Philippians 1:1-2
Servants Writing to Saints
1Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:
2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Berean Standard Bible
This is a letter. Somebody sat down and wrote it to particular people in a particular town, and what we have in front of us is their mail.
A letter is not a story. When we read the Gospels we are watching things happen. Somebody walks into a room, somebody speaks, somebody is healed or frightened or furious, and we stand at the edge of it and watch. Here there is no room to picture and no scene to stand in. A man with things to say to people he loves is setting them down while he still has the chance, so what reaches us is a mind at work.
He begins with two names, his own and Timothy's, and with the word he picks for the pair of them.
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus
Not founders, though they were. Not leaders. Servant is a word that puts a man underneath somebody, and it makes an odd opening for a letter to people who might reasonably have been braced for instructions from above.
The letter goes to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi. Saints has drifted a long way since he wrote it. We hear the word and think of a statue in a niche, or of somebody unusually good, or of a name on the front of a hospital. Paul means the ordinary people who belong to God, and he means the whole room. Overseers and deacons get their mention too, at the tail of the sentence, after everybody else.
Then the town. We know Philippi, because the account of how the church there began was written down as well. A Roman colony in Macedonia. A river outside the gate where people gathered to pray, and a woman named Lydia who dealt in purple cloth and opened her house to strangers. A girl whose owners made money out of her. A beating, a jail, singing at midnight, and a jailer washing the wounds of the men he had been told to guard. A cloth merchant, a jailer, and whoever came in behind them: those are the people who will hear this read out. The second verse is the whole letter compressed into a single line.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Both of those arrive with a source attached, and the source is not Paul. They come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, which is where the sentence ends and what it is finally about. He is not wishing them well as he signs on. He is telling them what is being handed over, and who is handing it.
How We Know
The people this letter is addressed to are named in another book. Acts 16:12 places Paul in Philippi, a Roman colony in Macedonia. Acts 16:14 gives Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. Acts 16:15 has her and her household baptized, and her house opened to the men who brought the message. Acts 16:33 gives the jailer, washing the wounds of the men he had been guarding, and his household baptized the same night.
So the letter has a return address and a real congregation behind it, described by a separate document with its own purpose.
Questions
1 Think of a time somebody made you feel welcome in a place where you knew nobody. What did they actually do?
AnswerUsually something small and physical rather than something said. They moved over, or they used your name, or they handed you a plate. Lydia opened her house. The jailer washed their wounds. Welcome nearly always looks like an ordinary act.
2 Paul and Timothy call themselves servants. What could they have called themselves instead?
AnswerFounders, leaders, apostles. They had started this church. Servant puts a man under somebody rather than over the people he is writing to, and it is the first thing his readers get.
3 Who does Paul mean by the saints?
AnswerEverybody in that church, not a select few and not the impressive ones. It is the ordinary word for people who belong to God. He addresses all of them first, and the overseers and deacons arrive at the end of the sentence, after the rest of the room.
4 What do we know about the people who first heard this read out loud?
AnswerTheir church started in Acts 16, and it is odd company. Lydia, who sold purple cloth and opened her home. A jailer who washed the wounds of men he had been guarding and was baptized the same night. Those are the people sitting there when the letter arrives.
What This Means for Us
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Both of them arrive from outside that room. Paul is not asking the church at Philippi to work either one up, and he is not asking them to deserve either one. He opens by naming what God has already handed them, and only then does he have anything else to say.
Saints in Christ Jesus is the same move made in the line above it. Not the impressive ones and not the ones who have earned the word. The ordinary people in that room belong to God, and they were told so in the first sentence, before a single instruction arrived.
So the welcome in this house sits downstream of the one God has already given. Somebody here may still be quietly working out whether they are wanted. Answer that out loud tonight, and answer it on the ground Paul used: not that they have earned a place at this table, but that God has already given them one in Christ.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a letter that starts with grace and not with instructions. Thank you that the grace and the peace both come from you and from the Lord Jesus Christ, and that neither of them is waiting on us to produce it. Make this house a place where people hear first what you have already given them. Amen.