Philippians2chapter 2

Philippians 2:1-2

Four ifs pile up what the Philippians already possess, consolation in Christ, comfort of love, fellowship of the Spirit, bowels and mercies, and each if expects the answer yes. On that fourfold ground Paul asks for the one gift they can give a prisoner: fulfil ye my joy, be likeminded. The mind thread that runs the whole letter gathers here, same love, one accord, one mind.

Philippians 2:3-4

Eritheia is faction's self-seeking and kenodoxia is empty glory, the two engines of church division named and forbidden in one line. The remedy is tapeinophrosune, lowliness of mind, a word pagan ethics used as an insult and the gospel made a virtue: let each esteem other better than themselves. Verse 4 turns the eye outward, on the things of others, and the hymn about to follow is the argument for it.

Philippians 2:5

Let this mind be in you: The hinge of the chapter: the mind commanded at verses 2 and 3 is now shown in its original, the mind which was also in Christ Jesus. What follows in verses 6 to 11 reads as an early hymn or exalted prose confession, and either way Paul cites the Lord's own descent as the church's pattern of thought. Doctrine here serves ethics; the highest christology in Paul is introduced to settle a quarrel about humility.

Philippians 2:6

in the form of God: Morphe is the form that expresses what a thing really is: being in the form of God states the Son's deity before the descent, and the participle is present, a condition never laid down. Harpagmos, the KJV's robbery, is read two ways with holders on both: a prize to be seized, or a treasure already held that he did not clutch, the reading most moderns favor, equality with God not exploited for himself. On either reading the verse asserts the equality; the dispute is only over the word for how he held it.

Philippians 2:7

The Greek is ekenosen, he emptied himself, and the text itself says how: by taking, the form of a servant, the likeness of men. The emptying is addition, veiling glory under a servant's form, and the church's main teachers have never read it as the Son laying down deity, since the form of God of verse 6 is what makes the descent astonishing. What was waived is described variously, the visible glory, the independent use of divine prerogatives, and those readings stand with their holders while the deity stands untouched.

Philippians 2:8

The descent has floors: found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, obedient unto death, and then the last step named with a shudder the first readers would feel, even the death of the cross, the slave's death Roman citizens were exempt from by law. Obedience unto death answers Adam's disobedience, and the hymn's V reaches its bottom here. Cicero wrote that the very word cross should be far from a Roman's thoughts; Paul plants it at the center of the pattern the church is to think with.

Philippians 2:9-11

Wherefore turns the V upward: God hath highly exalted him, huperupsosen, exalted beyond measure, and given him the name which is above every name. Every knee and every tongue is Isaiah 45:23, where YHWH swears by himself that to him alone every knee shall bow; the hymn hands that unshareable oath to Jesus, and the confession Jesus Christ is Lord carries the divine name in it. The bowing spans heaven, earth, and under the earth, and the whole ends where worship must, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:12-13

The command is katergazesthe, work out to completion, and it is never severed from its ground: for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. The teachers divide over the joint: Wesley reads grace enabling the working, the Reformed line reads verse 13 as the certainty beneath verse 12, and both agree the verse addresses believers working out what God works in, not sinners working for what only grace gives. Fear and trembling is the creature's reverence in so great a matter, not terror of a hostile judge.

Philippians 2:14-16

Murmurings is the Greek Old Testament's word for Israel in the wilderness, and the echo sharpens at verse 15, where a crooked and perverse nation inverts Deuteronomy 32:5: there Israel was the crooked generation, here the church shines as lights in the midst of one. Holding forth the word of life is the torchbearer's office. The day-of-Christ thread returns, Paul's own review stands there, that I have not run in vain.

Philippians 2:17-18

If I be offered is spendomai, poured out as a drink offering, the libation tipped over a sacrifice already burning; the Philippians' faith is the sacrifice and Paul's possible execution merely the libation on it. He will use the same word at the end, in 2 Timothy 4:6, when the pouring is at hand. The joy thread doubles here, I joy and rejoice with you all, and ye also joy and rejoice with me, gladness commanded in the face of a capital hearing.

Philippians 2:19-24

Timothy's commendation is a portrait of the mind of verse 5 in a living man: no man likeminded, one who will naturally care for their state while all seek their own. As a son with the father he hath served with me puts the proof in shared labor, the Philippians having watched it since Acts 16. Paul's I trust in the Lord, twice in these verses, holds his travel hopes with an open hand under the hearing's uncertainty.

Philippians 2:25-27

Epaphroditus, my brother: Five titles honor the returning courier: brother, companion in labour, fellowsoldier, your messenger, minister to my wants, and the last two translate apostolos and leitourgos, the congregation's envoy performing a priestly service with their gift. He was sick nigh unto death, and the text's account of the recovery is plain: God had mercy on him, mercy doubled to Paul, lest sorrow come upon sorrow. Sickness reached even an apostle's fellowsoldier, and God's mercy healed him; the verse teaches both without strain.

Philippians 2:28-30

Paul sends the recovered man home so their rejoicing can replace their anxiety, and adds a command the church needed or it would not be written: receive him in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such in reputation. The ground is verse 30, for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, where the word behind not regarding is a gambler's term, he hazarded his life. The chapter that began with esteeming others ends by naming one to esteem.