CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Philippians 3:17. Followers together of me.—He does not, as some ungracious pastors do, show the steep road to perfection whilst himself staying at the wicket-gate. Like the good Shepherd he leadeth his sheep.
Philippians 3:18. For many walk … the enemies of the cross of Christ.—Christians in name only, whose loose interpretations of the perfect law of liberty make it possible to live an animal life. The cross of Christ, symbol of His self-renunciation, should be the place of execution for all fleshly desires of His followers; and, instead of that, these men over whom an apostle laments have made it an opportunity of sensual gratification. They say, “We cannot help Him; He does not need our help; it is of little consequence how we live.”
Philippians 3:19. Whose end is destruction.—Beet argues from this that Universalism cannot be true. It must be admitted that St. Paul is speaking of sins of the body, and perhaps is thinking of the ruinous effects of fleshly indulgence. Whose god is their belly.—Against the dominion of appetite all the teachers of mankind are at one. All agree in repudiating the doctrine of the savage:
“I bow to ne’er a god except myself
And to my Belly, first of deities.”
Seeley.
“The self-indulgence which wounds the tender conscience and turns liberty into licence is here condemned” (Lightfoot). Whose glory is in their shame.—Their natures are so utterly perverted that they count that which is their degradation as matter for pride. Like the man whom our Lord describes, such men not only “fear not God, nor regard man,” but can lightly vaunt the fact. Who mind earthly things.—The peculiar form of expression is noteworthy. At these men, “of the earth, earthy,” the apostle stands looking in amazement. His expression reminds us of St. James: “Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord; a doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways” (so the R.V.).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Philippians 3:17-19
Good and Bad Examples.
I. A good example should be attentively studied.—“Mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample” (Philippians 3:17). We cannot imitate what we do not see and know. It will help us to be good if we carefully watch and meditate on the conduct of the truly good. The best example of uprightness and consistency is worthy of the most painstaking study. “Wherever they found the life of the apostle imitated and displayed the Philippians were to mark it and make it their pattern. Any excellence which they thus discovered they might by God’s grace attain to. It was not some distant spectacle they were to gaze at and admire, but an embodiment of earnest faith, walking on the same platform with them, and speaking, acting, praying, suffering, and weeping among them. What had been possible to others was surely not impossible to them” (Eadie). A Polish prince was accustomed to carry the picture of his father always in his bosom, and on particular occasions used to take it out and view it, saying, “Let me do nothing unbecoming so excellent a father.”
II. A good example should be faithfully imitated.—“Brethren, be followers together of me” (Philippians 3:17). Paul had studied profoundly the character of Christ, and was earnestly striving to follow Him. He therefore exhorts the Philippians to imitate him as he sought to imitate Christ; or rather, as Bengel puts it, he invites them to be “fellow-imitators of Christ.” To imitate Christ is not copying Him in every particular. We cannot follow Him as Saviour, Mediator, Redeemer. What is meant is, that we are to do our work in the Spirit of Christ, as He would do it. He who follows Christ never misses the right way, and is always led on to victory. When in the Mexican war the troops were wavering, a general rose in his stirrups and dashed into the enemies’ lines, shouting, “Men, follow me!” They, inspired by his courageous example, dashed on after him and gained the victory. What men want to rally them for God is an example to lead them.
III. A bad example is in antagonism to the highest truth.—“Many walk, of whom I have told you, … they are the enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18). Professed friends, dubious in their attachment and promises, are enemies of Christ, and of the great movement in human redemption represented by His cross. While professing to maintain the doctrines of the cross, by their wicked lives they are depreciating them.
1. A bad example is set by those who concentrate their chief thought on the material.—“Who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:19). The world has many attractions, but it has also many dangers. To be wholly absorbed in its pursuits weans the soul from God and holiness and heaven. Gosse tells us, in his Romance of Natural History, of certain animals which inhabit the coral reefs. So long as they keep the passage to the surface clear they are safe; but, this neglected, the animal finds the coral has grown around it and enclosed it in a living tomb. And so it is with the life of the soul on earth. The world is around us everywhere; the danger is when we allow it to grow between our souls and God.
2. A bad example is set by those who are supremely controlled by their sensual appetites.—“Whose God is their belly” (Philippians 3:19). The desires of the flesh invite to self-indulgence—to gluttony, revelling, drunkenness; to gaudiness, extravagance, and immodesty of dress; to impurity of speech and conduct. A sensual man looks as if lust had drawn her foul fingers over his features and wiped out the man. The philosopher Antisthenes, who had a contempt for all sensual enjoyment, used to say, “I would rather be mad than sensual.”
3. A bad example is set by those who gloat in their degradation.—“Whose glory is in their shame” (Philippians 3:19). Man has reached the lowest depth of vice when he boasts in what is really his shame. The last rag of modesty is thrown aside. “These enemies of the cross were not hypocrites, but open and avowed sensualists, conscious of no inconsistency, but rather justifying their vices, and thus perverting the gospel formally for such detestable conduct.”
4. The end of a bad example is ruin.—“Whose end is destruction” (Philippians 3:19). Evil is the broad way that leadeth to destruction. Sin must be inevitably punished; it works its own fate—“sin when it is finished bringeth forth death.” Judge Buller, speaking to a young gentleman of sixteen, cautioned him against being led astray by the example or persuasion of others, and said, “If I had listened to the advice of some of those who called themselves my friends, when I was young, instead of being a judge of the King’s Bench, I should have died long ago a prisoner in the King’s prison.”
IV. Professed members of the Church who set a bad example are the occasion of constant solicitude and sorrow to the truly good.—“For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping” (Philippians 3:18). Even when denouncing the worst sins, the apostle does it, not with harshness and imperious superiority, but with the greatest tenderness and grief. The anxious minister may well weep over the folly and delusion of half-hearted adherents, over their false and distorted conceptions of the gospel, over the reproach brought against the truth by their inconsistent and licentious lives, and over their lamentable end. The conduct of sinners is more a matter of heart-breaking sorrow than of wrathful indignation.
Lessons.—
1. Example is more potent than precept.
2. A bad example should be carefully shunned.
3. A good example should be diligently imitated.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Philippians 3:17. Imitation of the Good—
I. Possible only where there is a sympathetic resemblance to and admiration of the character sought to be copied.—“Brethren.”
II. Is easier when joined with those who have similar aims.—“Be followers together of me.”
III. Is aided by careful observation and study.—“Mark them.”
IV. Every good man is an example for others to imitate.—“So as ye have us for an ensample.”
Philippians 3:18-19. Enemies of the Cross—
I. Deny the efficacy and purpose of Christ’s sufferings.
II. Are incompetent to appreciate the spiritual significance of the cross.—“Who mind earthly things.”
III. Are the victims of sensuality.—“Whose god is their belly.”
IV. Are degraded beyond all bounds of modesty.—“Whose glory is in their shame.”
V. Will be inevitably punished.—“Whose end is destruction.”
VI. Are the cause of much grief to those who must constantly expose them.—“Of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping.”