Imitate the humility of Jesus
1 If I may advise you in the name of Christ and if you can hear it as the voice of love; if we share the same spirit and are capable of mercy and compassion, then I beg of you
2 make me very happy: have one love, one spirit, one feeling,
3 do nothing through rivalry or vain conceit. On the contrary let each of you gently con si der the others as more important than your selves.
4 Do not seek your own interest, but rather that of others.
5 Your attitude should be the same as Jesus Christ had:
6 Though he was in the form of God,
he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking on the nature of a servant, made in human likeness,
and in his appearance found as a man.
8 He humbled himself by being obedient to death,
death on the cross.
9 That is why God exalted him
and gave him the Name which outshines all names,
10 so that at the Name of Jesus all knees should bend
in heaven, on earth and among the dead,
11 and all tongues proclaim that Christ Jesus is the Lord
to the glory of God the Father.
12 Therefore, my dearest friends, as you al ways obeyed me while I was with you, even more now that I am far from you, continue working out your salvation “with fear and trembling.”
13 It is God who makes you not only wish but also carry out what pleases him.
14 Do everything without grumbling,
15 so that without fault or blame, you will be children of God without reproach among a crooked and perverse generation. You are a light among them, like stars in the universe,
16 holding to the Word of life. I shall feel proud of you on the day of Christ on seeing that my effort and labor have not been in vain.
17 And if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering of your faith, I rejoice and continue to share your joy;
18 and you likewise should rejoice and share my joy.
Paul’s messengers
19 The Lord Jesus lets me hope that I may soon send you Timothy, and have news of you. With this I will feel encouraged.
20 For I have no one so concerned for you as he is.
21 Most follow their own interest, not those of Christ Jesus.
22 But Timothy has proved himself, as you know. Like a son at the side of his father, he has been with me at the service of the Gospel.
23 Because of that I hope to send him to you as soon as I see how things work out for me.
24 Nevertheless the Lord lets me think that I myself shall be coming soon.
25 I judged it necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, who worked and fought at my side and whom you sent to help me in my great need.
26 In fact, he missed you very much and was still more worried because you had heard of his sickness.
27 He was indeed sick and almost died, but God took pity on him and on me, sparing me greater sorrow.
28 And so I am eager to send him to you, so that on seeing him you will be glad and I will be at peace.
29 Receive him then with joy, as is fitting in the Lord. Consider highly persons like him,
30 who almost died for the work of Christ; he risked his life to serve me on your behalf when you could not help me.
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Comments Letter to the Philippians, Chapter 2
• 2.1 Unity is often supported by a shared feeling of being the best, or the strongest, or having to contend with another group: in that way many religious groups maintain their strength, their discipline and the efforts and sacrifices needed for this. All that is also found in Christian groups, but it should not be, for we have another spirit (Lk 9:55). With us, unity will follow from much humility and understanding of others. Here, Paul gives the secret of Christian co-existence: look for what is humble and do nothing through rivalry or for glory.
In a hymn which is a sort of creed, Paul proposes the example of Christ: his path from God to man, from rich to poor, from first to last, from master to servant.
The Lord Jesus desired to identify with the most humble, the most afflicted, the most despised. Such were Jesus’ attitudes and they must be those of his followers, the Christians. A desire to identify with the most humble and to share with them is the motivation for a truly evangelical life.
In this we must differ from the majority of people who are mainly interested in their personal or family fulfillment. Their ambitions are legitimate, and who among us does not share them at least partly? Yet they have been devalued by Christ by the simple fact that he took the opposite way.
He did not claim equality with God: the mystery of God’s Son who became a mortal man and gave up God’s Glory, although he could have preserved it even in his human life. Since Christ was to be the New Man, glorified by God and placed above everything, his being subject to misery and limitations was a way of being reduced to nothingness.
God exalted him. The humiliation and obedience of Christ were the condition for receiving his glory. He gave him the Name (of God), that is, he made him fully enjoy in his human nature the divine Power (or Name).
• 12. Continue working out your salvation with fear and trembling. It is not a matter of being afraid of God. Paul has just urged his readers to rejoice, since they no longer have the spirit of slaves to make them fearful, but the spirit of sons and daughters (Rom 8:15).
Paul, in fact, has just recalled Christ’s sacrifice and he draws this conclusion: take your life very seriously (this is the meaning of fear and trembling: as does the one who carefully carries a precious load). Be aware that God is at work in you through these good desires that come to you. Live in the presence of God.
• 19. Paul usually deals with personal matters at the end of his letters. Here he seems to interrupt the subject of his letter that he will take up again in 3:1. Paul announces two visits to the Christians of Philippi.
Timothy is Paul’s assistant; he is entrusted with several missions to the communities. It seems that Timothy did not have much authority and could be easily humiliated by those who dis liked Paul’s direction.
As to Epaphroditus, he was a Christian from Philippi who had left his family, spent his money and faced risks in order to go and visit Paul. The community of believers must pay attention to its most committed members, who have little means, in order to assist them. The Church sometimes presents as examples, militants from the working class or peasants who were quite forgotten by their brothers and sisters in the faith during their lives.