PHILIPPIANS 1:12-18

12 Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 14 Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.

15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defence of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

Verse 12 The message had clearly reached Philippi that Paul was in jail. And it could have made them feel anxious: how would the gospel survive? But they should have remembered they’d seen Paul in jail before – in their own city, when God caused an earthquake and converted the jailor’s family, all in one eventful night. And Paul is eager for them to understand: his imprisonment has actually helped the gospel go forward.

Sometimes the things that seem most catastrophic for us are the cause of most blessing. God does not guarantee that he will give us both his power and an easy time. But he’s able to work through the contrary events caused by human hostility to bring his blessing in the end (Genesis 50:20). Sometimes we have to be willing to carry the cross personally so that God’s power can break forth. New life comes through death: “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24)

Verse 13 Paul has two reasons for claiming that his imprisonment has helped the gospel forward. This verse gives the first: how else would people in the palace – the very heart of Rome’s worldwide administration – ever hear the Good News? With Paul permanently there in captivity, there was no problem.

And we know that Christianity spread very early to the Roman army, and to the higher echelons of Roman society. Only thirty years after Paul died, and fifty years after he wrote this letter, Titus Flavius Clemens was put to death for “sacrilege”. He was the Emperor’s own cousin, and the likelihood is that he and his wife Domitilla (who was exiled) were Christian converts. It couldn’t have happened without Paul’s time in jail.

Verse 14 A courageous example always stimulates other people to try harder themselves. And so Paul’s imprisonment had not daunted the Christians; it had led to an outburst of gospel proclamation from people who had stayed silent before.

Sometimes when people suffer for Christ, such as the five young missionaries who died in Ecuador in 1956, we wonder why God allows it. But sometimes through their death Christian martyrs have a long-lasting impact that would never have been achieved through their life. (Of the Ecuador five, Wikipedia records: “They are credited with sparking an interest in Christian missions among the youth of their time, and are still considered an encouragement to Christian missionaries working throughout the world.”)

But not everybody reacts in this way; Paul says that “most of the brothers” had. It all depends on how willing we are to hear God’s challenge coming to us through the sacrifice of others. We need to ask: am I really so in tune with what God is doing in my brother’s life, that I’m able to discern what he’s saying to me through it?

Verse 15 Down through the centuries the gospel has been preached for many strange reasons and with many impure motives. (It was always this way: one of the most spectacularly effective evangelists in the Old Testament was Jonah, at the precise moment when he was on the run from God.) So I can’t rely on the effectiveness of my ministry as an index of how much God is pleased with me; sometimes powerful results will come through people whose heart is in the wrong place.

I always remember speaking at a Bible School some years ago just the week after a well-known preacher who had made an enormous impact. I felt quite humbled to be following him, and didn’t feel I made quite the same impression! Only a couple of weeks later, the man concerned had left his wife and gone off with his same-sex lover, with whom he had been having an affair during some of the most fruitful years of his ministry. Had it all been worthless? No, God had used it. But had it brought any blessing to the preacher himself?

So while Paul is grieved – we can guess – by the “envy and rivalry”, he is still happy that the gospel is being preached. It’s amazing what twisted means God can use to lead people to himself. I’ve worked with religious cult members for many years, and I have met people who have been truly converted through their membership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and even the Unification Church. How they stumbled upon the truth there, I can’t imagine; people are not rational beings most of the time. But it was impossible to deny the genuineness of their commitment to the Lord Jesus and the Word of God.

(There's another possibility to consider about this verse, raised by Tom Wright: "They are, I suggest, people in the local pagan (and quite possibly Jewish) communities who are telling people about this ridiculous fellow, Paul, and his wild claims: he is saying that Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean preacher, is the Lord of the world! Paul's response is simple: as long as people hear the news that Jesis is Lord of the world, I am content to stay in jail." Wright stresses, quite rightly, that the word kataggelein doesn't just mean "to preach", but really "to proclaim", like a herald; and Paul's gospel was ultimately political in its implications ("this is fighting talk, the sort of thing that gets you in trouble with the authorities"). If this is the true interpretation, it wouldn't be the first time that attempts to pour scorn on the gospel have led people to Christ. I wonder how many conversions The Da Vinci Code will be indirectly responsible for?)

Verse 16 Some, though, are preaching out of “goodwill”: Paul can’t do it, so they will. Their very act of testimony is a statement of their love. And this can make Christian proclamation incredibly effective: when it’s simultaneously a demonstration of unity and cooperation in the Lord Jesus.

I used to work occasionally on school missions with Ishmael, a British evangelist whose theology was entirely different from mine. Yet we respected each other immensely. He used to make jokes to school classes at my expense, and I used to give as good as I got. And the kids saw that here were two Christians who disagreed profoundly, yet loved one another. The unity between us was as powerful a statement about the truth of the gospel as anything we said.

Verse 17 Paul mentions two wrong motives for preaching: first, “selfish ambition”. Some of those concerned wanted to take over Paul’s crown. Religion can be a very effective route to power over other people’s lives, and ever since Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome, power-seekers and glory-hunters have infested organised Christian structures.

It places a responsibility on every one of us who preaches to ask ourselves: how much of what I say is genuinely promoting Christ? How many stories do I tell that put me in a good light, or drop the names of important people I’ve met and impressive things I’ve done? How much of my message is tailored for the consumption of the audience, and how free do I feel simply to say what God wants me to, without adulteration?

Is my preaching going to promote myself – or Jesus? Because it can’t be both. This little bit of verse has stayed with me since I was a teenager. I have no idea where it comes from, but I’m told it’s to be found “on the study wall of a well-known London rectory”:

When telling Thy salvation free

Let all absorbing thoughts of Thee

My heart and soul engross:

And when all hearts are bowed and stirred

Beneath the influence of Thy word,

Hide me behind Thy cross.

The second reason for ignoble preaching is to “stir up trouble”. How many messages are delivered in a spirit of hatred or competition? How often do Christians take the opportunity to have a sideswipe at their brothers and sisters as they deliver the Good News? There are many evangelistic Internet sites which, regretfully, I won’t point people to, because although they contain a clear gospel message, they also contain broadsides against believers in evolution, or those who practice infant baptism, or Christians who don’t believe in eternal security, or haven’t had the experience of speaking in tongues.

May God give us the clarity of thought, and the insight into our own confused hearts, to be able to detect when we’re sullying the purity of the gospel with a poison that comes from our own selfish concerns. We can follow our agenda, or his. Not both.

Verse 18 Yet none of this matters, in Paul’s analysis, as long as the gospel is going forward. It isn’t the false motives that will prevail; it’s the life-giving truth at the heart of it all. And so we have to be glad whenever the real gospel is being preached. I may not like the activities of some prosperity-gospel preachers, or those who promote a joyless Calvinist rigidity of belief, but if they’re preaching Christ, I have no right to treat them as members of heretical fringe religions. They are still my brothers or sisters.

I’ve often found this a challenge, in evaluating new groups I haven’t met before. Is this a dangerous “cult”, or just a freaky bunch of believers? If they are the latter, then they are part of my family, whether I like it or not.

It’s important to remember how great Christians have sometimes got it wrong; G Campbell Morgan, for instance, dismissing the Pentecostal movement with distaste as “the last vomit of Satan”; or Lord Shaftesbury, in his old age, fearing that the Salvation Army was a trick of the devil, trying to make Christianity look ridiculous.

It’s tragic that a teacher who had written so powerfully about the Holy Spirit as Campbell Morgan had, couldn’t see what God was doing in Azusa Street. It’s sad that a Christian social reformer like Shaftesbury wasn’t overjoyed at Booth’s new, pioneering form of evangelism. Yet both were wise, experienced Christians. We need to pray that God will deliver us from writing off our brothers too easily.