grace, but of surroundings.

Ver. 12. +I know both+ (_kai_, not _de_) +how to run low,[2] and how
to run over+, as I do now, with your bounty; and both experiences need
a teaching from above if they are to be rightly borne. +In everything
and in all things+, in the details and in the total, I have been let
into the secret, I have been initiated into the "mystery,"[3] +of being
full fed and of being hungry, of+

Ver. 13. +running over and of coming short. For all things I am
strong in Him who makes me able.+[4]

But not even this joyful testimony to the enabling presence of his Lord
must divert his thought from the loving act of the Philippians. He
seems about to dilate on the glorious theme of what he can be and do in
Christ; the wonder of that experience on which he entered at the crisis
detailed in 2 Cor. xii. is surely powerfully upon him; the "My grace is
sufficient for thee"; the sense of even exultation in weakness and
imperfection, "that the power of Christ may overshadow" him. But all
this leaves perfectly undisturbed his delicate sympathy with the dear
Macedonian converts. And so he will assure them that no spiritual
"sufficiency" can blunt the sense of their generous kindness.

Ver. 14. +Yet you did well+, you did a fair, good deed, +when you
joined together+ (_sunkoinonesantes_) +in participating in my
tribulation+, with the partnership of a sympathy which feels the
suffering it relieves. +But you

Ver. 15. +know+, (to add a thought on your previous bounties, which
may as it were correct (_de_) the thought that I needed this last
bounty to assure me of your love,) you know, +Philippians,[5] that in
the beginning of the Gospel+, in the early days of the mission in your
region, +when I left Macedonia+, parting from you on my way south, in
order to quit Macedonia (Roman Northern Greece) for Achaia (Roman
Southern Greece), _via_ Thessalonica and Beroea,[6] +no church
participated with me+, helped me in my labours, +in the matter of
giving and taking+, (they giving and I taking the needed monetary aid,)
+but you alone+. But

Ver. 16. you did so; +because even in Thessalonica+; even when I was
still there, in a place which was but ninety miles away,[7] and in the
same province still; twice over (_kai hapax kai dis_) +you sent+ aid
+to my need+, within the few weeks which I spent at Thessalonica.

Again he will not be misunderstood. This warmly expressed gratitude
may conceivably be mista