Philippians 1:3

Philippians 1:3

The text speaks to us of the feeling which ought to exist between a minister and his congregation, more especially how he ought to be able to speak of them and what he ought to make his special prayer for them whenever, in the providence of God, he is for a time separated from them.

I. St. Paul was able to thank God, in his compulsory detention at Rome, for all that he remembered of his beloved Church at Philippi. Whenever he prayed, he was able to make his prayer for them with joy. He could think of them as earnestly and resolutely set upon practising and helping the Gospel; they did not shrink even from suffering for it. If St. Paul had been writing to us, could he have thus expressed himself? Could he have said with regard to the great bulk of our congregations that in their several stations, at their various ages, according to their different gifts and talents, they were truly loving and living the Gospel?

II. One thing St. Paul was able to say alike for himself and for them: that there was the strongest possible tie between them of mutual love. Surely, where a minister and his congregation love each other fervently, there must be something of. Christ in that feeling and in that place. St. Paul loved and was loved by these Philippians, and he showed and returned it by his prayers for them. He recognised and valued their affection; he felt that their love for him sprang out of love to Christ and showed itself in an active and diffusive charity. But he knew also that in this world it is not safe to rest on that which is; while we stay here, we must always be moving onwards: and what he desired for them was that their love might abound yet more and more in a deeper knowledge and a more experienced judgment. This great gift of judgment or, more exactly, of perception, comes only from being much with God, from being often in His presence, hidden privily,as the Psalmist expresses it, in His pavilion from the strife of tongues,from the conflicts of selfishness, from the din of earth.

C. J. Vaughan, Lectures on Philippians,p. 1.

References: Philippians 1:3. J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons,p. 422.Philippians 1:3. J. J. Goadby, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 152; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 48.