Treasures of Paul Philippians

Philippians has been called the "laughing letter", because, perhaps more than any of his other writings, this one is redolent with joy. Given what Paul had suffered in Philippi (a flogging, torture in the stocks, and imprisonment), and that when he wrote the letter he was in prison again (probably in Rome), awaiting a death sentence, its joyful tone is astonishing. But Paul had been released from his Philippian incarceration by a mighty earthquake, and across several decades of apostolic ministry he had seen the power of the living Christ. This book tries to capture that joy, and to reflect it in many different ways. However, you will not find here a line-by-line commentary on the letter, but rather, an expansion of several of the key ideas that Paul introduces here and there in the letter. A couple of those ideas occur for the first time in this letter. Familiarity has eroded the startling impact those ideas made upon their first readers, but these pages strive to re-capture that freshness and to make Paul's marvelous revelations once again new and powerful, even to people who have heard them many times.