He Who Began a Good Work

Philippians 1:1-6

1Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:

2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In every prayer for all of you, I always pray with joy, 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

If you’re like me, you’re probably familiar with the encouragement found in verse six of the above passage: “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” How comforting to know God doesn’t give up on us and what he starts in us he will finish. We easily give up on ourselves and each other, but the God we serve isn’t like that. He finishes what he starts. Hallelujah!

Right now, though, I want to challenge our thinking and invite us to press into what more these verses can teach us. We are, perhaps, too quick to personalize promises like these. We love and serve a God who wants a personal relationship with us, so we take the personal, individual angle when we read Scripture. And as Americans, we are socialized to be independent, self-sufficient individualists—to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and all that—which makes us even more likely to take the “it’s all about me” approach to Bible promises. But this approach is incomplete and can lead to self-centered, complacent (uncritical, self-satisfied) Christianity.

I’m tired of being a self-centered, complacent Christian in a self-absorbed society. So, let’s think about this letter to the Philippians a little differently and with a bit more critical thinking. First, notice that Paul is speaking to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi and writes using the plural pronoun. If he were a Southerner, it might have sounded like this:

“Grace and peace to y’all…I thank my God every time I remember y’all. In every prayer for all y’all, I always pray with joy, because of y’all’s partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in y’all will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

Unity—“all y’all” rather than the individual—is a major theme of this letter. These believers needed a call to unity because they started in tremendous diversity and lived in a town that loved and valued independence. The origin story of the Philippian church can be found in Acts 16, and it’s worth a study of its own. In that chapter we meet a few of the founding members of the church at Philippi. They were from all walks of life: a rich woman (Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth) along with her entire household (servants and family alike); a slave girl who had been set free from demonic oppression; a working-class jailer and his household; and other “brothers” who met for church at Lydia’s house. The church consisted of women, men; older, younger; slave, free; rich, poor—diversity and inclusion at its finest. No wonder Paul needed to emphasize unity!

On top of that, they all lived in a city named for an independent, self-sufficient achiever, King Phillip II of Macedon (382-336 BC), whose very name symbolized self-sufficiency. Philip means “lover of horses.” In the ancient world, the horse was a symbol of wealth, power, and independence. No wonder Paul emphasized unity to this diverse body of self-sufficient, independence-loving believers. Grace and peace y’all…

Now let’s look again at what Paul says in verse six. Speaking to the whole body of believers at Philippi, he tells them that the God who began a good work in them all will bring it to completion. What is this corporate good work? Well, unity for a start. As hard as we may try, unity among believers is not possible without the work of God in our hearts. Jesus prayed that we would be one even as He was one with the Father (John 17). He sent Holy Spirit to help make that happen. On our own—without Holy Spirit accomplishing the good work of God in our hearts—oneness is not possible. Thank God He hasn’t given up on us! Unity is critical. Our witness to this world hinges on it. If we cannot get along and love one another as Christ loved us, what reason does “the world” have to listen to us? Why would someone want to “get saved” and radically change their lifestyle to join a bickering bunch of killjoys? Not really a great selling point, our bickering and in-fighting. Thank you, Father, that you don’t give up on us!

Beyond unity, I believe the good work that God began in the Philippians was really all about the gospel. It was about evangelism, not personal encouragement. Paul prays for the Philippians with joy because of their partnership in the gospel. It is that partnership—doing whatever they can to get the word out about the love, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—that has Paul praying with joy. He is encouraging the Philippians that this work of the gospel will get done. God will see to it that His son, Jesus Christ, will get the reward of His suffering. God will see to it that the work of spreading the gospel will carry on and prosper. It is the gospel that has power to supersede our differences and the power to change lives. We are one in Christ and apart from Him none of us—individually or collectively—can do anything.

In a self-absorbed and complacent world, I’m grateful for the reminder that it’s not about us. We can take personal encouragement in our corporate calling! The work God promises to complete is the work that begins and ends in Christ. Let’s partner with Him in seeing that the gospel message gets told to as many people as possible. We must see this thing through to completion, and God is for us and working in us all to get it done!