that leadeth to eternal life; through the
same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect for St Philip and St James.

CHAPTER VIII

JOY IN THE LORD AND ITS PRESERVING POWER "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM"

PHILIPPIANS iii. 1-11

Doctrinal perils at Philippi--"Be glad in the Lord"--The true
Israel--An ideal legalist--Position and experience--The spiritual power
of holy joy--Acceptance and holiness--Atoning Cross and Risen Life

With the section just closed the Epistle reaches its middle point and
already looks towards its end. We may lawfully think of St Paul as
pausing here in his dictation; he returns to it after some considerable
interval, with new topics, or rather with one important new topic, in
his mind. Hitherto, if we have read him aright, we have seen him
occupied, from one side or another, with the thought of Christian Unity
at Philippi. That thought has been either explicitly developed, as in
the close of the first chapter, and in the opening of the second, and
again in the passage embracing ii. 14-16; or it has been rather implied
than expounded. The Apostle's assurances of love and prayer have been
often worded so as to suggest it. The grand passage of doctrine, ii.
5-11, has been occasioned directly by it, and is made to bear
immediately upon it; the Lord's wonderful self-abnegation (if the word
may be tolerated) is revealed and asserted there, not in an isolated
way, but as it speaks to the believer of the spirit which should
animate _him_, and which will preclude jealousies and separations as
nothing else can. And even the paragraph where Timotheus and
Epaphroditus are before us is tinged with the same feeling; what the
Apostle says about both these dear friends is so said as _to unite_ the
sympathies of the Philippians.

But he has more to speak of than this sacred call to union of spirit
and of life in Christ. We gather that Epaphroditus, talking over the
condition of the Mission with his leader, had alluded to the presence
there of serious doctrinal perils, which must ultimately affect
Christian holiness. That ubiquitous difficulty, the propaganda of
anti-Pauline Christian Judaism, had come on the scene, or was just
coming. The teachers who affirmed, or insinuated, that Jesus Christ
could be reached only through the ceremonial law, were now to be
reckoned with. The converts were disturbed, or soon might be
disturbed, by being told that proselytism to Moses, sealed by
circumcision,