Paul's Letter to Philippi

One of my favorite New Testament books is Paul's Epistle (letter) to the Philippians.  In early college, I attempted to memorize it with good friend, Ed Mason -- I recall getting into chapter 3 before I quit. (I quit memorizing the passage after meditating on Philippians 3:1, realizing that memorization had become a legalistic regime for me, sucking joy out of my Christian walk!)

The Greek community of Philippi was the first place Paul visited after leaving Asia Minor (modern Turkey) for the west.

Paul first visited Philippi when, while in Asia Minor, he has a vision in which someone from that region appears and begs for Paul to come help them (Acts 16:9-10.)   His visit to that city is described in the remainder of Acts 16.  Paul and Silas are well received there (a special convert is a woman named Lydia) but eventually a healing of a woman fortune-teller leads to uproar and Paul and Silas are imprisoned.  Even that turn of events is good, for God intervenes and the jailer and his family become believers. Paul returns to the region in Acts 20:1-6.

The book has some strong theological statements, both on living in Christian community and also on the nature of Christ.  In the second chapter Paul gives a hymn of praise about Jesus, expressing both the deity of Christ and Christ's human nature.  It has an underlying theme of joy within suffering.

We will finish Philippians early this next week and then [in 2025] move on to the book of Colossians.

Resources

I am using a number of resources for my study in Philippians.

• The Tyndale New Testament commentaries has a commentary, The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians,  by Ralph P. Martin. I purchased my copy the day after my 21st birthday.  It has been my main source for this study.
• There is a nice summary at the Bible Project, including a a 9 minute video that I recommend.
• OverviewBible.com has a good summary of the letter here. 
• An online commentary by The Gospel Coalition is here.
• An online commentary by EasyEnglishBible (with comments and translation accessible to English language learners) is here. 

(The version of the Bible used in this blog post is the NASB. This post will eventually appear in my New Testament blog on 6/15/2025. At this time I am focusing my attention on working through the Old Testament at oldtestamentchapters.blogspot.com.)