Let the peace of the gospel be evident in your lives
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
After his specific admonition to Euodia and Syntyche, Paul returns to a more general encouragement. Sounding the keynote of this epistle once more, he describes the spirit that should fill the hearts of the Philippians and all believers all the time. “Rejoice in the Lord!” Paul says. This time he adds “always.” The purest, highest joy should always shine forth like sunshine from Christians’ lives. Joy should be a fundamental mark of every believer’s personality. Because it does not always seem reasonable to rejoice, especially when believers are facing difficult and trying circumstances, the apostle repeats his encouragement, “I will say it again: Rejoice!”
Can believers really feel joy in their hearts when they are troubled by past sins? Can they rejoice when they or those whom they love are facing life’s sharp edges of unemployment, financial problems, sickness, uncertainty, pain, and death? Remember, Paul wrote these words as a prisoner, a man with years of “the fellowship of sharing in [Christ’s] sufferings” (3:10) behind him and an uncertain future ahead of him. Yet he wrote this epistle with a song in his heart and words of praise on his lips.
The apostle’s obvious lesson, then, is that outward circumstances do not and should not determine the condition of a believer’s heart. Even when everything around them is dark and gloomy, Christians can be joyful within. They can be joyful because of their oneness with Christ. Christ’s Spirit fills believers’ hearts continually with real gospel joy: the joy of forgiveness, the joy of knowing that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, the joyful assurance that Jesus is coming again to give us the full physical possession of our eternal inheritance in glory. If we call these unshakable gospel assurances to mind each day, we will understand that it is far from unreasonable for the apostle to urge us to rejoice in the Lord always. Nor is it unreasonable for us to urge one another to always rejoice.
In his calling as a pastor and caretaker of souls, this author has used this encouragement of the apostle to bring comfort to the sick, the shut-in, and the dying. He has used it to encourage those who are depressed and downtrodden by earthly troubles and difficulties that never seem to end. He has used it as a text for a funeral sermon and has been comforted by it personally when he sat in a mourner’s pew. How precious these encouraging words of the apostle are. Oh, that all of us would heed this encouragement and, ever remembering the incomparable spiritual treasures we possess in Christ, rejoice in the Lord—always!
Joyful Christians also feel within themselves a compelling need to share joy. The joy in their hearts will become evident by a gentleness in their conduct. “Gentleness” is the translation that has been selected here for a Greek word that cannot really be reproduced by a single word in English. Expressions that come close to reflecting its meaning are “big-heartedness” and “sweet reasonableness.”
What Paul is saying here is that Christians ought to be people who would much rather suffer wrong than inflict it. Gentleness, or sweet reasonableness, is another of those distinguishing characteristics that ought to mark Christians as different, special people in this world, people with a selfsacrificing attitude that imitates the humility of Christ. Where others loudly demand their rights, believers will gladly yield theirs. They will make the interests of the weak and helpless their concern and patiently yield to others, wherever such yielding does not violate their Christian principles.
In this area too, all of us have much growing to do. Gentleness is not always evident in our Christian homes, much less in our relationships to our neighbors in the world. We need the Holy Spirit’s constant help and blessing to give evidence of our Christian joy in gentle treatment of others.
The nearness of Christ’s return should also be an encouragement to joy within and gentleness without. The early Christians were deeply conscious of the fact that each passing day brought them closer to Christ’s return. Frequently they greeted each other with the word maranatha, which means “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Over 19 centuries have passed since Paul wrote, “The Lord is near.” By God’s way of reckoning, Christ is still near. For individual believers, Christ’s summons from this life to eternity is always near. It could come at any time. So could Christ’s return in glory. If we understand that, we will want to live in the same eager, expectant spirit of rejoicing in which those early believers lived. How small a thing the sacrificing of some earthly rights becomes when we know that all wrongs will be righted when Christ appears. How meaningless the selfish lives of the unspiritual people around us appear. How significant lives of gentle joyfulness become.
Consciousness of the Lord’s return will also help believers put into practice the apostle’s next encouragement, “Do not be anxious about anything.” There is, of course, such a thing as God-pleasing, kindly concern and genuine interest in the welfare of others. What the apostle discourages here is worry and anxiety for those things we have no control over. We human beings are a worrying species. We worry about food and clothing, about what the future will bring, and about many other things. But worry is a sin. It shows a lack of trust in God. Do not be anxious and worried, Paul tells us. In childlike trust, leave everything in the Lord’s loving hands.
The Lord does not forbid us to make plans or to think ahead. He does not want us to regard prayer as a substitute for planning and working. He wants us to use forethought and common sense to meet the various challenges and problems he sets before us in life, but in all our working and planning and thinking ahead, we Christians dare never forget that the outcome depends completely on the Lord’s will and on his blessing.
With childlike trust, therefore, we should commend ourselves and our concerns to the Lord in prayer. The Lord knows our needs without our praying about them, but he lovingly invites and encourages us to bring them all to him in prayer. Into what more capable hands could we place them? And he actually promises that he will be moved by our prayers. It’s our loss if we don’t pray. “Oh, what peace we often forfeit,” the hymn writer reminds us, “Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!” (CW 411:1).
Nor should our prayers be restricted only to requests. If they are, we are praying selfishly. Christians’ prayers should also include thanksgiving. Paul began every one of his epistles with outpourings of thanksgiving to God, and throughout his writings he continually emphasizes the importance of giving thanks. A prayer without thanksgiving is like a bird without wings. It has trouble rising upward.
Above all these encouragements Paul places, in bold letters, a wonderful promise. Over all of believers’ lives, over all their labors and endeavors, rests the blessed peace of God. The peace of God originates in God. In love he imparts that peace to his children, his believers. He fills their hearts with peace through the gospel assurance that in Christ Jesus their sins are forgiven and they are at peace with him.
Peace and grace are often mentioned by the apostle in the same breath because peace results from grace. The peace of God has been called “the smile of God reflected in the soul of the believer.” That precious peace—“which transcends all understanding,” as Paul assures his readers—will guard their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
The Philippians were used to the sight of Roman sentries standing guard. In that way, the apostle tells them, God’s peace stands guard at the door of the believer’s heart. God’s peace standing guard keeps believers steadfastly clinging to Christ. It prevents care from wearing on their hearts and keeps unworthy thoughts from disturbing them. By trust and prayer believers enter the impregnable fortress of God’s peace in the Lord Jesus Christ, a fortress from which nothing can dislodge them.