Philippians

Mark J. Keown

General Editor: H. Wayne House

New Testament Editors: W. Hall Harris III, Andrew W. Pitts

Philippians

Evangelical Exegetical Commentary

Copyright 2016 Mark J. Keown.

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

You may use brief quotations from this commentary in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. E-mail us at permissions@lexhampress.com.

English quotations from Philippians are the author’s own translation.

Unless otherwise indicated, Bible quotations outside of Philippians are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, NT quotations in Greek are taken from The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition. Copyright 2012 by Lexham Press.

For Emma, my wonderful wife.

For your love, encouragement, support

and above all, your patience!

Thank you for embodying the Christ-pattern.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank the general editor, H. Wayne House, for the opportunity to participate in this series. I also thank the NT editor, Andrew W. Pitts, and Justin Marr, the associate publisher at Lexham Press, for their patience and encouragement as I have sought to complete this work. Andrew’s rigor and guidance toward linguistic tools and resources has been greatly helpful in this task. I also wish to thank my colleagues at Laidlaw College for their support, and especially their patience in allowing me to focus on this somewhat at the expense of other things I could have been doing at the College. I also owe gratitude to Chris Marshall (Victoria University) and Paul Trebilco (Otago University) for the formative guidance they have given me in my research into the New Testament and Philippians. I am indebted to you both. I also acknowledge the many scholars who have gone before me, many of whom I admire and feel dwarfed by. Thanks to the students who have sat through many hours of my lectures helping me test ideas; you are appreciated greatly.

My commentary was written before Eerdmans’ withdrawal of Peter T. O’Brien’s Philippians commentary, although it has reached publication only after this news became public. During the final stages of the editorial process, my publisher and I decided to retain references to O’Brien’s commentary due to the widespread influence of his work in contemporary scholarship on Philippians. At the same time, my work is not dependent on O’Brien’s work in any direct or exclusive way, and readers should be aware of the concerns surrounding his work’s withdrawal whenever his work appears in my notes.

My heart’s yearning is that this work will be helpful in catalyzing a fresh wave of desire among God’s people to live out of the pattern of Christ as citizens worthy of his gospel, in love, in unity, and holding forth the word of life—λόγον ...