Philippians 1: Lessons on Grace and Peace

We open Philippians by taking Paul’s first lines seriously and letting the history of Philippi explain why his greeting hits so hard. We track how grace produces peace, and how a servant mindset can dissolve status games that keep churches and families stuck. 
• historical context of Philippi as a Roman colony shaped by order and loyalty 
• major themes seeded early in Philippians, such as encouragement, joy, unity, humility, and imitation of Christ 
• reading Philippians 1:1–11 with focus on the opening greeting 
• Paul and Timothy described as dulios slaves of Jesus rather than chasing titles 
• all saints addressed before leaders showing equality in Christ 
• grace replacing a standard greeting and peace tied to shalom 
• why grace must come before peace for lasting spiritual stability 
• practical church praxis serving first to reduce conflict and consumer mindsets 
• Jesus washing feet as the model of servant leadership

Pick up the gift of grace. Pick up the gift of peace in your life that exclusively comes from Jesus Christ. Walk out of this room strengthened by that grace and peace.

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Transcript

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The book of Philippians was written as a letter, a personal letter, like you might write to a friend or to Santa Claus. Santa Claus comes back up again later, by the way. And it was written to the church in Philippi, which is a city in Macedonia, which is above Greece, if you don't know where that is. If you don't know where Greece is, I can't help you right now,

Philippi And Why Context Matters

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but you know, Google exists. You can use that later. Both of these facts impact how we read this letter, how we study it, what's in it. But Paul founded this church in the middle of Acts. The first Christian of this new church, the first convert that we see recorded is Lydia. If you recall, Lydia was a die maker, purple die maker. And if you remember correctly, Paul and Silas were imprisoned in Philippi at one point. And this letter reveals that Paul continues to be interested and invested in this church. He cares about the people there deeply. In Paul's time, Philippi was an important historical city. Again, in Macedonia, it had a special privilege among other Roman colonies because it was actually viewed. It's almost like U.S. Guam. Does that make sense? It's almost like Puerto Rico, a little bit here. That's how it was viewed. It wasn't just some sort of place that Rome had conquered. It was full of ex-Roman soldiers because Augustus or Octavian, they hadn't made a big Roman base nearby. And so as people retired, sometimes they just retired to the city. So it's a very patriotic place full of Roman citizens. It's a proper Roman colony. It had special privileges and tax wide tax reasons. It was on an important trade route, the Ignatian Way, that connected Rome to the east. And so all of these things are important for us contextually to understand who is Paul preaching to? He's preaching to people who are in a blessed city. He's preaching to many people who probably would recognize and understand the importance of order and authority, being military people. Paul mentions many people in this book, lots of them. Lots of lists. The vast majority of those people are Gentiles, which is also interesting, considering the special attention that Paul gives to Jewish communities when he goes into a place. A large number of the people he mentions are women, which is also interesting because, as we probably understand and know, women didn't have a lot of rights or importance in this day and age, but Paul cares. And in the church, women matter. Paul writes about rejoicing in this letter. Matter of fact, rejoicing or rejoice occurs 16 times in this letter. He writes about imitation throughout the book of Philippians. One of the chief themes of Philippians is encouragement. He wants to encourage the church. He wants to encourage the church to imitate Christ, to imitate Paul and Timothy, to he wants to encourage them to be servants, to be humble, to have unity, to imitate Christ, and to have rejoicing in that process. And so all of these things are contained in this book. And what's amazing to me, and this sets us up for our scripture for today, is that all of these themes, at least most of these themes, are hinted at in the first 11 verses of this book that has multiple chapters. Right from the very start, Paul does a great job of constructing this letter to prepare his listeners and their readers for what is to come, and he does it in a really creative way. So we're going to read Philippians chapter 1, verses 1 through 11. We're only going to get through the first couple of verses this week, but that's okay. But let's start. Starts this way Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and the deacons.

Core Themes Of Philippians

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we'll focus on today, but I'm going to keep on reading just so we have it in our head for next week. I thank my God in all my remembrances of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, all make my making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus, and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, the glory to the glory and the praise of God. Again, not going to cover all that, just the first couple of verses there, but I want it in our head. But those first eleven verses tell us what the rest of the book is about. Everything Paul talks about connects back to this. And so from the very start of this letter, Paul is doing something a little different. A little different. First, this is a standard personal letter that Paul is writing here. It has standard uh procedure. It follows a pattern that you will would find in other letters that you see written around this time in the Latin and Greek worlds. Sender, recipient, and some sort of personal salutation. It's not much different than if you were to write a letter to Santa Claus. It would start with some sort of greeting, who you are, who you're writing to, and some sort of first sentence to introduce the rest of the letter. Here's the thing about this standardized letter that Paul is writing. Paul uses this format and he changes some

Reading Philippians 1:1-11

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stuff. Some things are a little different here than maybe that first appears. Two other times Paul uses a greeting, like an intro, like this. It's a little different than this time. The other two times he has the same thing. Maybe Timothy's not mentioned, but he Paul adds his title, apostle, to his intro. Paul, an apostle of Christ. Paul, uh uh the Paul, an apostle of Jesus, an apostle of the grace of God. He adds these little titles to his greetings. He doesn't do that here. He leaves it out. So he doesn't include that. And additionally, what we see here is that he includes Timothy in this, and Timothy is his student, is his underling. He is uh less experienced, he he he he is lack of a better word, just a lower level in a practical sense than Paul. But right here, Paul doesn't delineate between the two. He doesn't say Paul and then my student, and Paul and then my my co-whatever. He just says Paul and Timothy together. Even though he is his student, Paul mentions them side by side. They are on the same level. In fact, the the only title here, besides apostle, that he doesn't include here, that includes for himself is this word in Greek, which is dulios. Everyone say dulios. This is Greek for slave, slave. Paul and Timothy, slaves of Jesus, slave of the gospel, slave, not just a servant, not just a butler, not just some cheap hired help, but that kind of slavery that puts a bad taste in your mouth, and that's the word Paul is using, to describe himself in Timothy in connection to God. Then, while Paul certainly gives proper honor to the leaders of the church, right? He says, Hey, elders, hey, hey, deacons. He doesn't start with that. He starts with all saints. All saints. And this is uh the saints, by the way, is just a word that's sort of attached to holiness. It's called out. You're called out and you are connected to Jesus, right? You are a saint because of what Jesus has done in your life, and because of what Jesus has done in your life, you are now separated and set apart. You are a saint. So he's not just talking to the leaders, he's not just talking to the authorities of the church, he's not just talking to people who have some sort of position in the church. He is calling out everybody who is connected to Jesus in this letter. So, what's going on here at the very first couple of lines in this letter? This is not accident. He's not doing this accidentally, he is doing this on purpose. Paul is already expressing ideas that's gonna become more highlighted and expanded upon later in the book. The vast majority of relationships inside the church are not those of authority, not those of superiority or inferiority, but of equality in the work of Jesus first and foremost. There's some authority issues going on in the church, in this church. Rather, they're not unified. They're thinking too much of themselves or they're not responding to certain people because of this or because of that. And Paul at the very front end of this thing is saying, Hey, me and Timothy are unified together as slaves, and all the saints, not just the leaders of the church, not just the uh authoritative figures of the church, this letter's for everybody. It's an equal playing field. Timothy and Paul are equal, calling to be slaves. The Philippians are unified as saints before any particular title. The human power structures that are so common in everything that we do take a back seat in Christ. They get reformulated, they look a little different. Paul is already describing a biblical attitude of humility, unity, and service, which we're going to find in the rest of the book of Acts. But Paul and Timothy are slaves. They're slaves. And slaves exist for their master. That is all they exist for. And to be a slave to Jesus might incite some negative connotations if we're thinking about slavery. And not just any kind of slavery. It doesn't have to be U.S. racially based slavery. It can be any kind of slavery. It's going to be a negative thing, right? And yet here, Paul and Silas, Paul and Timothy are slaves. And I'm going to tell you, any of the Roman authorities who are hearing this, who read this, they're going to have a problem with this. The Romans have authority structures in their life. They're very ordered. They're very orderly. And keep in

A Letter Greeting With A Twist

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mind that a lot of people in this church are probably connected to some sort of military career. And here Paul comes in and says, We're slaves. We're slaves. He's setting them up. He's trying to jar them out of their out of their mindset. When Jesus is the master, it's not a dishonor. It becomes an honor. He gifts us with his authority to get the job done. And remembering that slavery to Christ brings a level of humility into how we do things. How can we be arrogant? How can we think so highly of ourselves if we are slaves to Christ Jesus? Paul's not done using this traditional structure to show the Philippians and us something. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Typically in Greek and in Latin, the salutation would be greetings. Greetings to you. Greetings to you. And yet here it's grace to you. It's not an accident. The word in Greek for grace and greeting looks almost exactly the same. And so he does this on purpose. If you were, by the way, a lot of people couldn't read back in the day. So what would happen is someone would receive a letter, and then that letter would be read out loud to the church congregation. If you could read it, you could read it. But for the most part, there were a couple of people in a church who might be able to read. Letter would be sent and you would read it. And if you were reading or reading this letter and you're listening to it, you would immediately, your ears would immediately be expecting to hear greetings, because that's how every other letter starts. Instead, it says grace, and the words look exactly the same, and they sound almost exactly the same. It's done for a purpose. He's getting their attention. He's saying something. If you don't pay attention, you're going to miss this. Grace to you. Not greetings, but grace to you. And then Paul adds this little word peace to part of the salutation, which is not normal, a normal part of a Greek letter, personal letter, but it is a normal part of a Jewish letter. Who's ever heard of the word shalom before? Shalom. Shalom means perfect peace. It doesn't just mean like peace, man. It means perfect peace. Perfect peace. All encompassing every part of your existence is peace. Grace to you, set of greetings, and peace to you. He's putting these things together in this order for a reason, because without grace, there is no peace. Grace has to come first. The order matters. The order matters. Shalom is not just perfect peace, it's all-encompassing. And how many people in existence, including yourself, have wanted peace for their life? We want peace. How many different people and how many different ways do we pursue peace and try to get peace? And Paul is letting us know that every one of those efforts that we have in our life to get a micum of peace, they're wasted if we're not starting with the grace of Christ in our life first. And he would know this, by the way. He's writing this from prison. He knows all about peace. He knows all about peace that supersedes situations. Telling the church and Philippi and us this life-changing news about grace and peace through structure, through grammar. Like that. I always like a little bit of theology through grammar, even though I hated grammar in school. And Tara can tell you that it shows sometimes. Though there is let me step this back real fast. This grace and peace thing, we'll we'll close with that. What does all this mean for us practically? What does it look like in praxis? Right? I took a class and

Dulios Slaves And Equal Saints

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I never didn't know what this word meant, praxis. Who's heard that word before? Praxis. Okay. I had not heard this word praxis before when I got to college, and I had a I had a theology and praxis class, which simply meant what how does theology play out in our daily life? Okay, that's what this means. So, how does this, what we just talked about, this structure, this this grace, this peace, this slave, this dulio stuff, how does this play out maybe practically in some situations that we go through as a church? And since all of us in here are part of a church, you're in church, I don't know your perfect stories, but I know you're part of church. That's where I'm going to start with. Start with this. Though there is godly authority and structure defined in scripture, it's it's healthy. It's it's wise to have structure and the wise to have people who can make choices and decisions that you trust. In the church, it looks a little different. It works a little different than what you might see in a workplace or out in the world. The power structures are different. The way it's handled is different. We are slaves first, right? We aren't deacons first. We're slaves first. We are not elders first, we're slaves first. We're not, I'm not a pastor first, I'm a slave to the gospel first. And because I'm a slave to the gospel first, it changes the authoritative structures that are that that work out a little differently than than normal. We we submit to this attitude and this humility of service first, and we submit to uh godly wisdom and decision making, which we'll talk about later in the book of Philippians. I grew up in a well-established church. They had their hundredth anniversary in 2018. I'm not doing the math, so it's that old, okay? So I it was a well-established church. I grew up there in my entire life, and and I'm sure some of you can relate to this. There were a lot of personalities at that church that had been built up. There are a lot of families there that had been there a long, long time. And sometimes people, you know, they attach themselves to certain structures and things to do. And anytime someone stepped in to do something that maybe they normally did, there was some some friction there. You know what I mean? People saying, uh, you know, I I I always do this. Why are you doing this? Well, if if you know we've always done it this way, why are we going to try to do it a different way? Wait now. I'm sure some of you experience this. I've experienced it in every church I've ever worked at. These little things that crop up, right? Here's the thing if we have the attitude of a servant, if we understand that we do not exist to sort of boss people around, we don't exist just to be uh the leader, even the leader of a of a church, a lot of these little problems disappear. And let me just say this if you ever find yourself in a place struggling with an attitude, thinking that you want to be in charge, you want to have this authority, you want to have this title, you want to have this or that, check yourself, check your attitude and figure out why do you want this? Why do you want this title title? Why do you for me? A big thing for me and the church of God, which is what we're a part of, if they're gonna let you be a pastor of the church of God, you gotta have a real good reason for them to give you a title of pastor. You can't just say, Well, I want to be a pastor. You gotta understand and you gotta be able to explain to the person or the people that are interviewing you when you're going through this process why. Title by itself means nothing, but people want it. We have to check ourselves as a church. Right? You just have to check yourselves, examine why you want these things, and then maybe it is healthy, maybe that's fine, but maybe you've just got the wrong attitude and you need to readjust back to an attitude of service. The concept of serving, even being a slave, this dulios word, needs to be ingrained into who we are as Christians. Again, a lot of church drama melts away when our attitude is serve first and not be served. Does that make sense? A lot of hurt feelings can be avoided in church settings if we have the correct attitude, the attitude of Christ and the attitude of Paul and Timothy in church if we are service-oriented. Listen, if every single one of us walks into this church every Sunday or anytime we have a small group, or anytime the kids are doing something, and we walk in, and our attitude is, How can I serve my church today? and not how can I be served today? Chances are if we all walk in with that attitude, everybody's going to be served. It's like in a marriage. If both partners in a marriage want to serve each other and they both serve each other, both will be served. But if one person walks into a church, if one partner in a marriage walks in and they are all about how can I be served, then everybody else suffers because of that. Have the attitude of Christ and be a humble servant. Don't ask how can I be served? Ask how can I serve. And I can promise you, if other people are asking how to be served, you will walk out enriched in your church experience, in your church life. Too many times I have seen these situations crop up in churches where people walk in and they want, want, want, want, want. They want this from church, they want that from church, they they don't like this, they don't like that. It is, it's almost like we've turned church into Amazon, to consumerism. We want to buy exactly what we want, and we never ask the question, what can I give? I'm not talking about money, by the way. How can I give of my time? What are my gifts? What are my talents? Can I open a door? Can I help clean up stuff which you guys do? Can I help with the kids? Can I do this? Can I do that? Can I sing? Can I help Carrie? Can I help Dave? Can I help the pastor? Can I do something? How can I serve? And if everybody walks into church with that attitude, we will be a healthy church. And not these churches that I see which fall apart because everybody is fixated on what they're not getting because they're not thinking about what I can give. Serve.

Grace First Then Shalom Peace

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Like Jesus serves. One way we see this in action in the gospel, the gospels is in John. John chapter 13 is the washing of the disciples' feet. He laid aside his outer garments and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel that was wrapped around him. The King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Jesus, did the work of a slave for his disciples. Yes, he was God. Yes, he was their teacher. Yes, they followed him. He was the reason why they had upended their lives. All of them had upended their lives to follow him for three years. He had all authority, he had all power, he had all might in his hands. He was God incarnate, the living word of God. And he was focused. On serving his disciples. And as we'll see, as you know, we just talked about Easter. We just had Good Friday service. He was focused on serving us. If Jesus served, well, we better serve. That's the standard. To not be a Christian that doesn't serve, that's a double negative, it doesn't matter. Is to walk away from your calling as a Christian. Serve. An attitude of service cuts through the human-made mess of authority structures that we we can make in a church. And go tell you this, and and this is actually a pretty big deal. There have been my part of my master's degree was in leadership development. And there are quite a few secular leaders who look at Jesus' life as the perfect example of what a leader should be, even though they're not saved, because it matters, it makes a difference. So even in your home, if you have an attitude of a servant, it'll make a difference in your home. Even at work, if you have an attitude of a servant, it'll make a difference in that organization. Serve. Serve. Put others first and see what happens in your life. Not just this church, everywhere you go. We live in a selfish society, and it's not an American problem. It's not a 21st century problem. It's a human problem. But if we let the grace in our lives transform us, give us peace, and it will free us up to serve others because we're not concerned about being taken advantage of because we got peace that supersedes that. Matter of fact, we better not forget that grace and peace. And in that order, you need grace. You're not perfect. You're messed up. I don't care how good you are. We all know this. I'm preaching to the choir right now. I get it. But you've got to have that grace in your life to be connected to the stuff that you need to have. To be connected to God, your creator, you've got to have grace. To be connected to resurrection power and that great thing that we talked about last week. You need grace. Jesus gives us that grace. You can't earn it, you don't deserve it, you can't demand it of him. He just gives it to you, which is great news. It's fantastic news. Because when you get that amazing grace, you also get connected to it, that amazing peace. And it is reasonable and natural to want peace. Humans work for peace. Clothing and shelter and having those things is a form of physical peace. It'd be a little crazy out in the wild to walk around start naked, okay? It'd be very uncomfortable to not have shelter. So those things are things we do to create a form of peace. You eat to create a form of peace for your body. You work hard to gain financial gains for a sense of peace for yourself

Praxis Serving Over Status In Church

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and for your family. And we can get those things, right? Humans can get a little bit of peace. Here's the problem they don't last. It doesn't matter how hard you work, it doesn't matter how many clothes you have, things happen, and that peace that we work so hard for on a material level and even an emotional level can be stripped away so quickly. Or you might rely on a relationship for a level of peace in your life. That person might not be there tomorrow. So what do we do? We gotta have help. We've got to have help. That's why God gives us grace. That grace opens us up to this connection. And when you connect to God, you gain this appreciation for who He is. And sometimes it's a pro sometimes people get saved, and it's like they have been saved a thousand years emotionally. That immediately everything falls into place. Sometimes you get saved, and it takes a little bit of work figuring out what this means for your life. But what I have discovered is that over time, this peace that I have in God, which comes from this grace, this connection, it's just the security. It's peace that survives the storm. It's not peace that makes the storm go away. We talked about that recently. We've talked about that in the Gospels when the disciples were out on the water and there's a storm, and Jesus is asleep in the boat and they're freaking out. They don't recognize that if Jesus is in the boat, they're okay. Later we see Paul live this out more practically, and he has a peace and a confidence in God. Saw this in the book of Acts during his shipwreck, and he's freaking everybody's freaking out, but he has peace, and the storm doesn't stop, the ship's still destroyed, but he has peace that brings him to the shore. That's the kind of peace that we need in our life. We need the kind of peace that survives when we're at the doctor's office and there might be a bad report on the other end. We don't just have peace when there's a good report, when God is faithful to heal us. We need to have peace, even when God doesn't heal us, that we still have peace. That's a challenge. We need to have peace when we're standing in the unemployment line trying to get benefits. We need to have peace whenever we can't scrounge up enough food to feed our family, and yet we still have peace. That's the kind of peace that matters. That's the kind of peace that sustains us. That's the kind of peace that makes a difference in the world. That's the kind of peace people notice. When you have that kind of peace, you become this beacon of something different in this crazy world. And it's crazy, amen. It's crazy out there. But we got peace. Wars, rumors of wars, pains and tribulations, uh threat of famine, diseases, political upheaval, election going this way, election going that way. Well, guess what? I'm not ignoring those things, but I got peace, baby. I'm okay. I'm gonna keep going. And guess what? People will notice. And ultimately, part of what our relationship with God is all about, other people noticing what God is doing in our life. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Pick up the gift of grace. Pick up the gift of peace in your life that exclusively

Storm-Proof Peace And Final Prayer

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comes from Jesus Christ. Walk out of this room strengthened by that grace and peace. My greatest fear, always, every single week, anytime I preach, anytime I teach, anytime I'm talking to my kids, and you guys can understand this as well. My fear is that what I am saying simply becomes background noise and static that never actually finds a hold in the lives of the people that I'm talking to, you guys. My own life. What a waste it would be for me to put all this time and effort into studying to talk to you guys, and I never let it get into my life. What a waste of time. Walk out of here and make this a piece of your life. Be people of grace and peace and people who serve. It solves so many problems. So many problems. We're gonna keep going into the book of Philippians over the next couple of probably, I would dare say probably uh two months. Probably be in Philippians. She said four, okay. Four. Four. Yeah, because I get sidetracked by something, I'm sure, at some point. But we're gonna be in the book of Philippians. Remember this throughout the rest of the book of Philippians because Paul just keeps building on this. Just keeps building, keeps building, which is an encouragement to me as a parent and an encouragement as a preacher because we got to repeat stuff over and over again. Got to repeat stuff over and over again. I used to feel, you know, when I first started preaching, obviously, I had just started to preach. And so everything was brand new. I'm reaching a point now that I'm revisiting things for the second and third time. And at first I had this weird thing about, well, I can't repeat myself. Well, here's the reality. I gotta repeat myself all people gotta repeat stuff to me all the time for me to listen to it. We're gonna repeat some stuff over and over again in the book of Philippians. I promise you, if you let it become a part of who you are, your family life will be transformed. Your work life can be transformed. This church will continue to be transformed, and and amazing and beautiful things will happen. But we've got to get what's in here, in here in practical ways. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you for every good and great thing that you do. Thank you for serving us, Lord. Thank you for serving us on the cross. Thank you for serving us by coming to this broken world and teaching us showing us the way. Thank you for serving us by sending your Holy Spirit. Thank you for service, Lord. And I simply pray through the power of your Holy Spirit and your grace and your mercy that we would be people of service. People who are slaves to your gospel, who everything about our lives is it all points back to you, God, as parents, as brothers and sisters, as aunts and uncles, as grandparents, as friends, as workers, as coaches, whatever we might do, I pray all of it would point back to you somehow, some way, Lord. And I pray that we would be people who know that we need grace and from that grace have a perfect peace in our life. I need some peace in my life, Lord. And I guarantee you there's some people in this place that need some peace in their life. And I pray that we would believe in who you are and that you would give us that peace in abundance. Lord, if there's any sickness or illness in this place, I pray that you would bring healing. If there are people struggling financially, I pray that you you would bring uh blessing, that that that your daily bread would be a would be show up in abundance, Lord. And Lord, above all else, I pray that your perfect will would be done in our lives and in this church. In Jesus' mighty name we pray. And we all said together, Amen.