Finally Or rather, as το λοιπον should be here rendered, As for what remains; or, what I have further in view in writing this epistle. For the expression cannot here signify finally, as our translators have rendered the word, since the apostle is only entering on the main subject of his letter. Properly, it is a form of transition, and is translated besides, 1 Corinthians 1:16. It is as if he had said, Whatever may become of me, or of yourselves, so far as any worldly interest or prospect is concerned, rejoice in the Lord Christ In the knowledge you have of him, and of the truths and promises of his gospel; in the faith you have in him; the union you have with him by that faith; the relations in which you stand to him as his friends, his brethren, his spouse; in the conformity you have to him in heart and life, and in the expectations you have from him of felicity and glory eternal. These are sufficient causes for rejoicing, whatever circumstances you may be in, and whatever your trials and troubles may be in this present short and uncertain life. Reader, hast thou these reasons for rejoicing?
Then thou mayest well bear without impatience or discontent the light afflictions which are but for a moment, 2 Corinthians 4:17.
To write the same things Which you have heard from me before, or which I have written to other churches, and which I have desired Epaphroditus to tell you; to me indeed is not grievous Nothing was accounted grievous or troublesome by him which was for the edification of the church; but for you it is safe It will tend to preserve you from the errors and sins in which you might otherwise be insnared. The condemnation of the errors of the Judaizers, which the apostle was about to write in this chapter, he had already written in his epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. But as they were matters of great importance, he did not grudge to write them in this letter; because, if they were only communicated to them verbally, by Epaphroditus, or others, all the Philippians might not have had an opportunity of hearing them, or they might have misunderstood them. Whereas, having them in writing, they could examine them at their leisure, and have recourse to them as often as they had occasion. St. Paul, we may observe further, wrote most of his epistles, partly at least, with a view to confute the erroneous doctrines and practices of the Judaizing teachers, who in the first age greatly disturbed the churches chiefly by their affirming, that unless the Gentiles were circumcised, after the manner of Moses, they could not be saved But as these teachers artfully suited their arguments to the circumstances and prejudices of the persons whom they addressed, the controversy hath a new aspect in almost every epistle. And what the apostle advances in confutation of their doctrine, and for explaining and establishing the genuine doctrines of the gospel, comprehends a variety of particulars highly worthy of the attention of Christians in every age.