f his blood is to be offered like
a libation poured over the living sacrifice of the souls and bodies
which the Philippians offer to God (ii. 17). Before he speaks of this
libation of his blood he makes a tender appeal to his converts to
imitate the lowliness of Jesus Christ. He puts into the language of
theology the story of the incarnation which his friend St. Luke draws
with an artist's pen in the first two chapters of his Gospel. He
speaks to them of "the mind" of Christ Jesus, whose life on earth was
self-sacrifice in detail. Christ had before the incarnation the "form"
or essential attributes of God, but He did not set any store on His
equality with God, as though it were a prize,[2] but stripped Himself
in self-surrender, and took the "form" or nature of a bond-servant. He
looked like men as they actually are, and if men recognized His outward
"fashion," they would only have taken Him for a man. And then He made
Himself obedient to God up to His very death, and that the death of the
cross. This was followed by His exaltation, and worship is now paid to
Him in His glorified humanity (ii. 1-11).

In ii. 19 St. Paul returns to personal matters concerning Timothy and
Epaphroditus; then he seems on the point of concluding the Epistle
(iii. 1). But he suddenly breaks into {193} an abrupt and passionate
warning against the Judaizers. The passage almost looks as if it were
a page from the Epistle to the Galatians. The Judaizers are called
"dogs," and as their circumcision was no longer the sign of a covenant
with God, the apostle calls it a mere outward mutilation of the flesh
(iii. 2). It is unlikely that Jewish influences were potent at
Philippi. The explanation of this passage appears to be that the
apostle, before completing his letter, learnt of some new and
successful plot of the Judaizers at Rome or elsewhere. Nervously
dreading lest they should invade his beloved Philippian Church, he
speaks with great severity of these conspirators. The conclusion of
the chapter is apparently directed against the licence of certain
Gentile converts. These seem to have been "enemies of the cross of
Christ" in the looseness of their lives rather than in the corruptness
of their creed. It is difficult in this case, as in that of the
Judaizers, to know whether these errors already existed at Philippi or
not. The passage concludes with an exhortation to steadfastness (iii.
2-iv. 1).

Two women, Euodia and Syntyche,