Verse of the day · August 25
Who was Paul writing to when he promised God would supply all their need?
In those first days no other church had sent Paul anything. This promise is written to the one that did.
But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19
Paul is under guard at Rome, and a parcel has arrived from Philippi, up in Macedonia. The church there has sent him a present for his support, carried to him by a man named Epaphroditus. It was small. They sent to his necessity, just such things as he had need of, and he had not asked for superfluities or dainties. They had done it before, once and again, and from the beginning no other church had sent him anything at all.
None of the gratitude is complaint. He was not speaking in respect of want, he says, having learned in whatsoever state he was therewith to be content — a lesson Matthew Henry says he took not at the feet of Gamaliel but at the feet of Christ. He knew how to be abased and how to abound, and being full is as hard a lesson as being hungry. A good man soon has enough of this world; a covetous worldling with a great deal would still have more, and a heavenly Christian with little has enough. Nor did Paul welcome the parcel for what it added to him, but for what it added to them: I desire fruit that may abound to your account.
So the gift gets valued twice, and the valuation that counts is not Paul's. He calls it an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God, and the Geneva Notes hear the old law in that phrase, the sweet savours offered under the old law. It was not a sacrifice of atonement but one of acknowledgment, and more acceptable to God as the fruit of their grace than it was to Paul as the supply of his want.
Since they do not forget the needs of God's servants, he will not forget theirs. What Paul cannot do is repay it himself. JFB give the sense as a servant would: my Master will fully repay you; I cannot. He draws, as it were, a bill upon the exchequer in heaven, and leaves it to God to make them amends. Some old versions soften the line to a wish, may my God supply all your need. Gill keeps shall — an assertion by way of promise, since though Paul could not, his God would. And he is not only their God but Paul's — the God who counts a kindness done to his servant as done to himself.
They had supplied his needs according to their poverty; he shall supply theirs according to his riches. Albert Barnes takes riches here for the abundant fulness, the possessing of all things, an inexhaustible ability to supply. God is rich in the perfections of his nature and in the works of his hands, out of which he supplies the wants of every creature living; but it is according to the riches of his grace that the spiritual wants of his own people are met.
The need being supplied is counted from inside the man, not from his circumstances. Considered in Christ a believer is complete and filled full and wanting nothing; considered in himself he is poor and needy. He often wants fresh discoveries of the love of God, fresh supplies of grace, strength answerable to the day's work — daily food for the soul as for the body. No good thing needful for him is withheld. In glory is manner and destination at once: grace here, more as it is needed, and glory afterwards.
None of that shuts out bread. Adam Clarke reads it straight back off the gift: as you gave to me in my distress, God will never suffer you to want without raising up help for you. Barnes holds that nothing is lost even in the present life by doing good. On his reading the benevolent are not usually poor, and if they are, God raises up benefactions for them and sends supplies unexpectedly, bearing decided proofs of his own interposition. Paul's confidence in it seems to Barnes to rest on no express revelation, but on the general principle that God would regard their offering with favour.
They counted out what they had and sent it to a prisoner. No amount came back. What came back was a payer, and the reserve he draws on. It is not of debt but of grace: the more anyone does for God the deeper into his debt he goes, because he receives the more from him. Part of the repayment was already running as he wrote. Their small parcel was left upon record in a letter read in the churches ever since, so that wherever it is read, what they did is told for a memorial of them. The receipt is still being read out.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary, Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke, the Geneva Bible notes and B. W. Johnson.
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