The Peace of God

Philippians 4:2–9

Read Philippians 4:2–9 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6–7

Agree in the Lord

The letter is drawing to a close. Paul has run the long argument from the participation in the gospel through the chains and the Christ Hymn and the great reversal and the upward call. Now he turns to the local situation. The Philippian church, as it turns out, has a problem. Two of its members, two of its longstanding, faithful, co-laboring members, are at odds. And Paul names them.

I appeal to Euodia and to Syntyche, he writes, to agree in the Lord. The repetition is striking. In the Greek, Paul uses the verb parakalō, I appeal or I entreat, twice, once for each woman: Euodian parakalō kai Syntychēn parakalō. He does not group them together as if they were a single problem. He addresses each of them individually, by name, as one would address an adult he respects. The grammar is symmetrical because the appeal is symmetrical. Neither woman is being scolded. Both are being entreated. Both are being asked to do the same thing: to agree in the Lord.

The verb agree (literally, think the same thing) is the same phronein that has run through this letter from the beginning. Paul has called the Philippians to think the same thing with one another. He has held up Christ as the model of the attitude they are to have. He has named selfish ambition and vanity as the threats. And now, having laid all that groundwork, he applies the teaching to two women who are not, at the moment, thinking the same thing.

Notice how Paul does it. He does not write a private letter to Euodia. He does not write a private letter to Syntyche. He names them publicly, in a letter that he knows will be read aloud in the assembly of the whole church. The entire congregation, the next time it gathers, will hear Paul’s appeal to these two by name. This is bracing. Some readers have found it embarrassing on the women’s behalf. But Paul’s instinct here is not embarrassment but candor. The disagreement is not a private matter. It involves the unity of the church. And so the appeal is made openly, in the hearing of the whole body, so that the whole body can witness the reconciliation when it comes.

We know little else about Euodia and Syntyche. We know their names, both of them good Greek names with positive connotations: Euodia meaning prosperous journey or good journey, and Syntyche meaning good fortune. We know they were Christians. We know they had struggled together with Paul in the gospel ministry. The verb is synathlein, the same verb Paul used in chapter one of the church contending side by side for the faith of the gospel. These were not minor figures. They had been part of the missionary enterprise itself, perhaps from the very first days when Lydia opened her home and the church at Philippi was born. And now, after years of faithful service, they are at odds.

What was the disagreement about? Paul does not say. Was it doctrinal? Personal? Some practical matter of how the church should be ordered? We do not know, and Paul does not consider the content of the dispute important enough to name. What he names instead is the call back to unity. Agree in the Lord. Find your shared mind not in some negotiated compromise of your positions but in the One in whom you both stand. The Lord is the ground on which agreement is possible. The Lord is the reason agreement must be reached.

Then Paul calls in a third party. Yes, I say also to you, true companion, help them. The phrase true companion (or true yokefellow, gnēsie syzyge) is one of the more debated phrases in this letter. Some have argued it is a proper name (Syzygus), though no such name is attested elsewhere. Others have thought it refers to Epaphroditus, who would be carrying the letter to Philippi. Still others have thought it refers to a particular elder of the church, or to the whole congregation collectively. The most likely reading is that Paul is addressing a particular man in the church, someone known to the Philippians and known to him, whose role would be to come alongside Euodia and Syntyche and help them work through their disagreement.

This is what Christian reconciliation often looks like. It is rarely a private matter between two parties. It usually requires a third. The man Paul addresses here is not asked to arbitrate, not asked to take sides, not asked to declare a winner. He is asked to help: to come alongside, to use his standing in the community to enable a difficult conversation to bear good fruit. The Lutheran tradition has always known that the church is a body, not a collection of individuals, and that the body has the responsibility to mediate, to reconcile, to bring its members back to one another when they have drifted apart. Paul’s word here gives that responsibility a particular face.

And then Paul writes what is, in a quiet way, one of the most striking phrases in the letter. Their names are in the book of life. Euodia. Syntyche. Clement. The rest of Paul’s coworkers. Their names are written, says the apostle, in the book of life. This is a phrase from the Old Testament. Moses pleaded with God in Exodus 32 not to blot his name from the book; the psalmist spoke of the book of the living; Daniel wrote of those whose names would be found written in the book. And it appears in the New Testament, most notably in Revelation, where the saints are those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life from before the foundation of the world.

Paul invokes this language here, of these two ordinary Christian women and their unnamed co-workers. Their names, he says, are in the book. Whatever their disagreement, whatever the friction between them today, their names are written where it matters. The book of life is not a record of human achievement. It is a record of those whom God has loved from before the foundation of the world. Euodia is in the book. Syntyche is in the book. They belong to God; they belong to one another; and the disagreement that has come between them cannot finally separate them. The Formula of Concord teaches us to consider election not by prying into God’s hidden counsel but in Christ, as He is revealed to us in the Word and Sacraments, where God gives His promise to keep His own (FC SD XI).

This is the gospel as it lands in the middle of an interpersonal conflict. The two who are at odds are both inscribed in the same book, and both are held by the same promise, spoken to them in the same Word and given to them at the same table.

Rejoice in the Lord Always

Then Paul lifts the appeal from the particular conflict to the general posture. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice!

The double imperative is striking. Paul has just commanded it; now, on second thought, he commands it again. The first command might have sounded ordinary; the second makes it impossible to miss. Rejoice… Again I say, rejoice! The doubling is not redundancy. It is emphasis. Paul wants the Philippians to hear this with both ears.

What is striking, of course, is the source of the command. Paul is in prison. He has just spent three chapters describing chains, opposition, false teachers, the prospect of his own death. And from the middle of this situation, he commands the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord always. Not occasionally. Not when things are going well. Not when they are in the mood. Always. The joy he commands is not the joy of favorable circumstances. It is the joy of belonging to the Lord, who is not absent in unfavorable circumstances and not threatened by them.

Rejoice in the Lord. The location matters. The joy is in the Lord: not in finances, not in health, not in the absence of conflict, not in the satisfaction of being right. In the Lord. The Lord is the location of the joy. And the Lord is the only location that holds steady through every kind of weather.

The Lutheran tradition has read this verse, and its near-cousin in 3:1, as one of the foundational descriptions of Christian affect. Christian joy is not a feeling produced by good circumstances. It is the steady gladness of those who belong to Christ. It does not depend on the news. It does not depend on the calendar. It does not depend on the disposition of one’s body in the morning. It depends on Christ. And Christ does not change.

This is why Paul can say always. The joy he commands is not the kind of joy that fluctuates with situation. It is the kind of joy that is grounded in a relationship that does not fluctuate. The Lord is the Lord on the days when life is sweet and on the days when life is bitter. The Lord is the Lord in the prison and on the throne. And the joy of belonging to the Lord runs underneath the changing weather of the days, like a deep river under the surface of the seasons.

Let everyone see your gentleness. The next exhortation seems to come out of nowhere, but it is connected to the joy. The word the NET renders gentleness, epieikes, is a difficult word to translate; older translations say moderation or reasonableness. It means something like gentleness, forbearance, the willingness not to stand on one’s rights, the disposition to be lenient with others. It is the opposite of harshness, of insistence, of the spirit that always demands what it is owed. Aristotle used the word for the virtue that goes beyond strict justice to the spirit of the law (Nicomachean Ethics 5.10). The Christian epieikes is the disposition that holds the law lightly enough to let the other person live.

Paul wants everyone to see this epieikes. Not just fellow Christians. Everyone the Philippian Christians encounter: neighbors, employers, fellow tradesmen, civic officials, even the men who might one day arrest them. The way Christians treat people is to be marked by this kind of gentle forbearance. And it is to be seen; that is, recognizable, visible, on display. The world ought to be able to point at the Christians and say: “those people are gentle. Those people do not stand on every offense. Those people forbear.”

Why? The Lord is near! The clause is brief but freighted. It can mean either near in time (the Lord is coming soon) or near in space (the Lord is present, beside us). Probably Paul means both. The Lord is coming, and so the Christian’s posture in this present time can afford to be relaxed about the small offenses, the petty injustices, the daily slights that would otherwise sour the heart. The Lord is also already near, close to His people, present with them in their daily walk. The Christian’s gentleness is grounded in the Lord’s nearness. The one who knows the Lord is near can afford to be patient with everyone else.

This is what joy and gentleness look like together. The joyful Christian, secure in the Lord, has nothing to prove and nothing to defend. He can be gentle because he is not afraid. He can be forbearing because he is not anxious. He can let small offenses pass because he knows the Lord is coming, and the Lord will sort out what is truly owed. In the meantime, the Christian’s posture is gentle forbearance, on display before the watching world, grounded in the joy of belonging to Christ.

Do Not Be Anxious

And now Paul speaks to the great enemy of joy: anxiety. Do not be anxious about anything, he writes. The Greek verb, merimnate, covers the range of meanings we attach to the English word: to worry, to fret, to be preoccupied with what might go wrong, to carry tomorrow’s troubles into today.

It is one of the most universal of Christian struggles. Anxiety creeps into every corner of life. We worry about our health, our finances, our children, our reputation, our future, the future of the world, the future of the church. The list is endless because the things that could go wrong are endless. And anxiety has a peculiar power to multiply itself: the more we worry, the more we find to worry about; the more we find, the more we worry. The Christian life can become, if we let it, a long anxious vigil over a world we cannot finally control.

Paul says: do not. About anything. Not just about big things, not just about small things. About anything. The Christian is to live a life that does not run on anxiety as its fuel.

This is, of course, much easier said than done. And Paul knows it. He does not leave the command hanging in the air as a moral demand. He immediately gives the alternative. Instead, Paul says, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God.

Anxiety is to be displaced by something. The Christian is not asked to stop worrying by sheer effort of will. He is asked to redirect the worry, to lift it up out of his own head and into the ears of God. The thing that would have become anxiety becomes, instead, a prayer.

Paul piles up vocabulary to make sure the Philippians get the picture. Prayer: proseuchē, the general word for prayer. Petition: deēsis, the more specific word for asking for a particular thing (older translations say supplication). Thanksgiving: eucharistia, the giving of thanks. And requests: aitēmata, the specific items of asking. Four words, all running in the same direction. Whatever you are tempted to worry about, take it to God. Pray about it. Petition Him about it. Thank Him in the middle of it. Lay your specific requests before Him.

The thanksgiving is the unexpected ingredient. Paul does not say pray, asking earnestly. He says pray, with thanksgiving. The Christian comes to God not just as a beggar but as a son, not just as one in need but as one who already knows that the Father is good. Thanksgiving frames the asking. The Christian knows that whatever he is asking for, the One he is asking has already proved Himself worth thanking. And so the prayer comes wrapped in gratitude.

This is the Lutheran shape of prayer. The Small Catechism teaches the Christian to begin every prayer from confidence in the Father’s goodness: with the words Our Father, God invites us to believe that He is truly our Father and we are truly His children, so that we may ask Him boldly and confidently, “as dear children ask their dear father” (SC III, Introduction). The Lord’s Prayer names the relationship, names the trust, before it ever names a request. Paul is teaching the Philippians, in a single verse, what Luther will teach the whole Lutheran tradition: the prayer of the Christian is grounded in thanksgiving, because the One being prayed to is the One who has already given Christ.

And then comes the promise. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, Paul promises, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Notice the verb tense. Will guard. This is not a vague hope. It is a promise. The peace of God is what will come when the prayer goes up. Paul does not say that the circumstances will change. He does not say that the answer will come in the form the Philippians wanted. He says that the peace of God will come, and that the peace will guard them.

The verb guard, phrourēsei, is a military verb. It is the verb for a garrison protecting a city, for a sentry standing watch at a gate. The peace of God will not merely visit the Philippians; it will guard them. It will stand at the gates of their hearts and minds. Anxiety will try to enter; the peace will keep it out. Despair will try to climb the walls; the peace will repel it. The peace, in other words, will function as a defender, a watchman, a soldier on duty.

And the peace is described in a phrase that has gone into the Christian vocabulary: that surpasses all understanding. The Greek phrase, hyperechousa panta noun, picks up the hyperechon of 3:8, where Paul spoke of the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. It is the same root, the same idea of towering above. The peace that comes from God surpasses, towers over, exceeds every kind of understanding, including our own. The peace is not the result of having figured out the circumstances. It is the result of leaving the circumstances in God’s hands. It does not depend on understanding. It surpasses understanding.

The Augsburg Confession, citing Romans 5:1, speaks of the consciences that find peace only when they believe that God is gracious to them for Christ’s sake (AC XX). This is the peace of those who know that God is not their enemy, that Christ has reconciled them, that the Spirit dwells in them, and that whatever comes next is in the hands of the One who has loved them with an everlasting love. This peace is what guards Christian hearts through every kind of storm. It is what carried the martyrs to their deaths singing. It is what carries every ordinary Christian through every ordinary trial. And it is what Paul promises here, to the Philippians and to every reader of this letter, as the fruit of prayer.

In Christ Jesus. The whole guard takes place in Christ Jesus. Outside of Christ, there is no such peace. In Christ, there is a peace that the world cannot give and cannot take away. Paul’s letter has been in Christ from beginning to end. And the peace that ends the letter is the peace that belongs to those who are in Him.

Whatever Is True

And then Paul gives one of the most beautiful lists in his letters. Finally, brothers and sisters, he writes, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things.

Six adjectives, two summary clauses in the Greek, a single verb. The list is a catalog of what the Christian mind is to feed on. Paul has been telling the Philippians, throughout this letter, to think the same thing, to have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had. Now he names the kinds of things the mind should attend to.

Whatever is true. The true, alēthē, comes first because it is the foundation. The Christian’s mind is to feed on what is true, not on what is false. The world is full of lies, of half-truths, of distorted versions of reality. The Christian’s discipline is to keep his mind on what is actually so. The gospel is true. The promises of God are true. The history of His dealings with His people is true. These are the things the mind is to dwell on.

Whatever is worthy of respect. The word, semna, has the sense of dignified, weighty, honorable; the NET captures it as worthy of respect. It is the opposite of trivial or shameful. The Christian’s mind is to feed on what has weight, what merits serious attention, what reflects the seriousness of life under God.

Whatever is just. Dikaia: righteous, right, in accordance with what God requires. The Christian’s mind is to dwell on what is right, on what aligns with God’s character, on what gives every person his due.

Whatever is pure. Hagna: pure, undefiled, free from moral contamination. The Christian’s mind is to feed on what is clean. The pollution of much that the world feeds on, its endless preoccupations with what should make a Christian ashamed, has no place in the Christian’s mental diet.

Whatever is lovely. Prosphilē: lovable, beautiful, the kind of thing that draws the heart to itself. The Christian’s mind is to dwell on what is beautiful, beauty being itself a gift of God, a witness to the order and goodness of creation.

Whatever is commendable. Euphēma: well-spoken, of good repute, the kind of thing about which good can be said. The Christian’s mind is to feed on what is commendable, not on what is gossiped, not on what is dragged through the mud.

If something is excellent or praiseworthy. In the Greek these are two final clauses, and they are summary: if there is any aretē, and if there is any epainos. Whatever falls under the heading of excellence (aretē, virtue, moral excellence) and whatever is praiseworthy (epainos, of good report). These are the categories under which everything Paul has just named can be summed up. Truth, dignity, justice, purity, loveliness, commendability: all of these are species of the genus excellence, all of these are aspects of what is worthy of praise.

Think about these things. The verb think about, logizesthe, means to reckon, to ponder, to take account of. It is the verb of careful intellectual attention, the verb for deliberate mental focus. Paul is not telling the Philippians simply to have these things in mind. He is telling them to think about them, to dwell on them, to keep coming back to them, to feed the mind on them deliberately.

This is the discipline of the Christian intellectual life. We are not free to feed our minds on whatever happens to come along. We are responsible for what we attend to. The mind is shaped by what it dwells on, and the Christian is to choose, deliberately, to dwell on what is true and worthy of respect and just and pure and lovely and commendable. Not because the dark things do not exist (they do) but because the Christian is not to be the one whose mind is colonized by them.

The Lutheran tradition has been a tradition of intellectual seriousness from the beginning. Luther himself was a man of vast learning, a translator of Scripture, a preacher and teacher who took the life of the mind seriously. And Lutheran piety has always understood that the Christian’s affections are shaped by the Christian’s attention. What we look at, we tend toward. What we dwell on, we become. And so the Christian who would have the mind of Christ must take care what his mind is fed.

And what you learned and received and heard and saw in me, Paul writes, do these things. Paul does not leave the list at the level of contemplation. The thinking must produce a doing. The Philippians are to do: prassete, practice, carry out what they have learned from Paul. The Christian life is not finally about thinking but about a thinking that issues in a doing. The mind that has been disciplined to dwell on what is true and worthy of respect produces a life that practices what is true and worthy of respect. And the apostle’s own example, transmitted to the Philippians through his teaching and his presence and his letters, has given them a pattern to follow.

And the God of peace will be with you. The passage ends where it has been heading all along: in peace. The God whose peace surpasses understanding is also the God of peace, who is with His people. The peace that guards their hearts is the peace of the God who is present among them. And the God who is with them is the same God they have come to know in Jesus Christ, the One who has emptied Himself for them, the One who has been highly exalted for them, the One who has given them the righteousness that is from God. He is the God of peace. And He is, by His Spirit, with His people.

Gathering the Threads

Philippians 4:2–9 is the closing exhortation of one of the warmest letters in the New Testament. It moves through a particular interpersonal conflict, into the great commands to rejoice and to be gentle, into the promise of the peace that surpasses understanding, and into the catalog of what the Christian mind is to feed on. The whole passage is densely practical; it is the application of everything that has come before to the daily life of the Philippian church.

Several Lutheran themes have surfaced again. The doctrine of vocation is at work in the call to epieikes, gentleness and forbearance, toward everyone. The Christian’s vocation in the world is to be known for this kind of forbearance. The doctrine of prayer receives one of its clearest scriptural articulations: prayer that is offered with thanksgiving, that brings every request to God, that displaces anxiety with the peace that surpasses understanding. And the doctrine of sanctification runs through the catalog of virtues: the Christian’s mind is not formed by accident but by attention, and the Christian is responsible to attend to what is true and worthy of respect and just and pure and lovely and commendable.

But the passage’s deepest gift is the gift of peace. The peace of God, Paul says, will guard the Christian heart and mind. This is not a peace produced by favorable circumstances. It is the peace of belonging to God in Christ, the peace that comes when the Christian has lifted his anxieties up to the Father in prayer and left them there. It is the peace that runs underneath every storm, the peace that holds steady when the world does not, the peace that the Philippian church can know (and that we can know) because the Lord is near, the Lord is in our midst, and the Lord is, by His Spirit, the God of peace who is with us.

The passage began with two Christian women at odds. It ends with the God of peace among His people. The arc of the passage is itself the gospel: the conflict named, the appeal made, the joy commanded, the anxiety addressed, the peace promised, the mind formed, the God of peace at last among His people. This is what every Christian congregation is, in its best moments, and what every Christian congregation can be, by the grace of the One who is always near.

For Discussion

This session brings the gospel into the texture of daily Christian life. The questions below invite you to think about your own quarrels, your own anxieties, your own affections, and your own habits of mind, in the light of what Paul has taught.

1. Paul names Euodia and Syntyche publicly in this letter, knowing it will be read aloud in the whole congregation. What do you make of this public naming? When is it right to address a Christian disagreement publicly, and when is it right to address it privately? Where in your own congregation is there a Euodia-and-Syntyche situation that needs the help of a true companion?

2. Paul commands, Rejoice in the Lord always. What is the difference between rejoicing in the Lord and rejoicing in something else? Where in your own life have you tried to rejoice in something that could not bear the weight of your rejoicing? What does it take to relocate your joy back into the Lord?

3. Paul says, Let everyone see your gentleness. The Lord is near! How is your epieikes, your gentleness and forbearance, seen among the people who know you? Where do you most often fail to be gentle, and how would the recognition that the Lord is near change the way you respond?

4. Paul gives a striking exchange: Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. What does it look like for you to make this exchange in real time, to feel the anxiety and lift it into prayer? Where in your prayer life has the thanksgiving dropped out, and how would it change your prayers if you put it back in?

5. The peace of God that surpasses all understanding, Paul writes, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Have you experienced this peace? Where in your life has the peace of God stood as a guard against the anxieties that would have entered? Where do you need to ask God for this peace today?

6. Paul gives the Christian mind a diet: whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. What does your own mental diet look like? Where have you let the wrong things colonize your attention? What practical changes could you make to feed your mind on what Paul names here?

Looking Ahead

In Session 8, the final session of this study, we will move into Philippians 4:10–23, where Paul brings the letter to its close. He will thank the Philippians for their renewed gift sent through Epaphroditus, and he will reflect on his own hard-won lesson in contentment: I have learned the secret of contentment, he writes, as one who has experienced times of need and times of abundance. He will declare, I am able to do all things through the one who strengthens me (read rightly, in context), and he will promise that my God will supply your every need according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. The letter ends with greetings from the saints, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household, and a closing benediction.

Read Philippians 4:10–23 before our next session.

Closing Prayer

God of peace, who has spoken peace to us in Your Son and given us peace by Your Spirit, grant that we may rejoice in You always, that our gentleness may be seen by all, that we may not be anxious about anything, but in every situation bring our requests before You with thanksgiving. Let Your peace, which surpasses all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Teach us to think on whatever is true, worthy of respect, just, pure, lovely, and commendable. And bring us, with all the Philippians whose names are in Your book of life, into the perfect peace of Your eternal kingdom. To the praise of Your name, with Jesus Christ Your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.