Philippians
INTRODUCTION TO PHILIPPIANS
Welcome to the book of Philippians! Allow us to explain a bit about the context of the book.
The book is a letter. It is written by the famous Missionary Apostle Paul to a group of Jesus followers in a city called Philippi, in Macedonia, in Greece. Philippi is an interesting city:
It is named after the father of Alexander the Great
It was later conquered by Rome and became a Roman colony
Rome conquered it and then gave it back to its own defeated people to run it under the rule of Caesar
Rome filled Philippi with retired Roman soldiers so as to ensure loyalty to Rome
Philippi was the first European city to be evangelised (Acts 16:11-15)
So, why was Paul writing to the Philippian Christians? Well, we encourage you to read Acts 16 for the full story! But in short, Paul had taken the gospel to Philippi about 10 years earlier and some people there had believed the gospel and become followers of Jesus - the church of Philippi had been born. Paul was it’s spiritual father. And now 10 years forward, things were pretty tough for Paul. Instead of traveling as a missionary apostle around the known world, sharing the gospel wherever he went, adventuring and having amazing and powerful times, Paul is now in prison. He was imprisoned a number of times in his life, and in this instance he is in prison in Rome, under house arrest. So life is really tough for Paul at this stage. In many ways you could say that his life is restricted and reduced. But that doesn’t stop his gospel activity and fervour!
As we read this book we discover that this church had sent one of their own, a guy called Epaphroditus, with money for Paul and also to care for Paul on their behalf. Paul is really touched by this and now he is sending Epaphroditus back to the Philippian church with this letter - what we refer to as the book of Philippians.
The whole book covers 9 short essays that teach us how to live as followers of Jesus. Each of these essays includes at least one reference to joy or rejoicing because joy is central to the life of a Jesus follower. The whole book is centered around, “The Jesus Poem” in the middle of the letter (2:6-11).