1. AoDXo/, the servants) Paul writes more familiarly to the Phi- lippians than to those to whom, in writing, he calls himself an apostle. Under this common predicate, he very courteously joins Timothy with himself, who, by his means, was called to be a disciple, and who, having recently joined Paul, had come to Philippi, Acts xvi. 3, 12. — <tvv, with) The Church is superior to the bishops ; and the apostolic writing is sent more directly to the Church than to the presiding ministers ; Heb. xiii. 24 ; Eph. iii. 4 ; Col. iii. 18, etc., iv. 17 ; Rev. i. 4, 11 ; 1 Thess. v. 12.— l-Tr/tfjcoVo/g xal diaxovoig, with the bishops and deacons) At that time the former properly managed the internal, the latter the external affairs of the Church, 1 Tim. iii. 2, 8 ; the latter, however, were not excluded from care about the internal affairs, nor the former about the external. Sometimes Paul, in the inscriptions, calls them churches ; sometimes he uses a periphrasis, which either signifies something greater, as we have remarked at 1 Cor. i. 2, or is used because, as in the instance of the Romans, they had not yet been fully reduced to the form of a church. This epistle
to the Philippians alone is so inscribed as to connect the mention of the bishops and deacons with the emphatic paraphrase. l
2. Ev^apiffroj, I give thanks) In this place we shall give a synopsis of the epistle. We have in it —
I. THE INSCRIPTION, i. 1, 2. II. THANKSGIVING AND PRAYEKS FOR THE FLOURISHING
SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE PHILIPPIANS, V61\ 3, 4, 9, 10.