Philippians 1:1–11 — Partners and Partakers

This sermon is the first in a new series from the book of Philippians and is entitled Partners

and Partakers. It is from Philippians 1, verses 1-11 and was delivered to Ecclesia churches

Philippians 1:1–11

on Sunday, February 1, 2026. Last year, we spent a good deal of time in the book of Galatians,

which is the letter written by Paul to the church in Galatia. And Philippians is similar

a letter written by Paul, but to the church in Philippi. So in order to give us a little bit of

context before we dive into the opening of this letter, we're going to back up a little bit and

look at what we know about how this church began. And for that, we're actually going to go to Acts

Acts 16 · chapter mention

chapter 16. So Paul visited the city of Philippi after having a vision from God that called him to

the region of Macedonia, which is way to the northwest of Rome and Jerusalem in what is

modern-day Europe. And he sees this man in a dream who is urging Paul to come to Macedonia

and help us. So Paul sails to the coastal city of Neapolis and then a short ways inland to the

Roman colony of Philippi. And Philippi is an important city to Rome because it's a kind of

outpost of Roman culture built to mirror life in Rome. However, it's also a kind of retirement

city for upper-level Roman centurions and soldiers. So it's a very Roman-influenced city,

obsessed with personal honor and status, which will come up today as we look at Paul's

introduction of himself. It's a place with really very few Jews compared to other places,

and so few Jews that it doesn't even have a synagogue. So he has to go down by a river to

find a group of women who are gathering there for prayer on their own. And Paul and his companion

Silas meet a woman named Lydia there, who responds to the gospel along with her family,

is baptized, and then opens her home to Paul and Silas, which would have been the first

house church in this city. However, that's kind of where the smooth sailing ends. They meet a

demon-possessed fortune-telling girl. They command the demon to leave, and the girl's owners have

them thrown into prison and beaten by a crowd because they've destroyed their business. So Paul

and Silas are found singing hymns in chains when God uses an earthquake to free every prisoner.

But instead of running, they stay. Because of this, they convert their Philippian jailer and

his family, and they are baptized and presumably join the church as well. And this is really the

beginning of this church in Philippi. And that's about 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus

that this takes place. So over the following 10 or so years, Paul has continued to travel around

area, and God has sustained and grown the church, and the relationship between this church and Paul

has persisted. The church in Philippi has been crazy generous in supporting the spread of the

gospel, giving money to Paul over and over on his missionary journeys. Even when Paul didn't ask them

for support, they have insisted. Even when things got financially challenging or difficult, they have

continued to give to Paul. And they've been in communication with him via letters, but have been

served in the meantime, at least for a portion of time, by pastors like Timothy, who was appointed

by Paul. But by the time this letter is written, about 10 to 12 years after the founding of the

church, conditions have changed for the church and for Paul. So Paul, for his part, is imprisoned.

Most likely, this is written during his imprisonment in Rome.

And under Roman law, the state provides nothing or very little for prisoners, and it was the

responsibility of their friends and family to provide for their basic needs while they

were in prison, like food and clothing.

So at this point, the only support that Paul has is from the various churches who send

financial support, but also the support of people like Timothy, who is now with him in Rome.

The church in Philippi, meanwhile, is undergoing some of their own internal difficulties with

things like their leaders not seeing eye to eye on some unnamed issues. In a very Roman city,

they are essentially struggling to persist in their faith, to endure in a city that is surrounded by

not a lot of Christian spiritual support. So the church sends a man named Epaphroditus

to Paul for two reasons. First, he is taking some financial support to Paul while he's in prison,

but also he's going to request that he send Timothy, that Paul sends Timothy to them because

they were struggling to persist in the faith and they desired the pastoral care of Timothy.

However, Epaphroditus almost dies on the way to Paul from some sort of illness.

And basically, instead of turning around and going home, he risks his life to get this money

and letter requesting pastoral support to Paul.

So this letter of Philippians is a letter containing Paul's response to the church.

and in it he will address their request early, but spend the rest of the letter encouraging them to

persist in the faith. And today it stands not only as a beautiful letter to Christians who are asking,

what does it look like to persist in the faith? But also it is the inspired word of God calling

us to greater reliance on Jesus and moving forward in active obedience to him. So further up

and further in for the glory of God. That's the message of this letter.

So with that, let's begin by reading these first 11 verses that we'll be going through today.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi,

with the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus

Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you,

all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day

until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion

at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in

heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and

confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of

Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all

discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the

day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ

to the glory and praise of God. We're going to start with these first two verses that form Paul's

greeting, and they are pretty standard for a Greek letter and not so different really from ours today,

but we want to pay attention to a few of the additions that Paul makes, the words he uses,

and one that he doesn't use, actually. So let's look at these things together,

because I think it will give us a helpful view of how Paul sees both himself and the people of the

church. When it comes to a standard Greek letter, you would list three main things, who was writing,

who you were writing to, and some sort of greeting. And in each point, Paul introduces something that

differentiates his letter from others of a similar type. Let's begin with how Paul identifies himself.

He identifies both himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus. Of all the ways that Paul could

have introduced himself, even compared with the ways that he greets people in his other letters,

he begins here by introducing himself as a servant. To the Galatians, he introduced himself

as an apostle, establishing his authority that was given to him by Jesus on the road to Damascus.

And if you remember back to Galatians, one of the reasons he was writing them was to correct them

and defend his authority that was being threatened by some of the Jews in the city. But to this

church that he has been close with from the beginning, he simply uses his name. And to this

church in an honor-obsessed city of Gentiles, he introduces himself as the most dishonorable

title that Romans could think of, a doulos, a servant, and specifically a servant of Christ

Jesus.

He includes Timothy in the greeting, not because Timothy was writing the letter as well.

This isn't a co-authored letter.

He's basically saying, also, Timothy says hello, because remember, the church knew and loved

and desired to see Timothy again. That was apparently part of the letter that they wrote

to Paul in the first place. Second, Paul identifies the people to whom he's writing,

and we see much of the same emphasis. He greets the saints, which means all of the followers of

Jesus, everybody in the congregation. So on one level, this letter is from one follower of Jesus

to other followers of Jesus. But he also addresses two groups of leaders in the church,

the overseers, and the deacons. And one of the terms we're familiar with, and one we have to

define a little bit. So overseers is one of those words used to reference the pastors or the shepherds,

here being referred to in their role as leaders of the congregation. And probably the ones who

reached out to Paul in the first place are these pastors, these overseers. But the second is maybe

a new term to us, which is deacons. So the term deacons is a kind of title that comes from the

word diakonoi, but the word can also be translated simply as servant. That's the meaning of the word.

So we have to use context to kind of determine which way it is intended. And Paul here seems to

be referring to the position or office of deacon in the same way he's referred to the position or

office of overseer. So this position in the church is detailed in Paul's letter to Timothy,

1 Timothy 3 verses 8 through 13, in which this has a very similar qualification to a pastor,

1 Timothy 3:8–13

but their focus instead of on preaching and teaching and spiritual leadership is on serving,

particularly the physical and logistical needs of the church so that the pastor can focus on

the teaching and prayer and shepherding of the people. So in other places, Paul will use that

word not to describe the formal office, but rather in its function as the word servant,

right? A way of describing how various people act like a servant to the church.

In Romans 16, he uses an example where he commends a woman named Phoebe for being a servant to the

church. At this point in our church, with Ecclesia churches, we haven't really grown to need that

position yet. So until we do, we will all just kind of plan to act like Phoebe and all be servant-hearted

towards one another. That's the plan. So I just didn't want to move past that term without

addressing it. The final part of this greeting is important because Paul identifies the power and

the authority behind this letter. He recognizes that the grace and peace that he so longs to give

this church comes from none other than God himself. This is a Trinitarian letter from the start,

because Paul lists God the Father and the Lord Jesus as the source of this peace and grace. And

later, he will also recognize the work of the Spirit being the one who empowers us to live this

life that we are called to. But right from the very start, Paul wants to make it clear that the

of this message he sends is from God, through a servant of Jesus to other followers of Jesus.

And in a similar way, every message that we preach from this letter over the next 10 weeks or so

carries authority only in how it agrees with and accurately represents the word of God,

because this is the word of God, and it's being proclaimed by a servant of Jesus to fellow

servants of Jesus. That's a right understanding of how this works. Let's move on to verses 3 through

8. So it is immediately clear that Paul has great affection for the people of the church. If you look

at the language that he uses, he keeps coming back to this affection. After all, they have been nothing

but generous supporters of him over the years of his ministry. But Paul recognizes something crucial

about their generosity, that he's quick to call out. And it's that their support of him is a

partnership, not for his benefit, but for the sake of the gospel. This partnership with Paul

is about the gospel, the sharing of good news, making disciples. And I just want to recognize

the generosity of the people in our church over the last week. As a church, we've been able to

really thrive on very little because of the grace of God, because the generosity of a host for a

space to gather and by keeping things simple. But we've also close to doubled in size over the last

year. And with that, we brought some needs before the church last week. Simple things like we need

more chairs to sit in and a place to keep them. We need ways to make more space for our gathering

on Sunday when we all come together. We need books for us to study from. And the church gave

generously. We were able to get everything that we needed. We even invested in a projector so we can

sing and study together and all see together as we outgrow the current space that we're in.

But I also want to recognize, just as Paul did here, that your investment was very clearly a

partnership in the work of the gospel and always should be understood in that way. I think it's

particularly important for church leaders to keep that before them always when they're making

decisions about how the gifts of the congregation should be spent. Asking the question, how can we

best steward this as leaders to move forward the work of the gospel? Using that as a kind of filter

for what we invest in would make a lot of decisions a lot easier. For example, how does

this building we want to use enable us to gather as a church to worship and then to serve one

another? How does this technology that we want to invest in practically enable us to communicate

the gospel better? How does maybe paying this person enable them to advance the gospel

and equip the saints for ministry? The application of that single question,

how does this move the gospel forward are endless. But you can see how framing those things in the

lens of gospel partnership really changes the questions that we ask. Paul takes this one step

further, though, in verse 6 and 7. He says that God who began the good work in us will complete it.

But he also says we are partakers of grace. So he moves from recognizing what they have done

to partner with him in the gospel and moves into something else a little further. Stay with me here.

This is what Paul is saying so far. He's saying, I'm so grateful for you and the way that you've

invested in my life and ministry. And I see that it's an investment in the advancement of the

gospel. But I also want you to know that even that good work that you've been a part of was started

by God in you. I love your generosity, but I also want to point out that it didn't just come from

you. Rather, it's a visible sign of the work that God is doing in you. You are generous because a

generous God has poured out his grace on you through the work of Jesus Christ. And guess what?

That same God who began the work in you is going to bring it to completion at the end when Jesus

returns. He's still working in you. God and his work through Jesus is what gives us the confidence

in our salvation. He is the one who will ultimately bring this work sanctifying us to completion.

So we know that God begins and completes it. We don't earn our salvation. Our confidence

as Christians is in the work of Christ, the finished work of Christ. But in the life of

the Christian, there is also this component of our participation in this ongoing work that he is

doing in us. I was talking this week with a client at my other day job about how there's a gap

between what people say they care for and what they actually will act on. In other words,

it's very easy for people to say they care deeply about something and to talk a good game. It's easy

to say for the church that you believe the gospel is important, but there's a difference between

saying you have faith in the work of the gospel and putting that faith into action.

And these people in this church in Philippi had put their faith into action over and over,

being generous with Paul, not just because they loved him, but because they wanted to see the

gospel advance. We are called to respond to the work of Christ, to receive salvation,

to accept the work of Jesus, to exercise our faith. Paul says that God provides the sufficient

grace and that somehow by the exercising of their faith, their lives of generosity,

they are actually partaking in that grace with Paul. This is the seeming paradox of Christianity,

that we are both confident in the salvation of God, but we're also accountable for our response

to it. And Paul is trying to show us that it is not a paradox after all, but a relationship between

being loved first by God. And so we respond to that love. And it's that growth of love and response

that Paul is going to pray about for the church. So let's actually read this prayer one more time

in verses 9, 10, and 11. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge

Paul prays for love to abound, to increase more and more.

This living faith in action, this sanctification of the people of the church is a process that is

happening over time. But Paul adds an interesting connection here, praying that love will abound

with knowledge and discernment. This is something that Paul does often in his letters,

weaving these two together, knowledge and love. Because the love that Paul wants to see grow in

the church is the kind that moves them toward maturity. And that kind of love is more than

a feeling. It's a love that is growing in response to a knowledge of who Jesus is and what he has

done for us. It's a love that results from seeing the love of Jesus and experiencing the grace of

God available to us through the sacrifice of Christ. It's the kind that wells up in us and

changes us into something different altogether, into the image of Jesus. He understands that true

love, the kind that Christ is growing in us, is something that increases with knowledge and leads

to better discernment or decisions made in light of that knowledge. That kind of love changes people.

We want to start to make choices to act differently, to love what God loves and hate the things

that grieve him.

We start to hate our sin and desire to approve those things that are excellent.

He says this leads us to being pure and blameless for the day of Christ or the day that Jesus

returns.

This blameless life that Paul desires for the church is twofold.

That the life that we live is both lived with a desire to please God, but also not to cause

other people to stumble. Finally, he says in verse 11 that he prays that we will be filled

with the fruit of righteousness. And this isn't a fruit that we will in ourselves or that we produce

by trying hard to be more blameless. No, the fruit of righteousness, he says, comes through Christ

Jesus. So what is Paul talking about here? Because certainly any righteousness or holiness that we

have is the righteousness of Christ. That is a gift in which our unrighteousness is replaced by his

righteousness. It's not something that we can earn. But Paul is getting at something more here

in talking about the fruit of righteousness. Because what did Jesus promise we would receive

when he ascended from him, the Holy Spirit. And what does the Holy Spirit produce in the believer?

Something that Paul refers to in his letter to the Galatians, not as the fruit of righteousness,

but there as the fruit of the Spirit. Things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These are not self-produced fruit, but a result of

surrendering to the work of Christ and the Spirit of God at work in you.

Paul concludes this prayer, and we will conclude today by affirming that the highest purpose of

our lives should be, as Paul says, the glory and praise of God. In everything, Paul recognizes that

both he and the believers in Philippi exist and live for the glory and praise of God. From the

very beginning, he identifies himself as a servant, writing to other servants of Christ who exist for

the glory of God. In their partnership and their generosity towards Paul and the mission to make

disciples, all of this they did not just for Paul, not for their glory, but for the glory of God

and the proclamation of his gospel. And finally, in his opening prayer for the church,

he reminds them that even as they are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next,

even as they are being worked on by the Spirit,

bearing the fruit that results from lives of Spirit-filled people in process.

All of this is happening for the glory of God.

So further up and further in.

And I don't have anything that I really need to add to that.

The answer to the question, how are we supposed to persevere in the faith?

We continue to participate in the work that God is doing through us,

stepping out in faith in generosity.

We continue to partake of His grace for us as we allow Him to work in us and seek to

obey Him.

And we keep the perspective that in all of it, it is for the glory of God.

Ekklesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa and in homes

throughout the week.

We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from Scripture and making disciples

of Jesus.

You can learn more about our statement of faith and contact a pastor by visiting EkklesiaChurches.org.