Additional Notes §5
§5 Paul’s Present Situation (Phil. 1:12–14)
The Christians of Philippi were deeply concerned about Paul. They cherished a warm affection for him; they knew that he was now in custody awaiting trial and that his case was due to come up for hearing soon before the supreme tribunal of the empire. How was he faring right now? And what would be the outcome of the hearing when once it took place? How, moreover, would its outcome serve to advance the gospel throughout the Roman world?
Paul knows what is in their minds, and he proceeds to reassure them, to impart to them something of the confidence that fills his own heart as he contemplates the situation.
1:12 / That the apostle to the Gentiles should be in chains might well have been regarded as a blow to the advance of the gospel that he was commissioned to proclaim. But no: whatever might be Paul’s own situation, the word of God was not in chains (cf. 2 Tim. 2:9). Indeed, Paul’s presence in Rome as a prisoner awaiting trial had really served to advance the gospel. He was a distinguished prisoner, a Roman citizen exercising his prerogative to have his case heard by the emperor, and he made sure that everyone who came in touch with him knew that it was on account of the gospel that he was under house arrest, and not because of subversive political activity or criminal conduct.
1:13 / Throughout the whole palace guard, he says, and to everyone else who has anything to do with my case it has become clear … that I am in chains for Christ—lit., “that my chains are in Christ.” Here we have a further instance of the “incorporative” use of the phrase “in Christ” (see above on verse 1). It is not simply that Paul’s imprisonment is due to his being “a servant of Christ” (GNB); that is true, but in his eyes it is part of his life in Christ, to whom he is united by faith; it is, especially, part of his sharing in the sufferings of Christ (cf. 3:10). Of course, the members of the guard and everyone else to whom he refers would not see it from his point of view, but they could not fail to realize that it was Paul’s being a Christian that had landed him where he now was.
The palace guard is, literally, the “praetorium,” that is, the praetorian guard, the emperor’s bodyguard. The word “praetorium” has a variety of meanings according to the context (cf. Mark 15:16 par. Matt. 27:27 and John 18:28ff. for the praetorium in Jerusalem; Acts 23:35 for the praetorium in Caesarea), but as has been argued in the Introduction, its most probable meaning here is the praetorian guard in Rome. Having made his appeal to the emperor, Paul was the emperor’s prisoner (although he preferred to think of himself as “the prisoner of Christ Jesus”), and while he waited for his case to be heard, he “was allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him” (Acts 28:16). It was natural that the soldier (relieved by a comrade every four hours or so) should be a member of the imperial bodyguard. News about this extraordinary prisoner would naturally spread through the praetorian barracks.
In addition to the soldiers, there were others (everyone else) who were interested in Paul—notably the officials charged with preparing his case for the hearing before the emperor. He claims no converts among either group, but he is filled with encouragement because in this way the gospel had become a topic of conversation in the capital, at the heart of the empire.
1:14 / Not only that, but all this gave fresh encouragement to the Christians of Rome. When Paul arrived in their city as a prisoner for the gospel’s sake, some of them perhaps wondered how safe it would be for them to be known as those who professed the same faith as he did. According to Luke, the leaders of the Jewish community in Rome judged it best to know nothing about Paul or his case (Acts 28:21). But when the gospel became a talking point because of Paul’s presence in Rome, the Christians exploited the situation and began to bear their public witness with greater confidence and vigor. When Paul says that this is true of most of the brothers, he does not mean that there was a minority that refused to seize this opportunity for evangelization; he means that so many did so that their action characterized the Roman church as a whole. Nothing could have given Paul greater delight.
1:12 / I want you to know is called a “disclosure formula” by J. L. White, The Form and Function of the Body of the Greek Letter, pp. 2–5, etc.; he adduces many examples of the use of such a formula to mark the transition from introductory thanksgiving to the body of the letter. Cf. also J. T. Sanders, “The Transition from Opening Epistolary Thanksgiving to Body in Letters of the Pauline Corpus, “JBL 81 (1962), pp. 348–62. Paul commonly words the formula negatively: “I do not want you to be unaware” (Rom. 1:13, etc.).
1:14 / The phrase in the Lord, which some have taken rather with more courageously and fearlessly (so J. B. Lightfoot, ad loc.), is to be taken with the brothers, “the brothers in the Lord” being “Christian brothers” (cf. C. F. D. Moule, IBNTG, p. 108). There may be a slightly different nuance of meaning between in the Lord and “in Christ”; “one becomes in the Lord what one already is in Christ” (M. Bouttier, En Christ, pp. 54–61; cf. C. F, D. Moule, The Origin of Christology, p. 59: “what you are is ‘in Christ’ and what you are to become is ‘in the Lord’ ”).
Speak the word of God: although the genitive of God is absent from P46 and the majority of later witnesses, its attestation is impressively strong.