All the Saints in Christ Jesus, Philippians, 1:1
Philippians 1:1 · Vern Peterman · Feb 16, 2003
Philippians (2003), No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826225313755

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning, Saints. Let me pace our way through here. Compliments of Marilyn Berg, we've got this photo. It's apparently an unretouched photo and it's just the pattern of the sun coming through the fabric brings that out. And I just think it's very fitting to our time where we've got some obviously very tense things going on in the world. A time of heightened tension and certainly we have an immense amount to be very thankful for in the freedoms that we have as a nation and the heritage that we have. Nonetheless, how comforting all the more to remember that ultimately our citizenship is in heaven. And that's a neat thing.

And we'll take a look at that in more detail should the Lord allow us to be here that long when we get to Philippians 3.20. I have no idea how many years that is from now. We are stepping our way through the first verse of Philippians chapter 1, and as we do so, we've gotten now to this phrase, all the saints in Christ Jesus. So as we look at that verse, We'll want to start off first, kind of the first half, which you see in italics up here, the first half of that particular phrase, and look at what does this mean, all the saints?

And Helmut's right, I sometimes shock people. If I know a person's a believer, I'll send them letters or email, you know, dear saint or hello saint. And some folks are taken aback by that. I certainly don't mean to put anybody in shock. But nonetheless, it is a biblical truth here. He's writing to this church at Philippi. Lots of Roman citizens. But he in fact starts off all the saints that are there. So let's take a closer look at it. Here's Paul and Timothy writing this book, and they say, Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi.

He could have said, to all the church. To all those who believe. But he says, no, let's zero in on this fact. To all the saints in Christ Jesus. All those who are in the church there at Philippi. And if he was writing to Holly Hills, he could have done the same. All the saints at Holly Hills. If you believe you're a saint.

We'll see more of that in a bit here. First we've got to kind of back up a step here to get the big picture. If we look at this word saints, and of course in the singular, saint, in the Old and the New Testament, here's a pattern that we find. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word that's translated saints in English is basically the equivalent, shows up a couple times in Psalms and six times in Daniel, and it basically is applied to those who worship. This is not those of the church, by the way. Interesting, okay? Now, we step into the New Testament, This word saints is used for church age believers, but as we discovered as we went through the book of Revelation, it is also applied to those who become believers during the tribulation period.

The word saints is more than once applied to those as well. So it's important as we look at this to get a biblical idea. What is this word saints talking about? Because it's really easy, especially in our culture, given our cultural tradition, We speak of a saint frequently as being someone who's on some entirely different spiritual level. And Paul uses it actually quite the opposite, and Scripture uses it in a different way.

So we'll be taking a look at that a little more closely here. Here's a key biblical truth, and we'll be working on more backup for these points, but the word saint applies to all who believe of all time, and are therefore saved eternally based on believing God. That's the principle.

So whether it's Enoch, who before the flood walked with God, okay? He's a saint. Or whether it is Abraham, who believed God, and in fact was lacking lots of detail as to what God was ultimately going to do, but he says, God, I believe you. The Lord says, he's a saint.

Or whether it's us here, or whether a time when we're gone, and those who will believe during the tribulation, they will be saints as well. It doesn't apply to those just of this church age, and it doesn't apply just to some special little group of super holy people. It's applied across the board to all who believe. Now, we want to take a look at how this word saint is used in the New Testament.

I think that's going to help us zero in on what Paul is talking about when he and Timothy are sitting down writing this letter to the church at Philippi. So let's take one step at a time here. Over 60 times, mostly in the letters of Paul, but about 5 times in the Gospels, and 13 times as you see here in the book of Revelation, this word saints is either in the singular or the plural brought forth.

It's from this Greek and kind of zero in on this word, if you will. We don't ask you to memorize a whole bunch of Greek, but this word, if you can just remember it this morning, it'll help us kind of keep on the same frequency. Hagios, okay? Hagios. It just means this. Set apart for a sacred purpose. It's that simple. Set apart for a sacred purpose. Hagios means set apart for a sacred purpose.

This Greek word in the New Testament, and it's translated holy, is based on the same word. So when you see holy, that's also based on hagios. And when you see sanctify, now you'll see variations. Holiness, or sanctified, or sanctification, those are all based on the same word. And it's interesting, in English, we think of saint and sanctified and holy, and we've got entirely different words, don't we? In the Greek, they were all a family of words. all closely related.

We'll see it in a little more detail here. The Greeks had a word for it, and that word is hagios. They would apply it to the pagan temples themselves, to all the objects and people that were in the temple, even the clothing that you wore into the temple. Everything in and about that temple was or was to be hagios.

That was their concept. Now, so what does that mean? This is a little bit of a shock, perhaps, when we think about it, but to the Greek mind that Paul was first writing to, before they had this idea that this had anything to do with Jesus Christ, their thought was something with Hagia Sophia was an idol of Dionysius, an idol of Athena, an idol of Artemis. See these pagan temples that we looked at earlier in our pictures when we looked at Philippi? Those pagan temples were along with all the idols and everything else in those temples, they consider those all hagyas.

That was the understanding of the word that the people had before Paul came in and started telling them, here's how we're going to adapt that word. So here's what it looks like. Paul came to the pagan cultures and he adapted to that word and what he would do is he would start these letters where he's writing using this word, he would adapt it, but use extra words to explain and make it clear to the people that he was talking specifically about Jesus Christ.

So he would add other words, and this is an instance where we see this at the beginning, in Jesus Christ, okay? He doesn't just say Haggios and just leave it out there. He'll say, in Jesus Christ. And you'll notice as you'll see the beginnings of Paul's letters. If he uses sanctified, holy, saints, any of those words that are based on hagios, he would qualify it, and he would say, in Jesus Christ.

He would explain that. We'll see examples of that in a minute here. Here is a for instance. He writes to the church at Rome, and he starts off the letter, first seven verses here, And I won't read through it, but I'd like you to just take note of some things. Here's this word saints.

That's the one we're focusing on here. And that's hagios, or actually the plural, hagioi. I don't want to get you too wrapped up in there, but that's based on hagios. But also holy and holiness. We're also based on the same word. That's all a family of words all together. What's interesting, remember, to be a saint, to be hagios, meant to be set apart for a sacred purpose. And so what does Paul do? He uses another word here to underscore it. It's a synonym for hagios. It means set apart.

And so he's underscoring it with different words to try to get the point across to these people at the church at Rome. And not only that, he also puts some additional words in there called three times in that passage to indicate this is something specific for this group. You didn't just happen to mosey in and be sort of approximately Christians. You're not some percentage Christians here. You have specifically been called three times he tells them that. And he zeroes in on it to be bullseye accurate called as saints, called to be set apart for a sacred purpose. That's what he's telling them. See that?

He gets very specific, and notice how as he uses these words, he keeps talking about Jesus Christ all the way through. His Son, Christ Jesus. Because he wants them to understand, I'm not just using this word, Paul is saying, like all the other pagan temple worshipers would use it. I'm using it specifically about Jesus Christ.

And he wants them to get that association clear in their minds. So that's why in the rest of the book of Romans, for instance, you see this word saints. Now that he's introduced it, he keeps using it all the way to the last chapter. Again and again, he keeps salting his letter with that word. He also uses the related word holy. Basically, it's based on the same root Greek word, again and again and again.

And notice the asterisk. The asterisk is used in a place where it's applied to the Holy Spirit. It's the same word. It's the hagios, spirit. So this word, when we see saints, imagine here is basically the same Greek word applied to believers when he calls them saints. The same word is applied to the Holy Spirit. That's amazing, isn't it? Okay? Your holiness as saints is nothing minor. Okay? It's not secondary or inconsequential. Here is another thing to take a look at. We made mention of before. We just saw an example in Romans, but in fact, Paul goes on in other passages.

Yes, he says, called as saints here in Romans 1-7. In 1 Corinthians 1-2, what does he do? As Wayne read for us earlier, here he says, saints by calling. It's like he's trying to say something, isn't he? Saints by calling. We step on into 2 Corinthians, here he's writing to the same group of people. What does he say again? All the saints. Again, refers to the saints. These holy ones, he calls them. The church at Ephesus, what does he do again? To the saints who are at Ephesus. He points it out again and makes it very clear. Stepping past Philippians for a moment into Colossians 1-2, to the saints and faithful brethren of Christ who are at Colossae. He keeps coming back to it.

It's not an incidental point. These ones who are set apart are all those in the Church. Set apart for a holy purpose. Not a special group, other than the whole group is special. Now, let's specifically zero in on the letter to the church at Philippi then. All the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, including the overseers and deacons, basically all of them. Notice how inclusive he is.

All of them. All of you there. The entire group. You're all set apart for a sacred purpose. That's what God has in mind. That was God's intent. Not incidental. He's not going to leave it there. He's going to bring it up again when we get to chapter 4, several years from now. No, I'm kidding.

Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you. Especially those of Caesar's household. How about that? Caesar's household? Saints? You must be kidding! He's serious. All the saints in Caesar's household. That's phenomenal. We'll get into that in more detail when we get there. A few years from now. Now we want to take a look at the last half of that phrase. All the saints in Christ Jesus. We want to see, it says, in Christ Jesus.

Well, what does that mean? Why did he add that to it? Well, we've already seen that what Paul did was he, especially at the beginning of his letters where he would write, he would qualify what he meant by saints. He wouldn't just call them saints and move on, because he wanted them to understand that this was not like the rest of the world was using the word saints.

This was a very special use, specifically applied to those who are in Christ Jesus. Now, when we see this word in Christ Jesus, this little circle here in the line, and you have that also in the back of your N is translated from the Greek word en. Now that's simple, isn't it? Close enough to the English and simple enough, not complicated at all. The point here, if you look at the Greek grammars, this word en is shown graphically in Greek grammars like this. And what's the point? The point here being, we can show that believers are in Christ Jesus, because that's the word Paul uses, and this way. That's simple, isn't it? And what's the point?

The point is the believers' eternal position and identity are entirely within Jesus Christ. That's what it's zeroing in on. Entirely within Jesus Christ. So you aren't in some way just sort of approximately associated with Jesus Christ. there isn't just some sort of a vague association or partial identification with. When he says, in Jesus Christ, you are entirely in Christ Jesus. It's not a partial percentage kind of deal. Not an approximation at all. If you're a believer, you are entirely in Jesus Christ. Now, how important is that? Is that a minor item? Somewhat important? Let's take a look.

In Christ, in Jesus, in Jesus Christ, in whom, in him, those kinds of phrases show up about 200 times in the New Testament. They keep showing up again and again and again. And, let's take it for instance, here's Ephesians 1, 3-14. This may shock you, I'm glad you're all sitting down. 3-14 in Ephesians 1 is all one sentence in the Greek. It's broken up conveniently for us in the English into separate sentences. In the Greek, it's all one sentence.

And what's happened is Paul starts off with telling them, you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. And he gets so excited, he can't put his pen down. He doesn't know where to put a period at the end of the sentence. He goes just zipping away, telling them what it means to be in Christ.

It was in that one sentence. several verses, but one sentence, he uses in Christ, in whom, in him, ten times. I would say it's important. Very important, and it has very much to do with all the blessings that you have in Christ. And by the way, you have them, you don't have to keep getting them, you don't have to go out and try to get them or find them, you have them, they have been given to every believer in Christ. Ten times he tells them, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. I mean, I counted quite right, but you get the idea.

Now, beyond that, when we went through Revelation, and we just kind of hit the high spots, but when we went through it, wearing white and white robes kept showing up from the beginning in the part addressed to the churches all the way to the last chapter. That subject kept coming about. And what is that? Wearing white robes in the book of Revelation is all about being in Christ. Totally and completely wrapped up and enveloped by Him. That's what it's about. Being in Christ.

Now, let's go back to this passage that Wayne read for us here. 1 Corinthians 1, 1 and 2. Paul writes this. Imagine, here he's writing to this church and boy, he's got a lot to tell them. They have got a whole bunch of things to get sorted out. And he starts off.

Paul called an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Sosthenes, our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. Let's make these observations and points about that.

This word sanctified in the Greek hakiatso is in the perfect tense and passive voice. Wait a minute, Vern, I don't feel either perfect or passive. Well, it's the word here, don't worry about that. The perfect tense means it's a completed past action with ongoing results into the future.

So if you've been sanctified, he's specifically having spelled out to these people It's a completed past action that you were made hagioth, you were set apart for a sacred purpose. In the past, it's a done deal, and it's ongoing into the future, continuing results. That's what he's conveying to them. And it's in the passive voice, and that means they didn't do it, it was done to them. So they were hagiotho, based on hagioth, Set apart for a sacred purpose.

It was the Lord's doing in the past. It was completed It will it does now and it continues to have results on into the future It implies permanence. I should also tell you and God did it entirely. It is not something that we must do ourselves God's the one that did it. It's completed. It will and does have results in the future And finally, he uses this word saints again.

And again, as we look at it in English, it doesn't look related. But as he was writing to them, he was using a family of words, and the people who were reading it could well recognize, whether they read it or heard it, that he was telling them very clearly that they were all set apart for a sacred purpose, and for that reason are now saints. They're permanently of that place and status and position. Now, there's another aspect of this thing that we have to get clear in our minds, and that's this. Paul addressed the church at Corinth and called them saints.

Now you and I know, if you read through the book of 1 Corinthians, this church is full of trouble. I mean lots of trouble. And something we pointed out in the elective before here is, in the Greek language, there was a verb, if you wanted to describe being completely debauched and morally decrepit, you called somebody a Corinthian. And they were Corinthianing. Okay?

And so, I mean, it got to the point, these people were notorious. And here was this church being formed in this notorious city of immorality and depravity. So here's the church full of problems, and what does he do? He starts off writing this letter and calls them all saints. That's just amazing. Question, how could he do that? How could he do that? You know this church has got a lot of problems. Why on earth would he call them saints?

Well, let's take a look at that. 1 Corinthians 6, 9-11, and we won't read every bit of it, but he lists these, you know, moral slip-ups, if you will, and he says, such were some of you, in verse 11, he says, but you were washed, you were sanctified, that's hagiazo, okay? You were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God, okay? He says, Certainly, I know that there's all these moral problems in Corinth. Certainly, I know that this church is not untouched by that. But I want you to understand the position that you have in Christ. That's what he's laying out to them. Okay?

Here's 1 Thessalonians 5.23. And Thessalonica is just kind of up the peninsula a ways and to the east. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here he's pointing into the future, isn't he? And that's again, hagiazo, the verb form of hagias. Let's take a look at what this falls out as in terms of a time frame. In the past, all believers were made saint, that is, they were made sanctified. It's the same basic root word, based on belief in Christ.

That is the basis of their irreversible position. So he tells them in the past, you were made sanctified in the past. It's your position, it is irreversible and untarnishable. Next, however, we have the present. Believers are being sanctified. What does that mean? Your position is untouchable. As we look to the Lord, We are being set apart conditionally, consistent with our position. And there is this future aspect of it. Believers will be completely and irreversibly sanctified when they see Christ.

What does that mean? As we brought up when we were looking at the book of Revelation, it means that believers will have their condition and their position fixed as one. Right now the Lord is appealing to us, such that our condition is consistent with our position. A time will come, in the future, when we're done with these things, when the Lord will make permanently our condition and our position fixed as one. So there are those three aspects of being a saint, being holy, being sanctified. the present, the ongoing, if you're a believer, that's where you are, and the future. We look forward to that time when our position and our condition will be made one.

We will be irreversibly, in our position and our condition, sanctified wholly and completely. That's what Paul is telling to the church at Thessalonica. So here we come back to this verse here. Paul and Timothy They're bondservants of Christ Jesus, and we looked at what that meant. Two, and he's addressing here the entire church, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. To every single one. To every one of you. And think of what that meant. Think of what that meant.

Here is a church that consisted of people who were Roman citizens and people who had position. There's the Philippian jailer. His grandfather may well have been one of the founding Roman soldiers of that city. Based on looking at the history and the time frame. There's a fellow who may have had a Roman heritage and he walks into the church and he's a saint.

Up the hill from the city of Philippi were several operating mines, and the grunt work was done in those mines by the lowest of slaves. Those slaves who became believers, that worked the gold mines right above the hill, they could see them from the city. Those slaves were also saints. How about the slave girl who was freed from the demon? didn't matter the category, didn't matter all the earthly distinctions, whatever they might make of them. They were all saints in Christ Jesus. They had that position in Christ Jesus that was irreversible, untouchable in the heavens.

So as we look at this here, it's important to not gloss over this here. because he's not just using a word that says you somehow got holy dust sprinkled on you. He's telling them you have been set apart for a sacred purpose. And if Paul were to write a similar letter to the church at Holly Hills now, would he not be telling us the same? Believers here at Holly Hills, have you not been set apart for a sacred purpose? Whatever status in life you're in, whatever place, you've been set apart for a sacred purpose. You've been sanctified. You've been made holy. And he would use the exact same word for the holiness that you have. Isn't this amazing? As he would to describe the Holy Spirit. That is phenomenal. That is amazing. If it were not in God's word, it would be unbelievable. But it's wonderful truth, isn't it?

Let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks and praise. You have indeed placed us in a position that is difficult for us to fathom. And yet, Lord, it is you, as we saw here this morning, it is you who have done the setting apart. It's you who have determined the sacred purpose. And indeed, you have prepared every good work that we might walk in. And for that, we give you thanks. We do not claim to understand it all, but what you have revealed, we just express our desire this morning, Lord, to place our faith in those spiritual facts that you've laid out before us. And we give you thanks and praise. In Jesus' name, amen.