PHILIPPIANS
Eugene Peterson’s The Message: Introduction to Philippians

‘This is Paul’s happiest letter. And the happiness is infectious. Before we’ve read a dozen lines, we begin to feel the joy ourselves – the dance of words and the exclamations of delight have a way of getting inside us.

‘But happiness is not a word we can understand by looking it up in the dictionary. In fact, none of the qualities of the Christian life can be learned out of a book. Something like apprenticeship is required, being around someone who out of years of devoted discipline shows us, by his or her entire behavior, what it is. Moments of verbal instruction will certainly occur, but mostly an apprentice requires skill by daily and intimate association with a ‘master’, picking up subtle but absolutely essential things.

When we read what Paul wrote to the Christian believers in the city of Philippi, we find ourselves in the company of just such a master. Paul doesn’t tell us that we can be happy, or how to be happy. He simply and unmistakably is happy. None of his circumstances contribute to his joy. He wrote from a jail cell, his work was under attack by competitors, and after twenty years or so of hard traveling in the service of Jesus, he was tired and would have welcomed some relief.

But circumstances are incidental compared to the life of Jesus, the Messiah, that Paul experiences from the inside. For it is a life that not only happened at a certain point in history, but continues to happen, spilling out into the lives of those who receive him, and then continues to spill out all over the place. Christ is, among much else, the revelation that God cannot be contained or hoarded. It is this ‘spilling out’ quality of Christ’s life that accounts for the happiness of Christians, for joy is life in excess, the overflow of what cannot be contained within any one person.’

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THE SECRET OF PAUL’S CONTENTMENT

‘I HAVE LEARNED TO BE CONTENT’ (PHILIPPIANS 4:11)

1. LOVE 1:9

2. GRATEFULNESS 1:14

3. UNION WITH CHRIST 1:21, 4:13

4. THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING 1:29

5. HUMILITY 2:3ff.

6. UNSELFISHNESS 2:19

7. LOSING WHAT THE WORLD PRIZES 3:8

8. A LONGING FOR HEAVEN 3:13,19

9. HELPFULNESS 4:3

10. BEING WORRY-FREE 4:6

11. GETTING YOUR THINKING RIGHT 4:8

Shalom! Rowland Croucher