Philippians 1:3, read slowly

The letter opens by naming two men and one town. In the World English Bible, Philippians 1:1 reads, "Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ; To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and servants:" Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia. Acts 16:12 calls it "a city of Macedonia, the foremost of the district, a Roman colony."

Paul was in custody when he wrote. He says so four times in the first chapter, at 1:7, 1:13, 1:14, and 1:16. Philippians 1:13 in the World English Bible: "so that it became evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my bonds are in Christ." Whatever else the thanksgiving is, it was written by a man who could not leave the room.

The congregation he is thanking began at a riverside. Acts 16:13 says the group "went outside of the city by a riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down, and spoke to the women who had come together," and verse 14 names the first person who listened: "A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us."

A few paragraphs later the same chapter has Paul and Silas beaten and locked up in that same town. Acts 16:23 and 24 describe the beating, and then the inner prison with their feet fastened in the stocks.

So the town he remembers with thanks is the town where he was flogged. That is worth holding on to before the verse gets printed on anything.

Where he was when he wrote is unsettled. The letter says he is in custody and never says which custody. The candidates argued in the literature are the Roman imprisonment at the close of Acts, the earlier imprisonment at Caesarea, an imprisonment at Ephesus, and a second Roman imprisonment proposed by Jim Reiher in the Evangelical Quarterly in 2012, on grounds that include the harsher confinement the letter describes and the absence of Luke.

Since the 1960s a good deal of scholarship has also read the book as a compilation of pieces of separate letters. In Philip Sellew's widely cited division, 1:1 through 3:1 is one of them. Anyone who tells you the date and address with confidence is telling you more than the text does.

Here is the run of it in the World English Bible, verses 3 through 6, which most Greek editions and the King James punctuation both carry as a single sentence:

"I thank my God whenever I remember you, always in every request of mine on behalf of you all, making my requests with joy, for your partnership in furtherance of the Good News from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ."

Verse 3 is the opening clause. Verse 4 says when the gratitude happens, which is during prayer. Verse 5 gives the reason for it, which is partnership in the work. Verse 6 is the confidence that grows out of the whole thing, and it is the line that usually gets quoted on its own, detached from the thanks that produced it.

Read as a unit, the paragraph is a thank-you note with a theological reason inside it. Paul is grateful about people, he says so to God, and the ground he gives is what those people had done alongside him and continued to do.

Grammatically the verse is small. The verb is "I thank." The one being thanked is God. Everything after that is a prepositional phrase describing the occasion. There is no imperative in it and no second person address. The Philippians are talked about, and God is talked to.

The possessive is worth noticing. Paul writes "my God," the same way he opens Romans 1:8, 1 Corinthians 1:4, and the letter to Philemon. It is a personal claim about who he is praying to, and in this letter it lands in the middle of a Roman colony where that claim carried a cost.

The reason for the gratitude is money and labor, stated in verse 5 and spelled out at the end of the letter. Philippians 4:15 in the World English Bible: "You yourselves also know, you Philippians, that in the beginning of the Good News, when I departed from Macedonia, no assembly shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you only." Verse 16 adds, "For even in Thessalonica you sent once and again to my need."

Verse 18 records the latest delivery: "I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things that came from you, a sweet-smelling fragrance, an acceptable and well-pleasing sacrifice to God."

Whatever warmth the verse carries, it grew out of a long working relationship with receipts.

The three public domain versions this site quotes do not say the same thing. The King James Version has "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you," the American Standard Version has "I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you," and the World English Bible has "I thank my God whenever I remember you," each ending in a comma because the sentence keeps going.

The Greek behind all three is the same, and the printed editions agree on it, from Stephanus and Scrivener through Westcott and Hort to Nestle and the Byzantine majority text. Word for word it reads: I thank the God of me upon all the remembrance of you. The disagreement is about what the adjective for all does when it modifies a singular noun that already has the article.

Take it as countable and you get the King James, where each separate occasion of remembering triggers thanks. Take it as a whole and you get the American Standard, where Paul's entire memory of them, considered as one continuous thing, is thankful.

Thayer's Greek lexicon glosses the phrase as "as often as I remember you" while noting that the literal sense is "on all my remembrance," with a cross reference to Winer's grammar. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges takes the second route, glossing the phrase "in my whole remembrance" and describing it as a habit instead of a series of single acts. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown give the flat instruction: "Translate, In all my remembrance of you." The World English Bible picks the first route and renders it as a time clause.

There is a second split over the noun itself. The Greek word can mean remembrance or mention, and outside this verse the New Testament uses it six times, always with a verb of making or having: Romans 1:9, Ephesians 1:16, 1 Thessalonians 1:2, 1 Thessalonians 3:6, 2 Timothy 1:3, and Philemon 1:4. Philippians 1:3 is the only place it sits under the preposition on its own.

The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge prints the alternative in its margin as "remembrance. or, mention." Benson's commentary allows it, saying the Greek word equally signifies mention. The Pulpit Commentary refuses it in one clause, calling the remembrance continuous and adding "not mention" in parentheses. Two commentaries printed on the same page disagree about a single word.

The third split is the one that changes the picture most, and English hides it completely. The pronoun of you is a genitive, and Greek genitives can run in either direction. Read one way, the remembrance is Paul's and the Philippians are what he remembers. Read the other way, the remembrance is theirs, and Paul is thanking God for the way they kept him in mind, which in this letter means the parcel and the messenger.

Benson prints that reading as a live option: "I thank my God for all your kind remembrance of me," tied to the supplies they had sent. The King James, the American Standard, and the World English Bible all read Paul as the one doing the remembering. Philippians 4:18 gives the other reading something to stand on.

The English cannot settle it: Meyer's commentary rejects the second reading and still names six earlier interpreters who took it, Maldonatus, Homberg, Peirce, Michaelis, Bretschneider, and Hofmann.

It is not a promise. Nothing in it says God will do anything for anyone. The promise people usually have in mind is three verses down, in 1:6, and what it promises is that a work already begun will be finished. Circumstances are not mentioned.

It is not addressed to the reader. The "you" is a specific congregation in the town where Paul had worked and been jailed. Applying it to a friendship today is a reasonable thing to do with the sentence, and it is a step past what the sentence says.

It does not say the memories were pleasant. The same letter asks two named women in that church, Euodia and Syntyche, to come to one mind, and the same town is where Acts records a public beating. Paul's gratitude is aimed at what the people did in the work, and it survives the memory of the place.

It does not say the people being remembered are gone. The verse turns up constantly on memorial cards, funeral programs, and headstones, where it fits the moment well enough that its origin rarely comes up. It was written about living partners who had money in the post that week. Using it at a graveside changes what it points at. That is an ordinary thing to do with a good sentence. Knowing you are doing it keeps you honest when someone asks.

And it does not command anyone to feel grateful. It reports what one man did with his memory of a church that had backed him for years. If your memory of someone brings something other than joy, this verse is not a rebuke.

It goes on the last slide of a memorial service, in the card that goes round the office when someone leaves, in the note tucked into a gift for a teacher at the end of the year, and in the message you send a friend the night before a scan.

It also gets typed at three in the morning by someone scrolling through photographs of a person they will not see again. That is a different use, and the verse holds up under it, as long as nobody insists the grief has to convert into joy on the spot.

Verse 5 is about partnership and verse 6 is about work that has not finished yet, which is why the paragraph sits more naturally at a leaving service than at a wedding.

If you want to use it well, quote the paragraph and not the clause. Verses 3 through 6 take about twenty seconds to read and they carry the reason, which is the part a single line loses.

A verse can carry a lot and it cannot carry everything. If you are looking this up for a funeral program, or because the anniversary landed today, the useful next step is a person, with a name and a phone number, that you actually call. Your own pastor or priest, the chaplain at the hospital where it happened, or a grief counselor your doctor can name. Write the name and number down before you close this page.

If you are in the United States and you are not safe, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If the danger is immediate, call 911 and get someone to stay with you.

This page has no church approval behind it and no teaching authority. It quotes public domain translations you can check yourself and names the commentators it leans on so you can see where they disagree. For anything that matters, take it to someone who can sit in the room with you.