Additional Notes §9
§9 Call for Mutual Consideration (Phil. 2:1–5)
Paul’s concern for unity of mind and mutual consideration among the members of the Philippian church need not imply that there was an atmosphere of dissension there. The fact that two members are singled out by name and urged to agree in 4:2 could suggest (unless 4:2 belongs to an originally separate letter) that theirs was an exceptional case of conflict. We do not know what Epaphroditus had told Paul about the state of the church, but at this time Paul found sufficient evidence of quarrelsomeness and selfish ambition in some sectors of the Roman church to make him anxious that nothing of the sort should manifest itself at Philippi.
2:1 / Unity of mind is not easily cultivated when human beings of disparate backgrounds and temperaments find themselves sharing one another’s company, but the resources that make such unity possible are available to the people of Christ in their fellowship with him. In his love there is comfort that more than compensates for the troubles inseparable from Christian existence in this world. From his risen life they draw encouragement and strength, for they participate in it. They have received the Spirit of Christ, binding them together in a fellowship of love; he dwells within them both as individuals and as a company of believers, and through him “God has poured out his love” into their hearts (Rom. 5:5). It is the Spirit who maintains their common life in the body of Christ. The effect of this common life should be tender and compassionate hearts, but this tenderness and compassion are first of all Christ’s own. They have experienced his tenderness and compassion and can therefore the more readily show the same qualities to one another.
All the conditions, in short, exist within the believing community to foster a sense of oneness and a common purpose, not only with one another, but between them and Paul. He and they are bound together in the loving fellowship of the Spirit.
2:2 / There was already sufficient evidence of oneness of purpose and mutual affection in the Philippian church to give Paul cause for joy. He has already said that his prayers for the Philippian Christians are joyful prayers (1:4). Now, he says, fill my cup of joy to the brim; make my joy complete. Let me hear that you are like-minded, having the same love, that you are united in spirit and purpose. He is pleading, indeed, for unanimity of heart. This is not the formal unanimity that can be maintained only by the exercise of the veto; it is that sincere unanimity of purpose in which no one would wish to impose a veto on others.
This is not a matter of making everyone see eye-to-eye or have the same opinion on every subject. Life would be very flat and dull without the give-and-take practiced when variety of opinion and viewpoint provides scope for friendly discussion and debate.
2:3 / But discussion and debate cease to be friendly when each one aims at scoring points off the others and getting his or her own way. There must be no encouragement of the spirit of “Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first” (3 John 9, RSV). Do nothing out of selfish ambition, says Paul; forget all thoughts of personal prestige. Concern for personal prestige and vain conceit spring from the root sin of pride. Pride should have no place in Christian life; what characterizes the Christian is the opposite quality of humility. Humility was not generally esteemed a virtue in pagan antiquity, in which the Greek word here translated humility bears the meaning “mean-spiritedness.” The OT attitude is different: God “mocks proud mockers but gives grace to the humble” (Prov. 3:34, quoted in James 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5). Humility is specially appropriate to Christians, whose Master was, not self-consciously, but spontaneously, “gentle and humble in heart” (Matt. 11:29). His first disciples found the lesson of humility a hard one to learn: repeatedly, when they fell to discussing which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom of God, Jesus insisted that among his followers true greatness consisted in being least of all, servant of all—“for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
So, says Paul, in humility consider others better than yourselves. Rejoice in the honor paid to others rather than in that paid to yourself. The simplicity of Paul’s language should not blind us to its difficulty. Those who really try to consider others better than themselves soon discover that this does not come naturally. It is too easy to introduce permissible exceptions to Paul’s rule, if not as regards individuals, certainly as regards communities. There is a tendency, for example, to think one’s own denomination better than others, to the point of imagining that God himself is better pleased with it than he is with others (and therefore, surely, better pleased with me for belonging to mine than he is with others for belonging to theirs). No such exceptions are permissible where true humility reigns. And, as the prophet Micah saw centuries before Paul, humility flourishes best in fellowship with God (Mic. 6:8). Or, as James Montgomery put it:
The bird that soars on highest wing
Builds on the ground her lowly nest,
And she that doth most sweetly sing
Sings in the night, when all things rest.
In lark and nightingale we see
What honor hath humility.
The saint, that wears heaven’s brightest crown,
In lowliest adoration bends;
The weight of glory bends him down
Then most, when most his soul ascends;
Nearest the throne of God must be
The footstool of humility.
2:4 / To look … to the interests of others belongs to the foundation of Christian ethics. “Carry each other’s burdens,” says Paul in another letter, “and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2)—the law not only laid down by Christ but exemplified by Christ. Especially, as he says at greater length in Romans 15:1–3, “we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself.” The example of Christ is regularly Paul’s supreme argument in ethical exhortation, not least in the matter of unselfish concern for the well-being of others. If Christ’s example is to be followed, then it is better to be concerned about other people’s rights and our own duties than about our own rights and other people’s duties. When some members of the Corinthian church were so intent on defending their own rights that they had recourse to pagan judges to secure redress from their fellow Christians, Paul told them that it would be more in keeping with the way of Christ to suffer wrong without redress than to bring his name into such public disrepute (1 Cor. 6:7).
2:5 / Paul, then, urges them to have the same attitude … as that of Christ Jesus. This rendering is probably right, but any rendering of these words involves a measure of interpretation. A rather literal translation of the sentence would be: “Think this among yourselves (Be thus minded among yourselves) which … also in Christ Jesus.” The clause “which … also in Christ Jesus” lacks a verb, which has to be supplied. Further, the phrase “in Christ Jesus” may have its special Pauline sense (“in union with Christ Jesus” or “as members of Christ Jesus”) or it may have its general sense, referring to something which was manifested in the person of Christ.
The NIV rendering takes “in Christ Jesus” in the latter way; so does KJV (“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus”). The special Pauline sense of “in Christ Jesus” was preferred by the NEB translators: “Let your bearing towards one another arise out of your life in Christ Jesus.”
The words that follow, celebrating the self-emptying and self-humbling of Christ in becoming man and consenting to endure death by crucifixion, suggest strongly that his example in this regard is being recommended to his followers. Their communal life—their life “in Christ Jesus”—should be marked by those qualities that were seen in him personally; but the phrase “in Christ Jesus” in this context refers to what was seen in him personally rather than to their communal life (which is here expressed by the phrase “in you” or “among yourselves”). The missing verb, then, in the rendering “which … also in Christ Jesus” is “was” (KJV) or “was seen.”
2:1 / The four clauses in this verse are conditional, each being introduced by the conjunction ei (“if”); the apodosis to all four is the imperative clause make my joy complete in v. 2.
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ: lit., “if then there is any strengthening (Gk. paraklēsis) in Christ.” NIV takes the phrase in Christ in its incorporative sense, of their common life as Christians. The phrase covers all four clauses in this verse. It is from being united with Christ that they have encouragement, comfort, the Spirit’s fellowship, and mutual tenderness and compassion. The conjunction ei (“if”) implies no doubt of the reality of these blessings, either in Paul’s mind or in the Philippians’ experience: it might be translated “As sure as …”
J. B. Lightfoot (ad loc.) thinks that paraklēsis here means “exhortation” and paramythion (NIV: comfort) “incentive.” This is too fine a distinction. The two words are near-synonyms; when Paul uses the second (or its related verb paramytheisthai) it is regularly associated with the former (or with its related verb parakalein), perhaps in order to emphasize the idea of encouragement. Cf. the association of the two in 1 Cor. 14:3; 1 Thess. 2:12.
As for fellowship with the Spirit, the marginal alternative in GNB is better: “The Spirit has brought you into fellowship with one another.” Their fellowship with one another, indeed, was the corollary of their fellowship with Christ. It is in one Spirit that all believers in Christ have been baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12:13); he who thus unites them to Christ unites them also one to another. It is for them henceforth, by the cultivation of peace within their fellowship, to “keep the unity of the Spirit” (Eph. 4:3). God has called his people “into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:9), to participate in his risen life. It is the Spirit who enables them to respond to this call and to enjoy this fellowship; it may therefore be called “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14) or their joint participation in the Spirit.
The tenderness and compassion that they have in Christ are felt for one another. J.-F. Collange (ad loc.) thinks the reference is to the bonds of affection and sympathy between Paul and the Philippians. Paul was very much aware of those bonds, but his present concern is more for the maintenance of loving fellowship within the Philippian church. Behind tenderness lies Gk. splanchna (“bowels”), translated “affection” in 1:8. Behind compassion lies oiktirmoi, plural of oiktirmos (“pity”). In Rom. 12:1 Paul appeals to his readers by the oiktirmoi of God (“in view of God’s mercy”); in 2 Cor. 1:3 he calls God the Father of oiktirmoi (“the Father of compassion”). The two nouns splanchna and oiktirmos come together again in Col. 3:12, “clothe yourselves with compassion” (lit., “put on bowels of compassion”).
2:2 / Being like-minded, … being one in … purpose: Gk. hina to auto phronēte, … to hen phronountes, with repetition of the verb phronein, a verb specially common in this letter (which accounts for ten out of its twenty-three Pauline occurrences). It means “to think” in the sense of having a settled opinion or attitude, having one’s mind set in a particular way.
2:3 / In humility: Gk. en tapeinophrosynē, or “in lowly-mindedness.” A good first-century example of this word’s currency to denote a vice, not a virtue, comes in Josephus, War 4.494, where mention is made of the Emperor Galba’s “meanness” (tapeinophrosynē) in withholding from the praetorian guards a gift that had been promised them in his name.
2:4 / Look … to the interests of others. Paul may be making a more specific point, “advocating that his readers fix their gaze on the good points and qualities in other Christians; and, when recognized, these good points should be an incentive to our way of life” (R. P. Martin, ad loc.). Self-centered preoccupation with “one’s own things” (ta heautōn) might be a mark of a “perfectionist” tendency. If indeed Paul is encouraging his friends to pay attention to the good qualities of others, this would be an appropriate preparation for his setting before them the supreme example of Christ. But equally Christ might be set before them as an example of one who placed the interests of others before his own. In the original text there is no noun to complete the sense of “one’s own” (ta heautōn) and “those of others” (ta heterōn); hence KJV’s “his own things” and “the things of others.” What “things” Paul has in mind is a matter of interpretation. It is relevant to the interpretation that there is some (Western) evidence for the omission of “also” (kai) from the second part of the verse (rendered literally in KJV: “but every man also on the things of others”). If it be retained, the meaning is “look out for the interests (good points) of others as well as for your own”; if it be omitted, the meaning is “look out for the interests (good points) of others and not for your own.”
2:5 / Your attitude should be: Gk. touto phroneite en hymin, “be thus minded in (among) yourselves.” The interpretative problem in this verse lies partly in the supplying of a verb for the adjective clause ho kai en Christō Iēsou and partly in the understanding of the phrase en Christō Iēsou. These two issues are interrelated, for if, with J. B. Lightfoot (ad loc.), we supply the verb ephroneito (“was minded”), then en Christō lēsou will most naturally mean “in the person of Christ Jesus”; if, on the other hand, with J. Gnilka (ad loc.), we supply prepei (“is fitting”), then en Christō lēsou will mean “in your common life in Christ Jesus.” The latter alternative does not depend on supplying prepei in the adjective clause (for which cf. also F. W. Beare, ad loc.); it is defended also by R. P. Martin (Carmen Christi, p. 71), who takes the missing verb to be phroneite (“you think,” “you are minded”) and approves of K, Grayston’s rendering (EPC, ad loc.): “Think this way among yourselves which you think in Christ Jesus, i.e., as members of His Church.”
E. Käsemann ( accepts this interpretation and goes farther: understanding vv. 6–11 as setting forth a drama of salvation, he takes “in Christ Jesus” in v. 5 to denote the readers’ new status under the dominion of him who has been exalted as Lord over all—to denote, in other words, the realm of salvation established by Christ’s victory on the cross, into which they were brought at their conversion and baptism. To think humbly is the way one ought to think (dei phronein) in this realm.
A persuasive defense of the view that Paul is urging his readers to manifest the same self-denying mind as Christ manifested is made by C. F. D. Moule “Further Reflexions on Philippians 2:5–11,” in W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin, eds., Apostolic History and the Gospel, pp. 264–76. He suggests the amplification touto to phronēma phroneite en hymin ho kai en Christō Iēsou, which he translates “Adopt towards one another, in your mutual relations, the same attitude which was found in Christ Jesus” (p. 265). This, together with his exegesis of the following verses, commends itself as an acceptable interpretation (it agrees, incidentally, with the NIV rendering). See to much the same effect E. Larsson, Christus als Vorbild, p. 233.