Before you begin this or any study of the Word of God, because you are ultimately taught by God the Holy Spirit, make sure you are in fellowship with Him. When you are in fellowship with Him, He empowers you to both learn and apply Bible Doctrine. To regain His filling, apply 1 John 1:9, by naming your sins to God the Father.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
For more information on this, read this article.
Concluding the Salutation
Presented to Teleios Bible Church by Pastor Jim Oliver
PowerPoint Presentation at AuthorStream.com
Pertinent Verses
For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:14 NASB
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9 NASB
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed… 2 Corinthians 9:8 NASB
He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. Ephesians 1:5-8 NASB
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Ephesians 2:8-10
Verse Outline
Introduction
The Dramatic Grace Crescendo
The Doctrine of Grace
The Crescendo
Grace Prosperity
Doctrine of Reconciliation
The Source of Grace
The Door to Grace
Introduction
Paul begins the second verse of the salutation with what appears, on the surface, to be a simple greeting. However, he packed every word he wrote with truths with which every Church Age believer should be very familiar. Because these Philippian believers were mature believers, Paul needed do nothing more than remind them of these doctrines. Often He did this by simply mentioning a single word or phrase. This phrase would bring back to their thinking everything that relates to that word. Many modern Christians often need more than a one-word reminder of certain doctrines because unfortunately today, the average believer is too often unfamiliar with these great and important truths. Verse one of this book demonstrates an example of this concept. The word, “saint” for instance, should evoke in your memory a series of extremely important doctrines. These include the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Sanctification, Eternal Security and others as well. We took some time to study the word, “saint” as a part of verse one. Now, whenever you come across the word, “saint,” you should now remember that God has sanctified you! You should understand every ramification of that fact!
Why should we take the time to learn these doctrines? Church Age believers are spiritual royalty. In order to live like spiritual royalty, God has bestowed upon us many Biblical truths that are unique to this Church Age. The doctrine of sanctification is just one doctrine that we, as Church Age believers, need to master in order to orient ourselves to this life as spiritual royalty. Again, Paul just mentions these one-word reminders to these Philippian believers because he knows that they have mastered them. Paul begins this second verse with another one-word reminder of one of the most fantastic doctrines taught in the Word of God.
Paul continues this salutation with a word whose impact, when thoroughly understood should leave you in total awe of what God has done for you. That word is CHARIS, grace! This term expresses the outpouring of God’s integrity and virtuous love and resultant compassion to those who have received His salvation solution to the problems of life. Furthermore, the realization of what God has provided to each one of us, to every Church Age believer, in this Age of ages should be overwhelming. However, we need to learn them before we can fully appreciate His grace and love Him in return for what He has done for us.
The Dramatic Crescendo
Let us begin our study of this verse with the NASB translation of the first phrase of this verse. It reads in the NASB, “Grace to you and peace…” In the Greek: CHARIS HUMIN KAI EIRENE. The first word in the first phrase of this verse is χάρις CHARIS, a nominative feminine singular noun, translated “Grace.” Because CHARIS appears in an introduction without a predicate, we consider it a nominative absolute. It functions as the logical but not the syntactical subject of the clause. “CHARIS!” or “Grace!” was a common Roman greeting, not unlike the Hebrew Shalom, which means “Peace” or “Prosperity.” Both of these are valid translations of the well-known Hebrew greeting. Many theologians take this statement to be just that: a simple greeting; but Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, never wasted words. The accurate meaning from the immediate context of this word, as we will see, brings to mind a great truth of God.
The next word, HUMIN, grammatically, the dative second person personal pronoun is the complement or indirect object of the predicator, “grace.” Syntactically, this personal pronoun is a dative of advantage. With CHARIS, it is correctly translated, “Grace to you…” This dative of advantage indicates that recipients of the predicator’s action have a great advantage in life. In this case, to be under God’s grace is to be the recipient of the most incredible system of assets ever! It is to your advantage for God to focus His grace upon you. This is the greatest advantage in human history. How often do you look at someone who has monetary wealth and say that the person has the real advantage. How often does someone of a minority race allege that the majority race has the advantage? The real issue in life is spiritual, not economic and not racial! Neither race, gender, nor economic level determines spiritual advantage. As a believer in Jesus Christ, you are related to Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills! The dative of advantage of this personal pronoun focuses crosshairs of a scope on the soul of every believer and pinpoints God’s incredible grace toward him. I do not know if you have ever looked through an expensive rifle scope! The one object you focus upon is sharp and vividly visible. With the crosshairs, your attention and concentration focuses sharply on that one object. So it is with the grace of God and your soul. God has focused and brought incredible grace factors together, aimed them at you, providing perfectly for you, Church Age believer, but, if you do not know these grace factors, you cannot exploit them! Did you know that once you are under God’s grace, nothing can ever remove you from that advantageous status? No believer can remove himself from God’s grace! No believer can remove himself from God’s love. No believer can remove himself from God’s perfect provision and blessing! These two words, again, read as, “Grace to you…”
Now, let us take a closer look at the concept of grace. What does it really mean? Briefly defined, grace is all that God is free to do for each member of the human race without compromising His essence, that is, who and what He is. Grace means favor, kindness, and mercy, based entirely upon our Lord Jesus Christ’s work on the cross, bearing the punishment for every sin committed by every member of the entire human race. This wonderful grace includes every detail of God’s plan for every individual human being, from the beginning as spiritually dead ones to the potential of eternally glorifying God and ruling with Christ. Let us now turn our attention to a more detailed study of this fantastic, matchless grace!
The Crescendo
To this point in our study, we have translated the first two words: CHARIS HUMIN; Grace to you! The entire first phrase we are studying reads in the NASB as: “Grace to you and peace. The Greek reads this way: CHARIS HUMIN KAI EIRENE. The next word, the conjunction καὶ KAI, is translated “and so” because of its ascensive use. This ascensive use denotes that what condition follows results or arises from what precedes. The name Irene derived is from the next word, EIRENE. This noun came into the Greek language from and was equivalent to the Hebrew greeting, SHALOM. This nominative word, like CHARIS, above fulfills the syntactic requirements of a nominative absolute. It is in the feminine gender and singular in person. Though generally translated “peace,” the syntax of this phrase indicates that EIRENE, should be correctly translated, “prosperity!” Prosperity follows grace! If you follow God’s plan for your life, exploiting His grace, then prosperity will follow! It is as simple as that! The Philippian believers illustrate this pattern for us. They maximally exploited God’s grace provision by concentrating on the doctrines Paul taught them. Remember the “Parable of the Talents?” Our Lord taught this same truth. The servant to whom our Lord gave 10 talents exploited that grace by investment and fulfilled his lord’s plan for him. These Philippian believers invested the grace they were given so they fulfilled God’s plan for their lives by growing in grace so prosperity from the source of God followed.
Grace prosperity is the sum total of those blessings He imputes to believers after achieving spiritual maturity. This is a far cry from the common understanding of EIRENE, which is “peace” or simply the lack of warfare! This phrase then should be translated as: “Grace to you and so prosperity!”
These words, according to AT Robertson, form a crescendo, which dramatizes the entire concept. Paul waxes dramatic with these words. Every music lover loves and thoroughly appreciates the crescendo. The music begins softly then swells to a higher volume, fullness and intensity. A well-timed and perfectly executed crescendo thrills the music aficionado! Paul’s verbal crescendo, just as thrilling, begins with the word, grace. Is grace a quiet pastoral concept from which we would expect a crescendo to grow? I would have to say not! Paul begins this crescendo with the most fantastic principle of God’s perfect integrity then builds it to an even greater and higher intensity.
What can follow grace? Grace Prosperity! Paul’s crescendo builds from grace to grace prosperity. What can possibly follow God’s grace to heighten and intensify our appreciation of Him? What results from our exploitation of God’s grace? EIRENE, prosperity from the very source of God, Himself follows grace! Grace prosperity is perfect prosperity from the perfect hand of God. Grace prosperity emphatically results from the grace of our Lord. An expanded translation of these words sounds like this:
Now let us back up a moment here, why are we translating EIRENE as prosperity instead of the well-known definition, “peace?” First, a bit of background here: As I mentioned a bit earlier, the Greek word EIRENE came from the Hebrew word, SHALOM, which was and still is used as a salutation and greeting in the modern Hebrew, so the use of EIRENE would be a simple salutatory greeting were it not preceded by that ascensive use of the conjunction KAI. Its ascensive use changes the context of EIRENE and so its connotation from peace to prosperity. So EIRENE, usually translated peace, as in world peace, possesses as its true meaning in this context, “prosperity.”
Grace to you for your benefit and so prosperity! Philippians 1:2a
The concept or application is this: If you put yourself in the middle of the positive side of God’s grace, then what follows from this grace exploitation is the wonderfully fantastic prosperity described in Ephesians 3:20 as “above and beyond all that we can ask or think.” This fact is just as true for you today as it was for the Philippian believers in AD 62. They illustrated one category of their prosperity, monetary wealth, by the generous gifts that they sent Paul. The Philippian believers exploited God’s grace by placing themselves under the spiritual authority of their prepared pastor teacher thereby growing to spiritual maturity. God, then, rewarded their spiritual maturity with grace prosperity! God has mandated that every Church Age believer exploit His grace in the same manner. Now let us consider the doctrine of grace prosperity.
Grace Prosperity
Doctrine of Reconciliation
The expanded translation of the first words in this verse is, “Grace to you for your benefit and so prosperity…” You have not lived until you have enjoyed the benefits of grace prosperity. This prosperity from the grace of God, from the source of God, Himself results from your advance to spiritual maturity. God designed grace prosperity to give you an encouragement, to give you a glimpse of how great Heaven will be. These temporal blessings become the down payment on eternal blessings. If you receive grace prosperity in time then you know that you will receive your imputation of blessings in eternity.
The Source of Grace
Paul continues this verse by revealing to us the source of this wonderful grace. The NASB reads, “from God our Father…” The Greek reads as: APO THEOU PATROS HEMON. This prepositional phrase begins with the preposition APO. When combined with the ablative of source from a noun, it means “from,” denoting ultimate source. The next word in this phrase is the proper noun THEOU, from THEOS. This ablative-case noun, masculine, singular is translated as “God.” The ablative of source denotes that God the Father as the author of the divine plan is the ultimate source for all categories of grace. The lack of a preceding definite article, called the anarthrous construction denotes the quality of the following noun. In this case, the anarthrous construction emphasizes and emphatically points to God’s absolute quality, His absolute perfection.
The next word, the noun PATROS, the genitive masculine singular from PATER is translated, “Father.” HUMON, completes this phrase. It is a possessive personal pronoun from the genitive of EGO. The genitive is syntactically a genitive of personal relationship, so translated “our.” It completes this prepositional phrase. The entire prepositional phrase is translated, “from God our Father.” It indicates the intensely personal relationship every believer, whether or not he acknowledges it, has with God the Father. Every Church Age believer has an intensely personal relationship with the Father. He is the personal Father God of every Church Age believer. You see, He had each one of us, every Church Age believer personally in mind when He designed His grace plan in eternity past.
The Door to Grace
Paul continues the phrase with the door to this gracious plan the Father has devised. The NASB reads this way: “…and the Lord Jesus Christ.” and the Greek, KAI KURIOU IYESOU CHRISTO. The final phrase of this verse begins with conjunctionKAI. The connective use is translated simply “and.” The conjunction is followed by KURIOU the ablative of source of KURIOS with IYSOU. This is followed the ablative of apposition of KRISTOU. KRISTOS describes “Jesus.”
Just as in the preceding phrase, there is no preceding definite article here. This anarthrous construction emphasizes once again the incredible quality of the person of Jesus Christ. The Son, Jesus Christ, is the Door to the Father’s incredible plan. “Jesus” is the name of His humanity, while “Christ” refers to His messianic appointment. The work of Jesus Christ on the cross, that is His Saving work, is the open door through which a person walks by faith to enter into God’s gracious plan. The Tabernacle, for which God gave Moses the plans, taught this truth to those in the Age of Israel. Just inside door to the Tabernacle yard stood the Brazen Alter that taught our Lord’s sacrificial death.
Our heavenly Father provides the blessings while Jesus Christ the Son is the Door. You will note that this verse does not mention the Holy Spirit. He is conspicuously absent because He operates in the background during the Church Age, bringing glorification to the Son. This is the Age of the Glorification of the Son. The Spirit stays in the background providing the power for us to worship the Son. The Spirit points to the Son in this Age.
So, the entire verse in corrected translation reads thusly:
The entire salutation of this book sounds like this:
“Paul and Timothy, slaves belonging to Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, who are located in Philippi, with bishop-guardians (pastor-teachers) and deacons”. Grace to you for your benefit and so prosperity from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:1-2
Grace to you for your benefit and so prosperity from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:2
Link to: Philippians 1:3
Philippians 