The Big Picture

A thank-you note from a prison cell

Picture an older man in chains, waiting to hear whether he will live or die. He has every reason to be bitter. Instead, he writes a letter so full of joy that it has comforted Christians for nearly two thousand years. That letter is Philippians.

It is short (four chapters, 104 verses), and you can read the whole thing in about fifteen minutes. Yet it holds some of the most loved lines in the Bible: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (1:21), “Rejoice in the Lord always!” (4:4) and “I can do all things through Christ” (4:13).

Who wrote it, and when?

The letter opens with “Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ” (1:1). Almost all scholars, including skeptical ones, agree that Paul wrote it. Timothy, his younger coworker, was with him and joins in the greeting.

Paul was a prisoner when he wrote (1:7, 13). He mentions “the whole palace guard” (1:13) and sends greetings from believers “of Caesar’s household” (4:22). But which prison? Paul was locked up more than once (2 Corinthians 11:23), and Christians have held three main views:

• Rome, in the early 60s AD. This is the oldest and most widely held view. Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome for two years, guarded by a soldier (Acts 28:16, 30). “Palace guard” and “Caesar’s household” fit the capital naturally, and so does Paul’s sense that the verdict could mean his death.
• Ephesus, in the mid-50s AD. Some scholars favor this view because Ephesus was far closer to Philippi than Rome. The letter implies several trips back and forth (news of Paul’s imprisonment reaching Philippi, Epaphroditus bringing a gift, word of his illness reaching home), and shorter distances make that easier to picture. Paul does describe deadly danger in that region (2 Corinthians 1:8–10), though Acts never mentions an imprisonment there.
• Caesarea, in the late 50s AD. Acts says Paul was held for two years in Herod’s palace in Caesarea (Acts 23:35; 24:27). A smaller number of scholars prefer this view.

Each view has thoughtful supporters, and no one can be certain. The good news is that the message does not depend on the answer. Wherever Paul was, he was in chains, and full of joy.

The city and the church

Philippi stood in Macedonia, in what is now northern Greece. It was named after Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great. After a famous battle near the city in 42 BC, Rome settled retired soldiers there and made it a Roman colony. The city was treated as if it stood on Italian soil. It lived under Roman law, Latin was the official language, and many of its people were proud Roman citizens. Acts calls it “a city of Macedonia, the foremost of the district, a Roman colony” (Acts 16:12).

Paul first came around AD 50, after a vision of a man pleading, “Come over into Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9). There seems to have been no synagogue in town, so Paul found a group of women praying by a river. One of them, Lydia, was “a seller of purple” (Acts 16:14), a businesswoman who traded in costly purple cloth. She believed and opened her home to the new church.

Soon after, Paul freed a slave girl from a spirit that her owners used to make money. Furious, they had Paul and Silas beaten and thrown in jail. At midnight the two men were “praying and singing hymns to God” (Acts 16:25) when an earthquake shook the prison open. The jailer and his whole household believed and were baptized.

A businesswoman from Asia, a tough Roman jailer and their households: the church in Philippi began with people who might never have shared a table before. Over the years they stayed close to Paul and sent him gifts more than once (4:15–16). When they heard he was in prison, they sent one of their own, Epaphroditus, with another gift and his own help.

Why Paul wrote

• To say thank you for their gift and their long partnership (1:5; 4:10–20).
• To ease their worry. His chains were actually helping the good news spread (1:12–14).
• To explain why Epaphroditus was coming home. He had been so sick that he nearly died, and Paul wanted the church to welcome him with honor (2:25–30).
• To call them to unity and humility. Two women who had worked alongside Paul, Euodia and Syntyche, needed “to think the same way in the Lord” (4:2).
• To warn them about teachers who said that non-Jewish believers had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be right with God (3:2–11).

Key themes

• Joy. Words for joy and rejoicing appear more than a dozen times in four short chapters. Paul’s joy does not come from comfort. It comes from Christ.
• The mind of Christ. Jesus humbled himself for others (2:5–11). That is the pattern for how we treat one another.
• Partnership in the gospel. Paul and the Philippians shared one mission, and they shared their prayers, money and hardships to support it (1:5; 4:15).
• Knowing Christ. Every achievement is loss compared with knowing him (3:7–8).
• Peace and contentment. Prayer with thanksgiving brings God’s peace (4:6–7), and Christ gives strength to be content in plenty or in need (4:11–13).
• Citizenship in heaven. The Philippians were proud Roman citizens, but Paul reminds them that “our citizenship is in heaven” (3:20).

Where it fits in God’s story

Long ago, God promised Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3). In Philippi, that promise crossed into a new continent. This is the first church in Europe whose beginning the Bible describes.

The letter also looks ahead. Paul speaks of “the day of Christ” (1:10), when Jesus returns, and he promises that our weak, aging bodies will one day be changed to be like his glorious body (3:21). The story God began will be finished, and so will the good work he began in you (1:6).

How it points to Jesus

At the heart of Philippians is a beautiful passage about Jesus (2:6–11). He shared God’s very nature, yet he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (2:7) and humbled himself all the way to death on a cross. Then God raised him to the highest place, so that “every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (2:11).

For Paul, Jesus is both the example to follow and the reason to live. Everything in this letter (joy, unity, courage, contentment) flows from knowing him.

A simple outline

1. Thanks, prayer and news from prison (1:1–26)
2. Live worthy of the gospel: unity and the mind of Christ (1:27–2:18)
3. Two examples: Timothy and Epaphroditus (2:19–30)
4. Knowing Christ and pressing on (3:1–4:1)
5. Peace, contentment and thanks (4:2–23)