Slaves of Christ
Philippians 1:1
Philippians Lesson #004
May 12, 2022
Dr. Robert L. Dean, Jr.
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Father, we are thankful that we can come together this evening to fellowship around Your Word and to realize all that You have revealed to us, coming to understand the foundations and the significance of what Paul is going to be covering in Philippians.
“Father, we thank You for Your grace toward us. We thank You for the way You are working with so many of those who are part of the Word of God Bible Church and the Word of God Bible College in Ukraine. And we pray for them.
“Father, we pray for us that we might be focused upon Your Word and focused upon our spiritual growth. We pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.”
Slide 2
We are studying in Philippians. The focus is on several facets of this salutation that we will finish up, looking at Philippians 1:1–2.
Slide 3
We have our outline of Philippians here. These are the major sections. We are in the first section, which is Philippians 1:1–8.
Actually, that can be subdivided into Philippians 1:1–2, which is the salutation. Then next time, we will start with Philippians 1:3–8, looking at prayer and what the Scriptures teach about prayer. That orients us.
Slide 4
Philippians 1:1. We began last time looking at “Who is Paul?”
“Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with—or I would translate that, ‘along with’—the overseers and deacons: …” King James translated the word bishops. We will talk about that when we get there.
Slide 5
We talked last time about Paul, trying to summarize a few key things, so that those who are relatively new to the Scriptures can understand who this Paul is.
Slide 6
We looked at a summary of Paul’s life and ministry last time: “From Saul to Paul, What the Bible Teaches About the Apostle Paul.”
Slide 7
I broke that down into four basic time frames.
Slide 8
We looked at Paul’s early life: from birth to conversion. He is born into a strongly devout pharisaical home. He is brought up under strict observance of the Mosaic Law and an emphasis on obeying the law as a means of righteousness.
He talks about this in the beginning of Philippians 3, that he looked at his position and all of his observance of the law as the basis for his righteousness.
Philippians 3:5–6, He is “circumcised on the eighth day,” according to the Mosaic Law. He is genetically an Israelite. He is “of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; and concerning the law, a Pharisee: concerning zeal—he is overzealous—a persecutor of the church;—we looked at various passages where he sought to have executed those who had converted to Christianity—concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”
In that chapter he is going to contrast the righteousness of the law with the righteousness we receive from Christ.
As he was persecuting the church, he was given a writ to go to Damascus, which is in Syria, north of Israel, and to arrest Jewish converts to Christianity there, and to bring them back to Jerusalem.
Slide 9
That story of his conversion is given in Acts 9.
Slide 10
There, he is on his way to Damascus. As he is nearing Damascus—I would put it somewhere between this number 4 to Damascus located here—that is where the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him. When he saw the risen Lord, at that point, he recognizes Who Jesus is.
Acts 9:4, Jesus says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” A great verse, because when Jesus says, “Why are you persecuting Me?” He is identifying the body of Christ, that is the believers in Him, with Himself. So to persecute a Christian is to persecute the body of Christ, is to persecute Christ.
Slide 11
In that episode in Acts 9:15, “… the Lord said to him,—to Ananias in Syria, telling him that he should go and minister to Saul of Tarsus—‘Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.’ ”
I pointed out that there are three groups involved. He is to minister, to take the gospel to Gentiles. It’s funny how a lot of older Dispensationalists sort of were blind to the last two, because they saw that Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. And they stopped there.
Some of them reached the conclusion that when Paul took the gospel to Jews, that he was out of line because he was the apostle to the Gentiles, and Peter was the apostle to the Jews.
But if you look carefully at what the Lord said, He said, “… he is a choice vessel of mine to bear my name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.” Just because he was the primary apostle to the Gentiles, it does not mean that there was something wrong in taking the gospel to the Jews.
Slide 12
Philippians 3:8–9, as he continued what we read earlier, his focal point from that point was that he would “… gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.”
This is one of the clearest passages on justification by faith alone, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us, where we are given the righteousness of Christ positionally, legally, at the instant that we trust in Christ. At that point, because we possess His righteousness, that is the reason we are declared righteous.
I was asked to do a wedding for a young couple. They had a friend that was supposed to do it, and at the last minute he was unable to leave North Carolina to come here and do the wedding. So, they were asking some people they knew who were unsaved Jews. How many of y’all would, if you needed to find a recommendation for a Christian pastor, would go to unsaved Jews to find out who to do your wedding?
This guy owns a company, and some of the investors in his company are some of my favorite close friends, unsaved Jews. Individually, without knowing that the others were being asked, they all were unified in their response, that he should get me to do the wedding. With that kind of a recommendation, what else could I do?
So, in the process of Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, I was going to meet with this couple because I didn’t know anything about them at all. It turns out that the young man is very solid in many ways in his understanding of the Scriptures. He is very interested in Jewish evangelism and in having a ministry to these unsaved Jews that have invested in his company.
We had some good conversation, and we were meeting at the house of a friend of his, a man who has been a spiritual mentor to him, who goes to First Baptist. I wanted to find out, “Who are these people? What do they believe? Are they saved? Are they really saved?”
So I started off with the older gentleman. He gave me his story and how he came to understand the gospel. Then we went to the bride-to-be, and I posed the question, “If you were to die today, and you were to appear in Heaven and Jesus were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say?”
That is a good question to ask. I have found a number of Christians who were saved, who I was pretty confident were saved and that they understood the gospel—because in almost every case I’ve done this, they’ve been in Bible churches forever—but apparently, they just had never phrased it that way or thought about it.
You’re basically saying, “Why do you know you’re saved?” And they don’t know.
“Well, I’ve been a good person. I’ve gone to church a lot. I’ve really tried to help people. And I don’t think I have any really bad sins.”
So, I was in this environment where I’m with three people I don’t know. And sometimes you can get yourself in trouble. People will react to you if you start to try to correct a person’s understanding of the gospel in that kind of a situation.
So I said, “I would like you to read a Scripture.” I pulled it up on my phone, and I handed it to her. And I said, “I want you to read through the verse just quietly, and then tell me what it says. Read it to me. Tell me what it says.”
We went to Titus 3:5, “not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”
And I said, “What does that say about good works?”
She said, “It says it’s not by good works.”
I said, “Good. How are you saved?”
“It says regeneration.”
I said, “Do you know what regeneration is?”
And she said, “I’m not sure. Something about being born again.”
I said, “Okay, let’s turn to John 3:14,” which is the first time you read the statement that we are saved by belief in the only begotten Son of God. Then the explanation of that is in John 3:16. Then we went on through John 3:17–18.
When we got done, I said, “What’s the most common word in those verses other than ‘a,’ ‘and,’ and ‘the’?” I had to give her a couple of hints that it was the word believe. It’s in every verse.
How are you saved? Believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God. So we talked about that a little bit.
I said, “Have you ever trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior?”
She said, “Oh yeah, I did that when I was seven.”
I said, “That’s how you know you’re saved. Because what happens when you trust Christ as Savior is, God gives you positionally, legally—He assigns to you—Christ’s righteousness. So all your good deeds don’t count for anything. It’s just Christ’s righteousness. That’s what justification by faith alone means.”
What was interesting was, I’m watching the two guys, because in I’ve been in situations like this before where somebody said, “Why are you doing this?” And they are just eating it up.
I think the husband-to-be, the groom, was taken aback that she couldn’t answer that question. And the older gentleman was also. And they both seemed to me to be very concerned about evangelism.
It was fun to watch their very positive reaction to me taking them through the gospel. That worked out really well. She got a good understanding of the gospel.
That’s what Paul is saying here, that it is the righteousness which is from God by faith.
If you’re ever in a position where somebody says, “If you die, and you appear before the Lord Jesus Christ, and He says, ‘Why should I let you into Heaven?’ ” The answer is, “Because You gave me Your righteousness when I trusted in You, and that’s why You should let me into heaven.” Something along those lines.
Slide 13
What we learned as we went through Paul’s life is that the risen Christ appeared to him on the way to Damascus. He believed in Jesus as the crucified, risen Messiah and was commissioned by Jesus Christ as an apostle. He was specifically commissioned to take the gospel to the Gentiles and proclaim the new entity of the church, the body of Christ, composed of Jews and Gentiles together as one.
Slide 14
We looked at his three missionary journeys:
After the first journey, he wrote one Epistle; second journey, two Epistles; third journey, three Epistles. Now, you should never forget that as long as you can count to three.
Slide 15
Then while he was in Rome, he wrote the prison Epistles: Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians.
Then when he was set free, he traveled to Spain, England, Europe, and he revisited Crete, Ephesus, Macedonia, Troas, Nicopolis. And he wrote 1 Timothy and Titus during that time.
Then he is imprisoned again, during which he wrote his last Epistle: 2 Timothy.
Slide 16
Then we came to Timothy. What do we know about Timothy? Who was Timothy? Why is he important?
Slide 17
Timothy is important because he is the traveling companion to the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul took him along with him and mentored him so that one day he would be a pastor. He is going to pastor in Ephesus for a number of years.
There were several congregations in Ephesus. There are those that think that there is one congregation in each of these locations, but we know from several passages in Acts, where the singular noun EKKLĒSIA, church, is used to describe a region, where there would have been multiple congregations.
So when you have the church in Samaria and Judea, you’re talking about several congregations, but it is a singular word “church.” That is very important because once we start looking at the last phrase in Philippians 1:1, where it mentions the bishops and deacons, or overseers and deacons, sometimes people forget that the word “church” can refer to multiple congregations. We will get into that a little more in just a little bit.
On his second missionary journey, having already met Timothy on the first journey, he takes him along with him as they go to Europe. This was the last thing we covered towards the end last time.
Slide 18
He is not including Timothy’s name because Timothy also wrote Philippians. Timothy did not write it, and he probably was not Paul’s amanuensis.
That is a good word to learn, amanuensis. You will run across that in just about anything you read talking about inspiration and inerrancy. This is a secretary who takes dictation. He probably did not participate in the writing or transcribing of it at all.
Second, he was with Paul when Paul went to Philippi, so he would be known by the Philippians quite well.
He was present with Paul when Paul wrote the Epistle, so that was natural to include him.
Then because Timothy had been there on two previous occasions with Paul, he is well known to them, and he is about to send Timothy to Philippi with this letter.
By including Timothy, he is saying, “Timothy agrees with me in all of the things that I am teaching, and I recommend him to you.” So, Paul is giving Timothy an endorsement.
Slide 19
The next statement is an interesting one because there is interesting discussion and debate about the meaning of this word that is translated “bondservant.” It is the “bondservants of Jesus Christ.”
Notice, he does not mention that he is an apostle. We will get back to that, but that is because he is very close, and this is a very personal Epistle. He is not having to remind them of his authority. There are three Epistles where he does not mention his apostleship in the introduction. But in all of the others he does because he needs to remind them of who he is—he is “playing the authority card”—that they need to listen to him, but not in this situation.
Slide 20
The word translated “bondservants” is this Greek word, DOULOS. I want you to notice something here because he is not just saying, “Paul and Timothy, slaves.” That would just put our focus on the one word. He says, “We are slaves of Jesus Christ. We are bondservants of Jesus Christ.” This is a phrase that is a problem because a lot of people do not like the idea of being a slave.
Slide 21
In fact, in the Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich lexicon, it identifies as the primary meaning of the word, that this refers to a male slave as an entity in a socioeconomic context. The first meaning is “slave.” Then there is a parenthesis to explain this.
“ ‘Servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to biblical translation.” I will stop there. What is that saying? It is saying, the only time you see in all the translations of ancient Greek literature where DOULOS is translated as a servant is in the Bible.
You ought to have a problem with that because the issue is, in early American times—what is the problem in early America? The problem is slavery and what has taken place historically in terms of the War Between the States and all of the emotional associations with the concept of slavery that we have.
So, we are going to use our emotional reaction to an institution that was part of every civilization going back to at least the Flood and probably before. And we are going to change the concept in our translation because it might offend somebody or might make them feel uncomfortable.
There certainly are some negative associations with human slavery. There is physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. There are all kinds of negative things that happened when slavery took place, whether it was in American slavery, or ancient Roman slavery, or any of the other manifestations of slavery down through the centuries.
But the emphasis in slavery is that a person is owned by a master who has the authority to dictate everything to the one he owns because it is his property. We do not like that idea of saying that human beings are property. But we need to look at how Scripture uses the term and not get concerned about these socioeconomic, historical distortions and abuses of slavery that have taken place down through the centuries.
Now, I’m not endorsing slavery. But what Scripture says is, we are all slaves. And you have to go to Romans 6 to understand this.
Slide 22
Romans 6 is talking about the role of the believer in relation to his sin nature: that the believer is to recognize that now that he has been identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, the tyranny of the sin nature is broken.
It does not mean that the sin nature is any less powerful. It does not mean that the sin nature is going to go hide in a corner. It does not mean that the sin nature is not going to manifest itself in your way as it will with unbelievers. Those are all aberrations that are taught.
There is within lordship salvation the idea that what happens in regeneration is that a person’s sin nature is somehow diluted. Its power is diluted so that there are things that you just will not be able to do, or just cannot do as a regenerated person. That there are sins that only unbelievers are going to commit.
So, if you do “this thing” or “that thing,” then maybe you really were not saved. And when people look at anybody—pick any presidential figure, any criminal in American history—and you say, “Well, that person couldn’t be saved.” Why not?
“Well, they did this. Look at what they did. How could a Christian do that?” Christians commit all kinds of sins every single day, and nobody ever seems to talk about, “Wow, that person is so arrogant. How can they be a Christian?”
Usually, they are talking about some overt sin that they have committed rather than some mental attitude sin, because we do not usually see the mental attitude sins that are going on. But the mental attitude sins are what underlie the overt sins.
There is no sin that a Christian cannot commit because a Christian can make himself a slave to the sin nature again, live as if he is still a slave. That is what Paul is getting at here.
Romans 6:15, He says, “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” In other words, does grace give us a license to sin? And he says, “No, not at all!”–very strong, very emphatic phrase in the Greek.
Romans 6:16, He says, “Do you not know …” The way this is stated is, he assumes they do know, they just need to be reminded. “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?”
The first part of that verse states a universal principle, that if you put yourself under the authority of a master, then you have voluntarily become that person’s slave. That is what happened in the Old Testament.
A lot of what we must understand when we talk about this DOULOS, servant, or slave, terminology in the New Testament is that in the Old Testament you were not allowed to have a slave for life. A slave was to be freed every seventh year, every sabbatical year.
But a person may have decided, “I just can’t make my life work. I’m always getting into debt. I’m always getting into trouble. I just can’t quite handle life myself. I would rather be a slave the whole time and let somebody else take care of me.” They could voluntarily enter into lifetime servitude.
If they entered into lifetime servitude, they would pierce their ear in such a way to indicate they were a voluntary slave. That is what was accepted in the Old Testament. It was not practiced in the way in which we had chattel slavery that developed in the United States of America.
By the way, one of the most interesting things that I discovered last year in studying through a lot of Critical Race Theory material and Project 1619 is what happened in 1619. There was a slave ship, a Dutch slave ship, that ran into problems, so they ended up seeking refuge at Jamestown in Virginia. They had about 20 to 25 African slaves on board. They were running out of food and running out of water. They needed supplies, and they really wanted to ditch these slaves and not have to deal with that anymore.
So, what they did was, they did not trade for the slaves, they received food and supplies, and they let the slaves go into the colonies. But the 1619 Project wants to say, that was the purchase. There were no slave laws at that time in Virginia. So, they were let go, and they have been able to trace about half of them as to what took place.
They became indentured servants, which is modeled after the Jewish practice, a Mosaic Law practice, where they have bound themselves to a master, to an employer for seven years. Then on the seventh year, they received their freedom.
What is interesting is, one of those Africans became an indentured servant. After he gained his freedom, he managed to acquire some land. And then he acquired some indentured servants, and he became one of the wealthiest tobacco plantation farmers in Virginia.
In the 1660s—1663, 1664—one of his indentured servants had created a variety of problems, so he took it to court to have his period of indentured servitude be commuted to lifetime servitude. A black master with a black indentured servitude was granted the right to change this period of indenturedness to a lifetime of slavery.
That is the start of lifetime slavery in what became the United States. It was interestingly started by one of the slaves that got off that ship that landed in Jamestown. The people of the 1619 Project conveniently ignore all kinds of material.
The idea in slavery is, you are owned by someone. You become “that one’s slaves whom you obey,” voluntarily putting yourself under the authority of this master. And then Paul applies it.
He says, “whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness.” We all live our lives as slaves. Notice there is no free person in here. You are either a slave to sin, or you are a slave to righteousness.
This is the believer. The believer has already been freed from the tyranny of the sin nature. So now he has to decide if he is going to be like the Israelites that came out of Egypt during the Exodus and say, “I want to go back to the leeks and garlics and the comforts of Egypt because living out here where I have to take personal responsibility for my life and my spiritual life is just too hard. I want to go back and be a slave in Egypt.”
There’s a lot of people like that. And today I think we have reared a generation of spoiled children who would rather have their parents or somebody take care of them their whole life—the government on the government plantation—rather than take ownership and responsibility for their own lives.
This is what Paul is getting at here. I think he is thinking of what happened with the Exodus generation.
You are either going to follow the path “of sin which leads to death—this is not spiritual death, this is carnal death; you are already a believer, and now you are just going to be living like a spiritually dead person—or obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin—see, past tense, you were slaves of sin—yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine—or that form of teaching—to which you were delivered.”
Slide 23
Romans 6:18, “And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” This is the issue in the spiritual life. We make these decisions day in and day out.
Am I going to succumb to the temptation of my sin nature and put myself back under the mastery of the sin nature even though Christ has broken its ultimate power? Or am I going to walk by the Spirit and be a slave of righteousness?
Notice there is not a middle ground. You are either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness, but you are a slave. And that has all of the negative connotations, in that we lose freedom. We are either going to submit to the authority of our sin nature or submit to the authority of Christ.
Romans 6:19, he says, “I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members—that is talking about your physical body—as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now—this is the command; if it was automatic that you are not going to be a slave to sin, then why is he commanding them?—present your members as slaves of righteousness …”
Lordship salvation would say that in sanctification you are automatically going to lean towards righteousness. And if you are “really saved,” you just can’t be as bad as you would have, could have been when you were an unbeliever.
But Paul is saying, “No, you can choose to be carnal. You can choose to continue to be a slave to the sin nature. Or you can present your members as slaves of righteousness.” It is the same word used here as “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. which is your reasonable service” in Romans 12:1.
Romans 6:19–20, “… so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.” In other words, there was no righteousness in your life.
Romans 6:21, “What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” Now this is not spiritual death; this is carnal death. This is when you are living like a spiritually dead person out of fellowship.
Slide 24
What we are talking about here is, first of all, our eternal reality. When we trust in Christ, we have a new identity. We call this “positional truth.” Our new legal position is “in Christ.” We are children of light, Paul says in Ephesians 5:8, “Walk as children of light.”
When he says you are children of light, that is your legal identity. That is what you are in Christ. But then he says, “Walk as children of light.” Why would he say that if you are automatically going to walk as a child of light? He wouldn’t.
The other side of it is the temporal reality, that we have to walk by the Spirit. We have to be filled by the Spirit, walking by the Spirit. And that is when we are walking in the light.
That is why I use the white circles. We are children of light positionally, but experientially we have to walk by the Holy Spirit and walk in the light.
Slide 25
But when we sin, we are in darkness. We are walking like a child of darkness. We are walking like a spiritually dead person. And we are under the control—and we have placed ourselves under the mastery—of the sin nature. And the only way out is to confess sin, and then we are restored to fellowship with God.
Slide 26
Positionally, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:23, “… you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” We belong to Christ. That is our new position. He is our new master legally, positionally. Why?
1 Corinthians 7:23, “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.” The word there for price is AGORAZŌ. AGORAZŌ has the idea of purchasing something in the market.
The word for the marketplace was the AGORA. You will hear about a psychological term, that people are agoraphobes. That first part is their fear of the marketplace, the fear of being in public, the fear of being in crowds. It comes from this word.
This is a word which means “to purchase in the market,” or purchase in the slave market of sin: that Christ bought us out of the slave market of sin. He paid the price on the Cross.
Slide 27
This word DOULOS is translated in the New King James as “bondservant” in Ephesians 6:5, where it is talking about those who are slaves.
Paul addresses husbands, loving your wives as Christ loved the church, and wives being submissive to your husbands. Parents bringing up your children, and fathers specifically bringing up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and children obeying your parents.
And then he addresses the slaves. He says, “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.” So even though you, as Peter says, have a master that is cruel, you are to be obedient.
Slide 28
The verbal form of that noun DOULOS is DOULEUŌ which means “to serve.” This is what happens: because the word can have the idea of being a servant or serving, we like that better, because that is a nicer idea, to be a servant than to be a slave.
But you see, in many places, we are slaves. We have been bought with a price. We are either slaves of righteousness or slaves of sin. We are not a servant of righteousness or a servant of unrighteousness.
Galatians 5:13 says that “through love” we are to “serve one another.” That is DOULEUŌ.
Ephesians 6:7, “… with good will doing service—or serving one another—as to the Lord, and not to men.”
Slide 29
This idea of being a bondservant of Jesus Christ is very important. That phrase “of Jesus Christ” changes everything because Jesus Christ is absolutely perfect. He is not going to be an authority over us for self-centered reasons.
It is a perfect position to be in, where we are under the authority of the perfect God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. It puts the focus away from Paul and Timothy onto Jesus Christ. The real issue here is Jesus Christ.
The name Jesus, or IĒSOUS in the Greek, which is very close to the way it is pronounced in Latin, Jesu, which then becomes anglicized as Jesus, is from the Hebrew word Yeshua, which comes from the verb yȃshaˋ, which relates to deliverance or salvation and becomes a technical term.
And it is the same root as the name “Joshua” or Yehoshua that you have in the Old Testament. It is all built on the verb “to save.”
Christ, CHRISTOS in Greek, is the noun for being anointed, “the anointed one.” Somebody is anointed—it is not a spiritual category. It means somebody who is appointed to a particular position.
There are two different words that are used for “anointing” in the New Testament. There is the word CHRISTOS, and there is the word ALEIPHŌ or ALEIPHŌS, the noun. The difference is that CHRISTOS is a ritual anointing, whereas ALEIPHŌ, the verb, relates to a normal, everyday anointing.
Ladies, before you go to bed at night, you are going to put on some cream, some things to take your makeup off. You are anointing your face. Guys, you are going to put some gel or something on your hair to smooth it out. You are anointing your hair.
You are going to put on sunscreen. You anoint yourself with sunscreen. We do not use the word “anointing” that way, but that is how they would use it. The difference is, one is ritual, and one is just the everyday practice of taking care of your skin.
You live in a very dry climate in the desert, you would put oil on your skin to keep your skin soft. That is the idea.
This is IĒSOUS CHRISTOS, IĒSOUS the Anointed One. At one point they probably said it that way, “IĒSOUS the Anointed One,” but then it just became IĒSOUS CHRISTOS, and in some places it is CHRISTOS IĒSOUS, Christ Jesus. But there is essentially no difference between the two different terms.
The Epistle is addressed to all the saints. What is a saint? Due to the influence of medieval theology, the idea was that a saint was some person who was super spiritual. Somebody who maybe performed some miracles. So, it became a category of Christian.
But that is not how it is used in the New Testament. The Greek word here is simply the word HAGIOS with the article. So, it is “the sanctified one” literally. And the meaning of HAGIOS, as we have studied many times, is “to be set apart to the service of God.”
It is the Greek form of the Hebrew word qȃdash. That verb referred to doing something that was set apart to the service of God. And there is a masculine participle and a feminine participle that referred to temple prostitutes.
A lot of people think that a “holy one” is somebody who is morally pure and extra good. But that is not what the word means, because you would not refer to a temple prostitute, male or female, as someone who is morally pure. But they were set apart to the service of their god.
So, this is referring to believers who are set apart to God by their faith in Christ. This relates to their positional identity, that positional truth, the left circle in the diagram I used a minute ago.
Philippians 1:1, “the saints in Christ …” You have to look at the whole phrase. They are not just saints, set apart ones; they are set apart in Christ. That is their positional or their legal identity.
That is just another way to refer to believers. Anyone who has trusted Christ as Savior has gone through the process that was immediate, and you did not feel it or experience it. That is the baptism by the Holy Spirit.
Slide 30
In Romans 6:3, Paul writes, “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” The concept of baptism relates to identification.
“Or do you not know that as many of us as were identified with Christ Jesus were identified with his death?”
Romans 6:4, “Therefore we were buried with him through baptism—that is, identification with His—death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” So, the baptism by the Spirit is that which identifies us with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. It is that resurrection to newness of life which is the foundation for our spiritual walk.
In Roman 6:5 he goes on to say, “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.” When we look at what this passage says, HAGIOS EN CHRISTO, saints in Christ, that is our positional identity because of what happens with the baptism by the Spirit: identification with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
So, the passage is addressed to the saints in Christ Jesus. Then Philippians 1:1 goes on to say, “who are in Philippi—that is, those who are in this local church—along with …”
Your King James or New King James will just say “with,” but it has the idea “along with.” He is not just writing the everyday believer in the pew. He is writing to the bishops and deacons. These are two terms that are used to refer to church authorities. So, we have to stop a minute.
We have gone through this in our study in Ephesians, but we need to do it here. These two terms are significant. The word for bishops is the word EPISKOPOS, where we get the term for an Episcopal Church or an episcopal form of government. And deacons is the word DIAKONOS, which means someone who has a service of ministry in the local church.
And that verb form is used back in Acts 6 when the seven are selected to help with the distribution of aid to the widows in the Greek-speaking Jewish community in Jerusalem. It does not mean they were deacons. They were sort of proto-deacons. That was very early in the church.
Slide 31
You have the use of the word EPISKOPOS in relationship to Jesus Christ in 1 Peter 2:25, where Peter says, “For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer ...”
This is an example of the Granville Sharp Rule. One article and then the two singular nouns are joined by the conjunction “and,” which indicates Jesus is both Shepherd and Overseer, and unites those nouns together in Christ. The Shepherd is the noun POIMENOS, which is the word for pastor, and Overseer is EPISKOPOS.
Slide 32
This is also seen in 1 Peter 5:1–2. In 1 Peter 5:2, we have the verb POIMAINŌ, which is the verb form of POIMENOS, the noun for pastor. It means to shepherd or to feed the flock of God. So that is a command. It is an aorist imperative, meaning that it is a priority.
“Shepherd the flock of God, which is among you, serving as overseers.” The one who shepherds the flock is identified as an overseer. “Serving as overseers” is a participle based on EPISKOPEŌ, which is the verb form of EPISKOPOS.
This is important because you have different forms of church government which developed in church history. By the early second century, the bishop and the pastor were no longer the same person. They elevated the bishop to the first among equals among the pastors in a city.
You might have 20 pastors, but only one of them is going to be the first among equals, and he is going to be elevated to this position as the bishop. That is not how the Bible used the term, but that became part of the structure of churches after the second century, where you had a bishop as a ruling elder.
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What we see from passages like Acts 20:17 and Acts 20:28 is that the other term that is used for the leaders of the church is “elders.” And this is the term PRESBUTEROS on the right side. It means someone who is older, someone who is mature. That is the most common term for the leader of a congregation in the New Testament.
On the left you have EPISKOPOS, translated as overseer, bishop, or guardian. That refers again to a function of the elder. “Elder” emphasizes his spiritual maturity. Then you have the verb POIMAINŌ, which is to shepherd or to feed.
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These are the terms we have in the New Testament. Elder refers to an office, emphasizing the spiritual maturity of the person in that office. We will look at Titus 1:5–6 in just a minute.
You have the term bishop or overseer, and this emphasizes the authority, the oversight function of the office. It is used in Titus 1:7 as a synonym for elder in Titus 1:5.
Then you have the word pastor only used one time, as we studied on Sunday morning in Ephesians 4:11, Pastor-Teacher. That indicates his responsibility to feed the sheep through the teaching of the Word of God.
Slide 35
In 1 Peter 5:1, “The elders who are among you …” These were different pastors from different congregations. Remember, Peter is talking to those who are scattered in Bithynia and Pontus. He is not talking to one congregation, so there were numerous pastors.
“… who are among you I exhort, who am a fellow elder.” Then he says, “Shepherd the flock of God—POIMAINŌ—which is among you, serving as overseers.” So you have all three concepts, and they relate to the same person.
Slide 36
In Titus 1:5, he says to Titus, “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders—PRESBUTEROS in the plural—in every city as I commanded you.” He could be appointing multiple pastors in every city, or he could be using “elders” as the fact you are going to appoint multiple elders throughout Crete and they will be in different cities.
So you can’t say that means that every church has a plurality of elders. It just will not hold weight.
Then he shifts terms in Titus 1:7. He says, “For a bishop ...” The “for” indicates he is explaining something. He appoints elders and then gives qualifications for the elder in Titus 1:6, and then an explanation for a bishop, and that word bishop goes back to an elder.
The elder, the PRESBUTEROS, is the same as the EPISKOPOS. We see this in a number of other passages as well. In Acts 20 Paul calls the elders from Ephesus to come to Miletus, and he addresses them as both overseers and as elders.
This tells us that your key leadership are elders. And those who assist them in carrying out the administrative functions of the church and the details of the physical properties of the church are the deacons.
Slide 39
In 1 Timothy 3:1, it says, “This is a faithful saying: if a man desires the position of a bishop—of an EPISKOPOS or an elder—he desires a good work.” What is interesting is, all through 1 Timothy 3:1–7 where it is talking about the EPISKOPOS, it is always a singular. The participles are singular.
When he says, “It is a faithful saying: if a man—singular—desires the position of a bishop—the noun is singular—he desires a good work.” The pronoun is singular.
But when you get down to 1 Timothy 3:8, “Likewise deacons …”—plural. When it talks about deacons, it is a plural noun. And from that point on, the nouns and pronouns that refer back to the deacons are all plural.
So you have one singular elder, pastor, overseer, but multiple deacons. I usually have never made an issue out of what kind of church government. I don’t care what you call people, as long as you have these two areas that are taken care of. There is one who is teaching the Word, and the others are helping with the administration of the local congregation.
So that takes us through the end of Philippians 1:1, so we are making progress in a hurry. But all of this is important to understand what is being said in the text. We will come back next time.
Slide 40
We will probably get through Philippians 1:2 a lot more rapidly, and then we will get an introduction to prayer which takes place in Philippians 1:3–8.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for this opportunity to study these things, to get into understanding a little bit about church government and the role of leaders in the local church, as well as understanding the fact that we are all now purchased by Christ.
“We are owned by Him. We have been bought with a price out of the slave market of sin. But we have a choice. We can either serve Christ as His slave and a slave of righteousness, or we can serve go back to serving our sin nature and being a slave of unrighteousness.
“Father, we pray that we might be challenged with what we are learning here, that we need to walk more closely with You. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”