Philippians — Introduction — Joy in Chains

A letter that sings in a cell

Philippians is the warmest letter Paul ever wrote, and he wrote it in chains. Somewhere in a Roman guardroom, uncertain whether his trial will end in release or execution, the apostle takes up his pen to a little congregation he loves — and the word that keeps breaking out is joy. "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." Sixteen times some form of joy or rejoicing rings through four short chapters. This is not the giddy cheer of a man whose circumstances are good; his circumstances are terrible. It is the settled gladness of a man whose life is hidden somewhere his circumstances cannot reach. Philippians is the letter that answers the question: where do you go to find a joy the world cannot give and cannot take away?

Philippi — a little Rome

The church at Philippi was Paul's first on European soil (Acts 16), born from a riverside prayer meeting, a businesswoman named Lydia, a delivered slave girl, and a midnight jailbreak in which Paul and Silas sang hymns in the stocks. The city itself was a proud Roman colony — a settlement of army veterans, "a Rome in miniature," fiercely attached to its Roman citizenship. Paul will play on exactly that civic pride: he tells these colonists to live as citizens worthy of the gospel (1:27), and reminds them that their truest "citizenship is in heaven" (3:20). The whole letter is written to people who knew what it meant to belong to a greater empire than the one around them.

What it is about

For all its warmth, Philippians has a backbone. Paul writes to thank the church for a gift, to update them on his imprisonment, to steady them against opponents and against disunity among themselves, and above all to press them toward a single thing: a life shaped like Jesus. The letter's four movements — joy in suffering (ch. 1), humility after the mind of Christ (ch. 2), righteousness that is Christ's not our own (ch. 3), and the peace of God that guards the heart (ch. 4) — all circle the same center. Whatever the subject, Paul keeps returning to Christ: to live is Christ, to know Christ, to gain Christ, to be found in him.

The heart of it

At the very middle of the letter stands what may be the oldest Christian hymn we possess — the great poem of 2:6–11. It traces the steepest descent and the highest ascent ever told: the One who was "in the form of God" did not clutch his equality with God but "emptied himself," down and down, to a servant, to a man, to a criminal's cross — and therefore God "highly exalted him" and gave him the Name at which every knee will bow. Everything else in Philippians is lit by that poem. Paul's joy in prison, his call to humility, his counting all things loss — each is simply the mind of that self-emptying Christ worked out in an ordinary church and an ordinary life.

How to read it

Read it as what it is: a personal letter from a friend in chains, not a treatise. Let its joy surprise you, and let its center stop you. We will walk it slowly, work its Greek, and keep our eyes where Paul keeps his — on the Christ who went all the way down to lift us all the way up. This is where the joy comes from, and it is the only place it can be found.