I really enjoyed the discipline and learning I had when I was going through the Gospel of John here last month, so I have decided to try my hand at more of the same, this time in Paul’s letter to the Philippians.
I picked Philippians because it is short, and we will soon be into the Advent season. Plus, it is a joyful letter, with a lot to teach me. there was a book written a while back called like something The Christian Hedonist. I never read it, so I am not sure what the phrase meant to the author, but I think I might be one of those. I say this because most of the things I do, in part I decide to do them based on how much joy I think they might give me. (For those who are worried about that, I will quickly add, that for me, part of the joy I get is the satisfaction of seeing God glorified, and his kingdom come, and so on.)
When Paul wrote his letter to the church folk in Philippi it from within a prison cell in Rome. Probably he dictated the letter to a secretary, as he paced the cell floor. The church in Philippi had sent Paul a gift through one of their own members, a man named Epaphroditus. But Epaphroditus had fallen deathly ill, and the church members were worried about him, so one of the reasons Paul wrote was to tell them how he was doing.
Along the way he has some interesting things to tell us in the 21st century. So, let us begin our look inside.
Paul writes the letter together with his friend and colleague, Timothy, and they start like this:
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (1.1-2)
While the church is most definitely not a democracy, it can certainly be called a democratizing institution. That means that because it has been around, and is the way it is, democracy has gained a firm foothold in the world (though some would say that its foundations have been seriously cracked in some places).
Paul does not address himself first to the leaders, but to the people – the butchers, the bakers, the candle-stick makers. People without any title in the church, and probably not outside of it either. It is a good bet a number of them were slaves, as with many of the other churches he wrote to.
He calls them “holy people,” where the word “holy” (hagios) is the Greek word used to translate “saint.”
I remember when I was a young Christian, sitting in a Bible study where the Youth pastor was telling a story about his mother. She had been in church one Sunday (different church than ours), and the minister there had called all the people saints. This really offended her, because she felt it was an untruth, and that even though she was a Christian, she was not to be called a saint, since to her that was something quite different.
But as the Youth pastor explained (though, if memory serves, he told us he was too afraid to say it to his mother), his mother’s pastor was correct in his understanding. If a person is a Christian, then she is a saint. Perhaps not in the way that the Roman Catholic makes people saints on the basis of miracles and a holy life or something. That is not what Paul was getting at.
When he calls the people in the church at Philippi saints, he means that they have been set apart for God; this is the fundamental meaning of the word holy – to be set apart for God. We might call it the basement floor of holiness; getting to sainthood in the RC sense is raising it another level or two.
Anyway – if you are a Christian person, this is you. You are “holy” already – even as you have been called to be holy. Rejoice!
J & S on Mission 