Through Christ

Paul's power for perseverance | Favorite verses part 4

Oct 10, 2024

Have I ever told y’all about my favorite internship ever?

During my senior year of college, I was an editorial assistant for Alabama Alumni Magazine. I love print media and relished every second that I spent honing my writing, editing, design, photography, and interviewing skills there.

While I was working there, I also discovered one of my favorite pastimes: looking through archives of old files. Since we were writing for alumni, there were lots of opportunities to write about “back when,” which meant anything cool I found tucked away in a library might be useful material one day. We also had the benefit of digitized collections from the entire UA library system at our fingertips.

I’m not a historian, but I love looking through archives. Newspaper clippings, personal letters, old photos, journal entries—there’s so much to learn from these pieces of history that may otherwise be discarded as waste.

Lately, when I read the letters preserved in the New Testament, I’ve been trying to approach them with that same level of excitement. No, we don’t have Paul’s original handwriting preserved, but we do have the personal messages of an original apostle, a witness of the resurrected Christ. We have, in his own words, stories of his persecutions, victories, and challenges; we have records of God’s work in the earliest church and records of how the members of that church were putting together what we now recognize as the story of Christianity, all the while ceaselessly working to fulfill the Great Commission.

It’s easy to take these texts for granted for a few reasons. The first is saturation: if you’ve grown up in a largely Christian context, then the letters of the New Testament are just part of the package. I often have to remind myself that the Bible didn’t just fall from heaven fully formed, with neat delineations between Old Testament and New, but was compiled over centuries.

The second reason is lack of understanding. It’s not that we can’t understand the significance of these letters; it’s that no one’s talking about how exciting it is that we have such well-preserved evidence of the activities of the early Christians.1 There are more manuscripts of the New Testament than Homer’s Iliad, with the oldest dating to the second and third centuries—so, within 200 or so years of initial authorship.

To modern minds, this may sound sketchy at first. (Imagine if the oldest evidence for the Declaration of Independence was a photocopy sold in the gift shop of the National Archives 50 years ago.) But by historical standards, this is exceptional. Consider the work of Plato: though the philosopher lived in the late 400s and early 300s BC, our earliest manuscripts of his work are from around 895 AD…yet, nobody bats an eye at attributing the Allegory of the Cave to him.

This is the mindset I want to preserve as we take on another “Favorite Verse” this week, one you’re sure to recognize from Paul’s AD 50(ish) letter to the church at Philippi:

“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Philippians 4:13

As with all of our favorite verses, the journey toward a deeper understanding of Philippians 4:13 starts with understanding the context of the verse.

Context is more than just the verses that come before and after; it’s the whole environment that the letter came to be in. For our purposes, I want to look at two levels of context:

The letter as a whole
The verse as part of a section

The letter: Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi

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Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia (now Greece) and the church that Paul established there was the first church in Europe. The city itself was relatively small, with a population around 10,000 at the time Paul was writing, but it was extremely diverse; as many as 35 deities were worshipped there during the first century. Stories about Paul’s first journey to Philippi are told in Acts 16.

It’s clear from the outset that Paul (and Timothy, his coauthor) writes to a group of people he loves dearly: “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,” he says, “always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy” (1:3). The letter primarily expresses thanks for financial support the church at Philippi has provided Paul in his missionary journeys, with exhortations to stand strong amid persecution.

And indeed, the persecutions have been great. Paul, likely imprisoned himself as he writes, gives insight into his attitude, assuring the Philippians that “my imprisonment is for Christ,” (1:13) and that his imprisonment has resulted in a spread of the gospel among the imperial guards and an attitude of boldness among other believers.

Paul and the Christians at Philippi don’t have to rely on good feelings or empty encouragement to spur them forward during persecution, though; in the person of Christ, they have a model of perseverance that will not fail:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
by taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
Philippians 2:6-11

N.T. Wright, in The New Testament in its World, says that this poem isn’t just a meditation on Christ, but “a paradigm for the Philippians’ attitudes and behavior as it had been for Paul himself.”

In this poem, we find the key to Paul’s message of perseverance through suffering: Christ.

The verse: Paul’s power to persevere

Throughout the rest of the short letter, Paul makes it absolutely clear that his treasure is in heaven. He doesn’t preach the gospel because it’s easy or will make him rich and famous (what might he think if he knew how he’s been venerated in Christian tradition?), but because he is compelled to do so by the truth of the message.

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Philippians 3:8

As he wraps up the letter, Paul exhorts his readers to think about all that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise. He comforts his brothers and sisters in Philippi, his financial sponsors who love him dearly, by assuring them that their inability to help him directly hasn’t caused him undue hardship.

In fact, there’s no single circumstance that can render Paul hopeless or make his life unduly difficult:

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Philippians 4:11-13

When it’s returned to its rightful home, Philippians 4:13 is a powerful meditation on the consistent provision and presence of God in all circumstances.

We know from other scripture that Paul’s missionary journeys were treacherous, that ultimately he’d be martyred for the faith he dedicated his life to spreading and defending. Paul recognized, though, that (as evidenced in 2:6-11) only the humble can be exalted; only those who are brought low will ever be restored. Only those who partake in the sufferings of Christ, who set aside their wills, their personal ideas of right and wrong, in favor of the standard of a holy and perfect God, will partake in his resurrection.

Verse 13 is so much more than a mantra or an affirmation; it’s a reminder of God’s faithfulness to his children and an exhortation to continue conforming to the image of Christ.

As you remember this verse, think on the sufferings of Christ, the sufferings of Paul, and the long history of steadfast perseverance exemplified by the church that has come before you. Thank God for his faithfulness to all those believers, both well-known and nameless, and thank him for his faithfulness to you as you labor for righteousness.