of conflict, difficulty, disagreement. He calls the church to live in to the best of unity, self-giving.

00:06:53:07 – 00:07:15:47
Michael Gewecke
In the midst of that and here as we come towards the end of the letter, that theme is not gone. I think we see it summed up once again that it’s the whole church, everyone that each creed in Christ. How are they bound together in Christ? They’re located. That’s a very Pauline phrasing there in Christ. And that is the root of their relational identity.

00:07:15:52 – 00:07:49:41
Michael Gewecke
And then remember, the circle extends beyond just your circle. It goes all the way to all of the holy ones, especially the ones who are in the emperor’s household, the ones who are occupying positions far outside Philippi. And that reminder that the faith connects us to people all around the world is, in a way, novel. In the ancient world, you certainly had religious groups, and you would take your family religion with you whenever you went.

00:07:49:46 – 00:08:22:21
Michael Gewecke
Christianity was, in a way, a breakthrough kind of faith in which belief to find one’s identity before family, before job, before people, group. This vision that Peter had, and the ensuing spread of the gospel to all parts of the world. You see that being embodied here in the Philippian church where the gospel is being brought to bear. People are united and they’re united because of the spirit of Christ at work.

00:08:22:21 – 00:08:50:39
Michael Gewecke
In them, there’s something deeply anchoring in the text like this, Clint, because though it’s a it’s a spiritual leader writing to mentees, but also to friends, to fellow Christians, I think reaching to us through time, thousands of years, it’s an invitation for us to step back and to see our faith is more than just what we believe. It’s more than a proposition.

00:08:50:43 – 00:09:14:37
Michael Gewecke
It’s more than saying, you can write down a paper. It’s lived out in community. It’s lived out in fellowship. The grace that we have been given as people is the grace that we all live in together. That’s a beautiful reminder. And clearly, Paul is not intending to teach us that thousands of years later with this, but it’s teaching that nonetheless that the spirit has a way of doing that well.

00:09:14:42 – 00:09:49:46
Clint Loveall
And I think it’s evident in the word that he uses saints, which is, if you translate literally is Holy One. And when we hear a word like that, we tend to think of that person that is somehow particularly faith filled or is particularly like Uber Christian. But for Paul, that’s just a synonym for believer. All believers in Paul’s eyes are saints are holy ones, not because they have attained that, but because that has been given to them through Jesus Christ.

00:09:49:46 – 00:10:22:13
Clint Loveall
And and it’s very interesting. We would not think of ourselves likely as saints, but Paul would think of you as a saint. If you were a person who claims faith in Jesus Christ, Paul would call you saint and that’s a humbling title. It’s a humbling reality. It’s certainly something that we should aspire to, live into and, and live out of, and that that word is kind of lost on us.

00:10:22:13 – 00:10:53:06
Clint Loveall
But the way that Paul uses it is deeply important. And then finally, I just think the last words of this letter ring out the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, be with your spirit. At his heart, I think Paul is a pastor, and what Paul wishes for people is just this, that the grace of Jesus Christ would remain with our spirits, would guard our hearts, would guard our minds, would guide our lives.

00:10:53:10 – 00:11:08:13
Clint Loveall
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is for Paul. I think, the perfect last word and the thing that ultimately he he, above everything else, wishes for the people of Jesus.

00:11:08:18 – 00:11:41:24
Michael Gewecke
And what’s amazing about that, Clint, is that it is vertical in that grace comes from God through Jesus Christ, and it’s horizontal in that it affects the musculature and sinew of the community. Because we receive grace, therefore we are called to be a gracious people with one another. There are a few words, maybe, that we’ve learned in Sunday School that we heard in confirmation that we has said and prayers and read in Scripture a lot.

00:11:41:36 – 00:12:21:45
Michael Gewecke
There’s a few words. I think grace is on the list of words that we could easily skim over and miss the depth of, because the implications of grace extend through the entire depth of our lives. There’s not a single moment of our development, of our facing change, of our seeking to learn and to grow as a community together in Christ, in which grace is not the animating character of that work, and the fact that that is listed here.

00:12:21:50 – 00:12:45:45
Michael Gewecke
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, not good intentions, not try your best to be gracious, not be a gracious host, but that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who we remember back to the Christ, him the grace took on flesh. The grace was willing to die. The grace trusted the Father God to lift him up.

00:12:45:50 – 00:13:02:51
Michael Gewecke
That’s the kind of grace that we are asked to live into and not just live into through our own action, but to receive by the power of the spirit working in us. It’s beautiful if we have ears to hear it. I think it’s transformational. It’s good to slow down and to see in the words more than what is just the surface of them.

00:13:02:51 – 00:13:03:54
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.

00:13:03:59 – 00:13:20:55
Clint Loveall
If you can join us tomorrow, we’ll offer some closing thoughts on this book. It’s, overall content. The big picture, what we think it offers Christians, and maybe its place in the church. As a kind of final wrap up and hope you can be with us.

00:13:21:00 – 00:13:29:34
Michael Gewecke
Thanks for being with us today. If you found this interesting helpful, give it a like helps other finds it, find it in their own study subscribe so you don’t miss studies like this. We will see you all tomorrow. Thank.