This is the second part in an ongoing series where I’m collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill to blog through St Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians by writing each other letters. You can read the first part on Adsum’s blog here.
Dear Adsum
Thank you for your letter and for suggesting this little endeavour in the first place. I’m always encouraged by your joy in God. Every time we speak you ask how you can pray for me, which is a great kindness.
Your call to be prepared to suffer for the sake of Jesus is timely. I’m stirred to see chains as a crown.
Today I’m writing to you about Chapter II of Polycarp’s letter:
““Wherefore, girding up your loins,” “serve the Lord in fear” and truth, as those who have forsaken the vain, empty talk and error of the multitude, and “believed in Him who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and gave Him glory,” and a throne at His right hand. To Him all things in heaven and on earth are subject. Him every spirit serves. He comes as the Judge of the living and the dead. His blood will God require of those who do not believe in Him. But He who raised Him up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness; “not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing,” or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing, but being mindful of what the Lord said in His teaching: “Judge not, that you be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that you may obtain mercy; with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again; and once more, “Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”
Polycarp encouraged the Philippians to prepare for action so that they can serve God. Well, he uses the Biblical image of ‘girding up your loins’ picturing a man scooping up his long clothing and tying it around his waist so that he can run or fight without tripping, but the idea is the same.
I think that sometimes we expect that serving God would be a gentle, meditative thing that we do in quiet, dusty churches. I suppose it can be, but the church Polycarp is writing to don’t own a church building, and their lives could be made significantly more difficult by pursuing God. Martyrdom for the most senior leaders of the church was common and the Philippians would have seen this close at hand. Polycarp’s own death was not far in the future, as you’ve pointed out. Serving God is serious business, they needed to prepare themselves and then get about it.
Our day and context are significantly different to theirs, but this call to action in the service of God should still be how we talk to each other.
Polycarp calls them to service in two specific ways. Firstly, he tells them to leave behind the error and talk of the crowd. Secondly, he tells them that instead they should believe in God.
They need to ignore the way that the rest of their city believes, ignore what their neighbours think and say, and keep following Jesus. The pressure to recant the faith ebbed and flowed but was often strong at this early moment of the Church’s life. We know that a refusal to sacrifice to the Emperor was considered seditious, and seemed bizarre in an Empire full of religious cults but unified around recognising the Emperor as divine. Religious exclusivity was known only among the Jews—who had a special dispensation in the Empire—and people were starting to realise that these new Christians weren’t all Jewish and were winning converts quickly.
Polycarp knows that at some point they will face pressure to conform and that Philippi is full of a thousand ideas to lead this church astray. He tells them to leave that behind.
There’s a word here for us too, I suspect. Hop onto any social media app and you’ll find a crowd with a swirl of beliefs that they want you to follow. Some of them might even be compelling because they contain portions of truth. It’s not just online, either, you can find forces pulling you in multiple directions and urging you to mix following Jesus with something else throughout our society. Don’t listen to the crowd.
I suspect we could apply this in about every direction you could imagine. I find my thought springing to particular ‘crowds’ that friends are sucked into that would have little impact on me. My friends need to leave those errors behind, but we need to be aware of our own capacity for deception. I don’t need warning to leave the errors that I’m not tempted by, it’s the ones my mind doesn’t naturally turn to because I don’t see them as errors, that Polycarp has in mind. I need you, my friend, and others to point them out as I fall into them.
Instead, he gloriously calls to us, believe in God, who raised Jesus from the dead and set him in glory on high. Polycarp then waxes lyrical about the glories and power of Christ: he reigns over all things, all serve him—which is a startling idea when you start to reflect on it—and he will judge everyone. Some will find that God will hold them responsible for Jesus’ blood: we all killed him with our sin, and any who have not repented and turned to him will face justice for that.
Which is not the sort of thing we say any more. The first time I read that line I had a visceral reaction, we like to be calmer and kinder in the way we communicate judgement and Hell than that. I don’t think Polycarp was too concerned. Though, as the account of his martyrdom shows, he treated those who killed him with kindness, he’s not a rabble-rouser for the culture war any more than he’s tied up in what we’ve taken to calling ‘winsomeness.’
Which is why we read the Fathers, they speak all the louder to our day by not being concerned with our concerns at all.
I was struck reading this by the breadth and scope of Christ’s victory: Jesus the cosmic emperor. There’s a whole view of the world here which I think we struggle to share. The starting point in all of our endeavours in the world should be Jesus and his rule. This is his world and he is Lord. I fear sometimes that I pay lip service to this rather than act like it’s true in the very core of my being.
Then Polycarp turns to his main theme for the rest of his letter; we will be raised if we do his will, love the things he loved, follow his commands, and avoid evil. He’s writing on the occasion of a particular elder’s sin, and to answer the Philippians’ questions about what righteousness is. We could summarise his theme as ‘orthodoxy will result in orthopraxy.’ Believing the right things will mean we behave the right way. Polycarp would suggest that not behaving the right way mean we don’t believe the right things.
I want to respond that it’s not that simple, but I’m sure we’ll explore that in detail as we continue. He wants the Philippians to watch their lives. In the wake of their Pastor’s sin, they should carefully check themselves. If only that was my response to others’ sins, to carefully check my own heart and see if I do love the things that Jesus loves. Which, by the way, is a really beautiful way to describe morality.
He continues with a number of instructions—not repaying insult for insult is one I particularly struggle with (1 Peter 3.9), if I’m honest—and points them to the Sermon on the Mount with a few quotations and allusions. Jesus has summarised for us the way of a flourishing life, the way to be truly human, so do that the good bishop says.
I love the simplicity of it. If I read this with most Christians I know they’d scoff at whether or not that was even possible. Of course we can’t live like that, we need Jesus to rescue us. I think I’d join them. It is true that I rest in the finished work of Christ on my behalf rather than striving to be agreeable to God: he loves me because I’m in the Son. It’s also true that grace should change me, I should love the things Jesus loves, and I should serve him in every way I can.
I appreciate Polycarp’s clarity, I could do with more of it.
With love
T. M. Suffield
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash
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