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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Philippians 1:29 - 1:29
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
29. ὅτι … ἐχαρίσθη. The link of thought (ὅτι) is that their trying circumstances, and the benefits of them, were, as he has just hinted, no evil, but a gift of love (ἐχαρίσθη) from their Divine Friend.
ὑμῖν. Slightly emphatic by position. As if to say, “Yes, it is you whose ‘salvation’ is thus ‘indicated,’ whatever doubts and fears your trials may suggest.” They were to take fully home the concealed token of final blessing.
ἐχαρίσθη. The verb denotes specially a grant of free favour, and thus often the grant of gratuitous forgiveness, as 2Co 2:7; 2Co 2:10; Eph 4:32; sometimes the work of free grace and salvation at large, as Rom 8:32; 1Co 2:12. (In Act 3:14, ᾐτήσασθε ἄνδρα φονέα χαρισθῆναι ὑμῖν, we still have the word used of a grant “free” in the sense of its being arbitrary, extra-legal.)
τὸ ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ. The article τὸ is explained when we see that the sentence rose first in the writer’s mind thus:—ὑμῖν ἐχαρίσθη τὸ ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ πάσχειν, “To you was given the boon of suffering for Christ.” Then, with characteristic wealth of thought, he brought in also the boon of faith in Christ; and the present somewhat complex grammar is the result, in which the words οὐ μόνον τὸ εἰς αὐτὸν πιστεύειν ἀλλὰ καὶ are parenthetical, and ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ redundant.
εἰς αὐτὸν πιστεύειν. The phrase indicates the directness and intensity of saving faith; not that this explanation is to be pressed everywhere, for see e.g. Joh 2:23, where the ἐπίστευσαν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ refers to a faith not wholly satisfactory.—Faith in Christ is here incidentally viewed as a gift of Divine grace. See Eph 2:8, and note in the Camb. Bible for Schools.
ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ πάσχειν. Alike the call, and the power, to “suffer for Him” were a glorious boon; not only because of the coming results in glory (Rom 8:17; 1Pe 4:13), but because of the profound communion with the Crucified Lord conveyed in and with the suffering.