Philippians 2:3-5 - Sermon Bible Commentary - Bible Study & Commentary

Verses 3-5

Philippians 2:3-5

I. There are two ways of doing even the best work: through strife and through love. This was seen in the first chapter, where two classes of preachers are described.

II. Entire sympathy with Christ will always heighten man's appreciation of man.

III. Christianity is thus the only humanising and fraternising religion.

IV. Self-seeking is in utter antagonism to the spirit of Christianity.

V. Christianity never encourages a degrading view of human nature. Man is to be esteemed by man. Christians are to recognise each other's excellencies. Love's eye is quick to detect virtue in another. Up to this point Paul continues his appeal for unanimity. The spirit of this appeal is most suggestive; it is the spirit of profound and tender sympathy with Christ. Absence of union is a reflection upon the uniting force. What is the uniting force of a Christian Church? The love of Christ. Where, then, there is disunion, it is plainly to be inferred that there is either not sufficient of this love, or that this love is unequal to the exigencies of the case. The world has a right to compare the deeds of the servant with the deeds of the Master, because the connection is moral, and consequently involves responsibility. All the practices of the Church are carried back to Christ, and He is magnified or crucified afresh according to their nature.

Parker, City Temple, vol. ii., p. 212.

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William Nicoll

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Sir William Robertson Nicoll CH (October 10, 1851 - May 4, 1923) was a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.Nicoll was born in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Church minister. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and graduated MA at the University of Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the Free Church Divinity Hall there until 1874, when he was ordained minister of the Free Church at Dufftown, Banffshire. Three years later he moved to Kelso, and in 1884 became editor of The Expositor for Hodder & Stoughton, a position he held until his death.In 1885 Nicoll was forced to retire from pastoral ministry after an attack of typhoid had badly damaged his lung. In 1886 he moved south to London, which became the base for the rest of his life. With the support of Hodder and Stoughton he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist newspaper, which also gained great influence over opinion in the churches in Scotland.Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper (including Marcus Dods, J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, Alexander Whyte, Alexander Maclaren, and James Denney), to which he added his own considerable talents as a contributor. He began a highly popular feature, "Correspondence of Claudius Clear", which enabled him to share his interests and his reading with his readers. He was also the founding editor of The Bookman from 1891, and acted as chief literary adviser to the publishing firm of Hodder & Stoughton.Among his other enterprises were The Expositor's Bible and The Theological Educator. He edited The Expositor's Greek Testament (from 1897), and a series of Contemporary Writers (from 1894), and of Literary Lives (from 1904).He projected but never wrote a history of The Victorian Era in English Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, two volumes of Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. He was knighted in 1909, ostensibly for his literrary work, but in reality probably more for his long-term support for the Liberal Party. He was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 1921 Birthday Honours.... Show more

This was a 12 volume, chapter by chapter commentary of 4,800 sermon outlines and 24,000 homiletic references that the editor compiled from authors he liked. The Sermon Bible was compiled/edited by William Robertson Nicoll who also edited the Expositor's Bible Commentary.... Show more

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