PHILIPPIANS 2:23-24

23 I hope, therefore, to send him as soon as I see how things go with me. 24 And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come soon.

Verse 23 Why was Paul sending Timothy? It’s a bit of an odd scheme. He says in chapter 1 that he is sure he will be free soon, and intends to visit as soon as possible. Then here we read that Timothy is to come first. Then we read a few verses later that Epaphroditus is coming even sooner.

It does look as if Paul was more concerned about the situation in Philippi than he allows himself to express in this letter. With the Corinthians and the Galatians, he pulled no punches; it was time for plain speaking, and the urgency of their problems meant that tactfulness was out of place; but perhaps because of his long-standing warm relationship with Philippi – and the delicacy of the situation – he was reluctant to signal too clearly here just how worried he truly was.

But Timothy wasn’t to start out until “I see how things go with me”. Again, this doesn’t mean that he is uncertain about whether he will be released; it’s simply that he wants to send Timothy with hopeful news. And Timothy probably wouldn’t want to go unless his mind was at ease about Paul’s future. Paul isn’t thinking of himself (how could Timothy’s presence help him anyway, if things became worse?) but of the others affected by his circumstances.

Verse 24 He hoped “in the Lord Jesus” in verse 19; now he’s “confident in the Lord”, the same expression used in Gal 5:10. It seems to refer to a confidence that doesn’t derive from circumstances or hopeful signs, but from an inner conviction that God is about to act in a certain way (1:24-25).

“In the Lord” (or sometimes “in Christ”) is Paul’s favourite expression for the Christian life (Rom 14:14, 16:11, 1 Cor 11:11, Eph 6:21, Phil 1:14, Col 3:18, Col 4:7, 1 Th 5:12, Philemon 1:16!). We’re chosen in the Lord, a temple in the Lord, light in the Lord, commissioned for service in the Lord. We can work hard, boast, be faithful, insist, obey our parents, be strong, rejoice, stand firm, agree and urge in the Lord. Our relationships alter: we can receive others, love others, greet others, welcome others and benefit from each other in the Lord. Paul’s habitual use of the term may explain why the anchor, rather than the cross, was a key symbol of hope for the earliest Christians.

Curiously, it isn’t anybody else’s favourite term. Apart from the dead “in the Lord” in Revelation 14:13, and a couple of “in Christ” references in 1 Peter, the phrase occurs nowhere in any other New Testament writer.

Perhaps it’s because of the circumstances of Paul’s conversion. Unlike John or Peter, who had followed Jesus from the beginning in Galilee, Paul was always haunted by the fact that he had been “a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man” (1 Tim 1:13). It was when he asked the question “Who are you, Lord?” on the Damascus Road that his life changed irreversibly.

Christianity to Paul meant a change of authority at the centre of his life: coming into a sphere in which Christ was supremely sovereign. “Even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:5,6).

And so Paul’s confidence, like every other area of his thinking, planning and dreaming, is subject to the authority of Christ. Confidence “in the Lord” has a different flavour from confidence based on optimism or personal judgment. When Jesus is Lord, everything is different.