When my wife and I first got married, I bought her what is called a “Mizpah necklace”. It has Genesis 31:49 written across it: “The LORD watch between you and me, when we are out of one another’s sight.” It is in the shape of a heart, divided in half so that each spouse receives half the heart and half the verse. I bought it at the time because it sounded romantic. But, when you look at the context, it is not romantic at all. It is something which Laban says to Jacob after repeated conflicts, mistrust, and cheating!

We Christians do this a lot with scripture verses. We take them out of context because they sound better independent of the context! When we read them in context, we realize they mean something entirely different than what we were intending to use them for.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)

In the case of Philippians 1:6, we usually interpret this as saying something like, we are pretty messed up now but one day Jesus will help us not to be such bad people anymore. But this way of reading the scripture is as out-of-context as the Mizpah necklace.

It is difficult for us to hear what Paul is actually saying here because we are so focused on ourselves. We may not necessarily be focused on ourselves because we think we are so great, but we may even be fixated on our own sin or shortcomings.

In order to understand what Paul is talking about, we need to remember the situation which Paul was in when he was writing Philippians. When Paul wrote, he was in prison in Rome. He had actually been in several different prisons for several years on the way to going to Rome. We read this story in Acts.

First, Paul is arrested in Jerusalem because there was a riot in which the crowd wanted to kill him. He is arrested in Jerusalem and gets moved around to different prisons in Israel. And he gets forgotten for years in some prisons. After this, on the way to being moved to prison in Rome, the ship he was on was shipwrecked and he and the other people on the boat ended up on an island.

After getting to prison in Rome, he is cold and lonely, he doesn’t have his coat, and most of his helpers have abandoned him. It is during this time that he said it would be better for him to be dead (and thus with the Lord) than to be in this situation.

What Paul was waiting for was the determination of his court case. He is not able to move around freely. And the people who can move around freely are ‘super-apostles’ who go around to the churches which Paul founded and try to convince them that Paul was wrong and that faith in Jesus should be accompanied by various ritual and ethical rules and should result in worldly benefits and success, rather than what Paul is experiencing.

When Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians, the Philippians were being persecuted, had infighting, and would possibly soon be visited by the super-apostles.

So all of this is on Paul’s mind as he writes. Thus Paul doesn’t write with the attitude, “Forget all of these situations. How are you doing in your personal spiritual journey? Aww, you’re having a hard time. But don’t worry. Everything is going to turn out okay!”. This verse is not primarily intended to be a verse of comfort for your individual spiritual life.

How do we know?

First, when it says, “He who began a good work a good work in you”, the “you” here is plural. (The word “in” is also better rendered “among”, too.) Paul is referring to the Philippian church collectively. And he says that the work will be completed at the day of Christ Jesus. “The day of Christ Jesus” here refers to the “Day of the Lord”, that is, Judgment Day–Christ’s second coming.

The “good work” is not just only or primarily Christ’s work in the life of each individual. The “good work” is God’s work of calling the gentiles through faith in Christ Jesus.

The people of Israel were called in the Old Testament to be a light to the nations so that the word of God could go to all nations. Some among Israel had the wrong idea from the promises of the Old Testament that people from all nations would stream into Jerusalem as God raised the Israelites up, smashed their enemies, and blessed them in every way above all people. Because they would be so rich, wise, healthy, successful, and free, other nations would say, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Let’s go to Israel.”

But then Jesus comes in the New Testament and says, “Actually, it’s a bit different from that. I am going to take upon myself all of the responsibilities of Israel because Israel has not been faithful. People from the nations will be drawn to me as I am raised up on the cross.” And so Christ dies and is raised from the dead and begins to gather all people to himself as the inheritance promised by his Father.

When Jesus is resurrected, before His ascension, the disciples ask him, “Is now the time for the kingdom to be restored to Israel?” But Jesus says, “That’s not for you to know; but know this: this is the time where you go out.” So they go out into all nations and people from all nations stream into Jesus, because His body is the new temple and the gateway to the new Jerusalem. So Christ is working through Peter, Philip, and, later and primarily, Paul to accomplish this “ingathering” into Christ from all the nations.

This is the “good work” which God has began and will bring to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. When Paul says that it “began in you”, he is saying that this work of gentile ingathering was begun in Philippi–as well as Thessalonica and Galatia and Ephesus and Rome and the other places about which we read in Paul’s letters where Paul had planted these fellowships of Jewish and gentile believers.

Paul is not looking inside of you for a “good work” in Philippians 1:6. Paul is looking around the world and seeing the “good work” of God bringing many gentiles into the new temple who is Christ. Even though Paul is in prison and about to have his head cut off, even though the Philippian church is facing persecution without and division within, Paul is confident that God will continue this work of reaching out and gathering his people from all peoples. Nothing can stop it or delay it.

That is still true today. We should never talk about nations “closed” to the gospel. As Paul tells Timothy (in 2 Timothy 2:9), Paul may be in chains, but chaining or restraining the word of God is impossible. Political miracles need not precede spiritual ones. Even today, God does some of his best work when all of his human messengers are detained or restrained.