Fridays in Philippians

This week we are going to be starting a new feature on the blog called “Fridays in Philippians.” We’ll start with quite a few introductory posts today and next Friday we’ll begin our weekly look into the actual content of the book. Some of the posts today may have a slightly technical feel to them because of their topics, but I hope we will avoid dryness and present the book in a Christ-centered, expository way in weeks to come.

I have also invited some others to post articles along with me on their respective blogs and I will link to them as they are written. Most everything that I will post over the following weeks I have learned from other men either through their messages or their writings. Where I have gleaned from these godly men, I will try to give them due credit in the footnotes.

I am happy to humbly acknowledge these men as my teachers. Using the words of one of them, they are “men in whose communion I thankfully delight myself, [and] whom I delight to honour.” (1)

One of the least known of these men, but one of the most helpful to me, was the Chinese missionary G. Christopher Willis who understood something of Paul’s situation in Rome, having being imprisoned himself as a missionary in a Japanese concentration camp during the war. I leave you with the words from the preface to his book because they express my heart.

“Perhaps none will realize the shortcomings of these Meditations so much as the writer; but such as they are I commend them to God and to His grace, that in His mercy He may accept them, and use them for His own glory, and for food for some of His sheep and lambs: for, the whole Flock, not any party, has been in view in their preparation.”  (2)

May God bless our study of this wonderful book.

Follow the “Fridays in Philippians” series of synchroblogs here.

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(1) JND, “Considerations on the Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ”

(2) Willis, G.C. “Sacrifices of Joy”. pg. vi

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