Additional Notes §32
§32 Acknowledgment of Present Gift (Phil. 4:18–20)
Paul gives them his receipt for the gift and promises them every blessing.
4:18 / Continuing his “accounting” language, Paul says, I have received full payment. If he knows “what it is to be in need, and … what it is to have plenty” (v. 12), they have given him occasion once again to have even more. With the gifts brought him on their behalf by Epaphroditus he is full to overflowing. He has mentioned Epaphroditus with appreciation already (2:25–30) as the one (he says) “whom you sent to take care of my needs”; the handing over of the Philippians’ gift was one of the ways in which Epaphroditus helped him.
The gift was welcome to Paul. But Paul was engaged in the service of God; the gift was therefore a gift to God as well as to Paul, and it was at least as welcome to God as it was to Paul. Paul now abandons the vocabulary of accounting and takes up the language of worship. Their gift to Paul was a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. The phrase a fragrant offering is found repeatedly in the OT, from the description of Noah’s sacrifice in Genesis 8:21 onward; it is specially common in the directions for the levitical sacrifices (cf. Exod. 29:18, etc.). In the NT it is used figuratively of the self-offering of Christ (Eph. 5:2) and similar language is used of the self-offering of his people to God (Rom. 12:1; 2 Cor. 2:14–16; Heb. 13:16).
4:19 / They may rest assured, says Paul, that what they have given to God will be amply repaid by him from the limitless resources of his riches. Paul cannot even think of the divine riches now without linking them with Christ Jesus. he is the mediator through whom all God’s blessings are communicated to men and women. Paul speaks of my God (cf. 1:3) because he had long since experienced his power to meet all his personal needs, and to supply them through Christ. At a time when he was most painfully conscious of his own inadequacy he received the assurance from the risen Lord, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9), and in effect it is that assurance that he now imparts to his friends.
4:20 / Paul’s expression of thanks is fittingly concluded with a doxology, which also fittingly concludes the letter as a whole. J. B. Lightfoot, commenting on the doxology in Galatians 1:5, points out that (like the present doxology) it contains no verb and argues that the verb supplied should be the indicative “is,” not the imperative be. “It is an affirmation rather than a wish. Glory is the essential attribute of God.” (He refers to the doxology of 1 Peter 4:11, where the verb “is” appears in the Greek text, as it does also in the later doxology appended to the Lord’s Prayer in Matt. 6:13, KJV.)
4:18 / I have received full payment: this is the sense of Gk. apechō de panta (lit., “and I have everything”); there is abundant evidence that apechō was in contemporary use to mean “Paid in full.” Similarly NIV renders apechousin ton misthon autōn in Matt. 6:2, 5, 16 as “they have received their reward in full”; cf. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, p. 227: “they can sign the receipt of their reward: their right to receive the reward is realised, precisely as if they had already given a receipt for it.”
4:19 / His glorious riches: Gk. en doxē, “in glory.” The phrase probably does not refer to the life to come; it might be rendered (with the adjoining words) “his glorious abundance.” F. W. Beare takes it as an adverbial phrase with the verb “supply” (NIV meet): “my God shall fully supply every need of yours gloriously.”
In Christ Jesus: Gk, en Christō lēsou, which J. B. Lightfoot takes to be incorporative: “through your union with, incorporation in, Christ Jesus.”