"Now the Christians, O King, as men who know God, ask from Him petitions which are proper for Him to give and for them to receive; and thus they accomplish the course of their lives. And because they acknowledge the goodnesses of God towards them, lo! on account of them there flows forth the beauty that is in the world."--_Apology of Aristides, about_ A.D. 130; _translated by_ MRS RENDEL HARRIS.
PHILIPPIANS iv. 1-9
Euodia and Syntyche--Conditions to unanimity--Great uses of small occasions--Connexion to the paragraphs--The fortress and the sentinel--A golden chain of truths--Joy in the Lord--Yieldingness--Prayer in everything--Activities of a heart at rest
Ver. 1. +So, my brethren beloved and longed for+, _missed_ indeed, at this long distance from you, +my joy and crown+ of victory (_stephanos_), +thus+, as having such certainties and such aims, with such a Saviour, and looking for such a heaven, +stand firm in the Lord, beloved ones+.
The words are a link of gold between the passage just ended and that which is to follow. They sum up the third chapter of the Epistle into one practical issue. In view of all that can tempt them away to alien thoughts and beliefs St Paul once more points the converts to Jesus Christ; or rather, he once more bids them remember that in Him they are, and that their safety, their life, is to stay there, recollected and resolved. There is the point of overwhelming advantage against error, and against sin; and only there. "Standing in the Lord," in remembrance and _in use_ of their vital union with Him, they would be armed alike against the pharisaic and the antinomian heresy. Counterfeits and perversions would be seen, or at least _felt_, to be such while they were thus in living and working contact with the REALITY. There, with a holy instinct, they would repudiate utterly a merit of their own before God, and a strength of their own against sin. There, with equal inward certainty, they would detect and reject the suggestion that they "should not surely die," though impurity was cloaked and loved.
But the words we have just rendered look forward also. St Paul is about to allude, for the last time, and quite explicitly, to that blot on the fair Philippian fame, the presence in the little mission Church of certain jealousies and divisions. One instance of this evil is prominent in his thoughts, no doubt on Epaphroditus' report. Two Christian women, Euodia[1] and Syntyche, evidently well-known Church members, possibly officials, "deaconesses," like Phoebe (Rom. xvi. 1), were at personal variance. Into their life and work for Christ (for workers they were, or however had been; they had "wrestled along with Paul in the Gospel,") had come this grievous inconsistency. Somehow (modern experiences in religious activity supply illustrations only too easily) they had let the spirit of self come in; jealousy and a sense of grievance lay between them. And out of this unhappy state it was the Apostle's deep desire to bring them, quickly and completely. He appeals to them personally about it, with a directness and explicitness which remind us how homelike still were the conditions of the mission Church. He calls on his "true yoke-fellow," and on Clement, and on his other "fellow-labourers," to "help" the two to a better mind, by all the arts of Christian friendship. But surely first, in this verse, he leads not only the Philippians generally but Euodia and Syntyche in particular up to a level where the self-will and self-assertion must, of themselves, expire. "Stand firm in the Lord." In recollection and faith surround yourselves with Jesus Christ. The more you do so the more you will find that so to be in Him is to "be of one mind in Him." In that PRESENCE self is put to shame indeed. Pique, and petty jealousies, and miserable heart-burnings, and "just pride," die of inanition there, and heart meets heart in love, because in Christ.