Philippians 4:21-23

Followers of Christ find fellowship and the grace they need for all of life.

While studying this text this week, I couldn’t help but think about the movie, “Remember the Titans.”

It is a 2000 sports drama loosely based on the true story of coach Herman Boone and his attempt to integrate the T.C. Williams High School football team in Alexandria, Virginia.

As the story goes, the school’s team had been coached by a white coach, Bill Yoast, who, rather than leaving to coach another team, signed on as assistant to keep the white players on the team.

Stark reminder of the racial division in the South within many of our lifetimes (1971).

Early on, the black and white team members frequently clashed in racially motivated conflicts. However, through forceful coaching, rigorous training (suffering), and a motivational early morning run to the Gettysburg National Cemetery, the team comes together and returns as a united group.

Through a season of scandal and attempted cheating by white school board members, the Titans go undefeated while battling racial prejudice and slowly gaining support from the community.

While this story emphasizies striving for unity it still presents to us, as the audience, a picture of the church.

As players on the field of life, we face the challenges of unity while prevailing culture promotes individualism/separation on so many fronts. Through shared suffering, shared grace, and living for a cause higher than self, we beat the odds and exist victoriously in a diverse community of saints. Not striving but acknowledging what already exists globally across empires, and even in prisons.

Without the rousing soundtrack, we get this from Paul’s final greetings to the church in Philippi and the end of this powerful letter written from Roman captivity.

This is where we end our study, with gratitude for the grace proclaimed, which compels us to live as a new humanity, wherever we are.

Followers of Christ find fellowship and the grace they need for all of life.

Let’s be reminded of the context. “The Philippians were poor, despised, and disenfranchised by the provincial Roman government of Philippi, and in Rome Paul was a prisoner of the same system, despised and betrayed. Whenever Paul thought of the Philippians, he lovingly longed for them. He had heard rumblings of division in Philippi amidst their stress. Then, unexpectedly, Epaphroditus was standing before him with a generous gift from them. And soon Paul was penning a letter to his partners in the fellowship of the gospel, instructing them as to how they were to strive together in unity for the gospel.”

There is much we could highlight from our study of Philippians, empowering exhortation, inviting us as Christians to real life.

But even in three verses, almost a postscript, Paul still brings truths abounding in gratitude and the goodness of Christ.

We will take it in two turns this morning: who we are made to be, and how we are made to be. Both answer the question of what does it look like when grace is enough?

Fellowship of the Saints

Philippians 4:21 “Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers and sisters who are with me greet you.” (ESV)

Paul is always saying “howdy!” to those he knows in his letters, revealing real relationship with the churches. Here he invites the body of believers to recognize two life-changing truths: in Christ Jesus, you are a saint and made part of a kingdom, a family, a fellowship of the saints.

Saint, some title this is. We’ve dealt with this before in Philippians, but we need the reminder.

Now, as a label, sinner comes easily. We experience this as a sinner saved by grace. A sort of low anthropology that keeps us humble and rightly reliant on Jesus.

But repeatedly, Paul has called the church saints. It’s not merely for his beloved Philippi, but for all who are “in Christ Jesus.”

“Saints” describes our present reality. Christians are God’s new creation, transformed through the Spirit’s cleansing and regenerating power. This brings us into Christ’s mission, sanctifies our character, frees us from the bondage of sin, and clothes us in spiritual purity.

And since Scripture recognizes no elite class of saints separate from ordinary believers. All who are brought into living fellowship with God through Christ are saints.

Being a saint is huge.

And it is here as a reminder of the truth of who we are in Christ and what that means for our relationships with each other.

This shapes how we live, where we put our trust, and how we belong.

This greeting from Paul acknowledges that being made a saint we are in the community of believers. He encourages the congregation to actively greet and appreciate their fellow believers, building brick by brick as a church grounded in Christ’s love.

It is also a reminder that the kingdom is bigger and more diverse than one church. It’s brothers and sisters in Rome greeting Philippi, seeing them, praying for them. Believers beyond; we are part of something so much larger than ourselves in Christ.

And his grace goes far, even to people we may not expect.

Philippians 4:22 “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.” (ESV)

This provides a profound example of the body of Christ's multiplicity and the gospel's expansive reach.

As far as Caesar’s household.

“The probability is that they were not actually members of Caesar’s family, but ‘persons employed in the domestic and administrative establishment of the Emperor’. Even so, it is significant that there were by this time loyal Christians in the imperial service.” Francis Foulkes

John Calvin cuts to the chase: “It is evidence of divine mercy that the Gospel had penetrated that sink [pit] of all crimes and iniquities.”

The text itself is the illustration! The empire that is persecuting the church is simultaneously being infiltrated by it. The gospel is moving through the very system trying to crush it. That's not a footnote; that's astonishing. Feel the audacity of it!

“The ancient church developed networks of hospitality and communication across the Roman world — letters carried by hand, strangers welcomed in homes, resources shared across cities — that functioned like a shadow empire of grace. What looked like scattered, powerless people was actually a living web. The Philippians sending Epaphroditus, Paul writing from prison, Caesar's slaves passing greetings — it's one organism breathing together.”

And each saint is a part of it.

“Here and there they would find members of the new humanity, and he urges them to reach across the old barriers which used to divide and to greet every saint in Christ Jesus.” Motyer

“The spiritual glue of their fellowship was, of course, the three-way bond between Paul and the Philippians and Christ, which came from their union with Christ. This provided them with cohesion and focus that transcended mere human fellowship. Together they were a community of brothers and sisters in Christ bound together by a great quest that was nothing less than the evangelization of the Gentile world—a quest they had pursued from the very first day.” Hughes

How vital this is in our age of encampment and tribalism.

“This is the people we belong to as Christians; yet we know so little of the reality, excitement or practical implications of it. We have allowed the church to lose its distinctiveness as the new humanity; we have identified it with nationalistic causes; we think nothing of it when Christians take up weapons of war, prepared in principle to kill their brothers and sisters in Christ; we have lost our love in denominations which blandly unchurch those who own the same Saviour and owe their eternal security to the same precious blood.” J. A. Motyer, The Message of Philippians, 1984).

The fair vision in verse 21 should spur us to repent of all that needlessly holds us apart, to pledge ourselves to whatever detachment from worldly loyalties may be necessary in order to honor our superior loyalty to the new humanity, to mourn for what might have been, and to cry to God that it might yet come to pass.

And it should spur rejoicing; in Christ, you are saints, and have been made part of the fellowship of saints that will eventually include members from every people/tribe and tongue of humanity. God’s promise and will shall come to pass whether we get our act together or not.

This freedom and family come out of our fellowship with Christ.

Fellowship with Christ

Philippians 4:23 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” (ESV)

This is Paul’s “sincerely!” It is a hope, prayer, and pronouncement of what fellowship with Christ looks like.

Think of all we have encountered in this letter to the church. That which delivers a rousing “for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.’

Confidence in the gospel, confidence in salvation, unity in the gospel, and partnership to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere.

It comes through the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus.

Paul commended the church to have the mind of Christ and then immediately articulated three downward movements of Jesus’ self-humiliation. He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped (v.6). He emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (v.7). Then reaching the lowest point, he became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (2:5-8).

His humiliation, taking our place, facing what we deserved. This is the significance of the cross of Christ. Our place of being made right with God, Jesus as the atoning sacrifice for us.

But his humiliation was followed by his soaring exaltation.

Philippians 2:9–11 “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, [10] so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (ESV)

From that, Paul models a life satisfied in Christ, of weighing the good and bad of our lives, balanced by the grace of Christ. He is willing to go low too.

Philippians 3:10–11 “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, [11] that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (ESV)

If you are still looking for a summer goal, this is a pretty good one! To know Jesus and the power of his resurrection. It recasts life in light of hope and security. It makes us strange to the world around us, and that is good.

This is where we find contentment, and partnership in the gospel to advance the kingdom.

“Returning in verse 23 to the blessing of grace with which the apostle greeted them initially (1:2), and of which they are partakers (1:7), Paul re-centers a troubled Philippian church on the humble joy and fruit of the gospel. From first to last, the letter to the Philippians is a summons to grace—to receive it, to rest in it, and to work it out in one’s life.” GTB

“Paul doesn't end with a command or a challenge, he ends with a benediction. After everything he's asked of them — rejoice, don't be anxious, press on, stand firm — his final word is not try harder but receive this. Grace is what the whole letter has been sitting on.”

Grace is God’s undeserved and ill-deserved kindness to sinners that comes through Jesus, purchased by his death on the cross.

“In the course of four chapters, many things have come to light about the Philippians—how they are placed, their needs, the duties and dangers before them, the love they should share and the divisions that are marring the church. Paul has also given us a rich revelation of the Lord Jesus—who he is, what he has done, what can be expected of him. At the end it is to the same grace and the same Lord that Paul commits the saints. His grace is enough for them! It is the remedy for every human need. Jesus’ grace reveals all his glories—his power, his helpfulness, his riches—and makes them available to his people. Grace is an all-sufficient supply; grace is Jesus being gracious.” J. A. Motyer

Paul’s prayer is that this grace may be with your spirit; that we would experience all we need in Christ, having fresh experiences of his grace daily. This is how his news stays good. How we live with hope and faith for the future.

“Grace for your spirit — singular, intimate, total. Not grace for your ministry or your Sunday morning. Grace for you, the person, in the whole of your daily existence. Illustrate the ordinary: the difficult conversation with your spouse, the diagnosis you're waiting on, the work that feels meaningless, the teenager you don't know how to reach. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is present and sufficient there, and everywhere.”

It’s this grace that makes us saints together. It’s glorious.

Followers of Christ find fellowship and the grace they need for all of life.

Follow Christ - Believe in him, receive new life in Jesus.

Have fellowship - Love the saints, and at least greet them! You are not to walk this road alone.

Live - Free from things of death, in his sufficient grace. Remind each other along the way.

The world will scream for separation based on a whole slew of distinctives, the devil will lure you to trust in self or some strategy that will fail, and your flesh will pull away from community. The deck is stacked against the team… But in Christ, together, we can live for his glory, with his grace, in all of life.

May it be so in us.