Philippians 4:5

‘Let your forbearance be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.'

The second exhortation is that their forbearance and neighbourliness and unjudgmental attitude in the face of persecution should be demonstrated towards the whole world. In one sense this command stands by itself as the equivalent of the command to love their neighbours as themselves, but there is also a very real sense in which it connects up with their rejoicing in the Lord. It will be their rejoicing in the Lord, and their fixing their eye on Him, which will affect their whole behaviour and attitude towards all men in this way, for they will walk as He walked. It should result in them behaving with forbearance, gentleness and due regard for others (epieikes). And this because ‘the Lord is at hand.' The idea behind the word for ‘forbearance' is of a balanced, intelligent and decent outlook which will be admired by all right thinking people, as pre-eminently revealed in Christ (2 Corinthians 10:1; compare Matthew 11:28), for the church is not just to be caught up with itself, it is to be open in its attitude to the world (compare Philippians 2:15).

‘The Lord is at hand (‘ho kurios eggus').' It has been suggested that this may be a citation from Psalm 144:18 LXX (Psalms 145:18), although in LXX the Psalm reads ‘eggus kurios' (however, other Greek texts may have been closer to the Hebrew) and makes it part of a longer sentence, ‘the Lord is at hand to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth'. The idea would then be that because the Lord was beside them and with them it should affect their daily attitude towards the whole world. This would certainly tie in with the surrounding context, and with the exhortation to pray in Philippians 4:8. On the other hand the phrase could equally be a reminder of the closeness of the Lord's return, as in Philippians 3:20, as though he was saying, ‘the Lord's coming is imminent', possibly being seen by him as echoing the apocalyptic language of Zephaniah 1:7; Zephaniah 1:14 ("the day of the LORD is near" - ‘eggus he hemera tou kuriou'), language which is picked up in James 5:8 (‘the day of the Lord is at hand') and is probably in Paul's mind in Romans 13:12. Such a significance would provide a powerful incentive to them in respect of their behaviour towards the world, and it would tie in with the idea expressed in the Aramaic ‘marana tha', ‘the Lord comes' (1 Corinthians 16:22).

It may indeed well be that the Lord's imminence in both ways is in mind. Compare Revelation 3:20 where the true believers are to recognise that He is continually at the very door to succour and comfort them, while they are also to look for His return when they would eat and drink with Him at His table.