(30) Having the same conflict, which ye saw in me.--The allusion is, of course, to the lawless scourging and imprisonment of Acts 16:22-24. How deeply this outrage impressed itself on the Apostle's own mind we see, both by his conduct to the magistrates at the moment, and also by the allusion in 1Thessalonians 2:2, to the time, when "we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi." Here he uses the remembrance to suggest to the Philippians that their struggle was only the same which he had borne, and borne successfully. Similarly in 2Timothy 3:10 (going back on the eve of death to the very beginning of his ministry to the Gentiles) he reminds Timothy of the persecutions "at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra--what persecutions I endured, but out of them all the Lord delivered me." Verse 30. - Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me. These words are best taken with Ver. 27, vers. 28 and 29 being parenthetical. The apostle returns to the military or gladiatorial metaphor of a contest, ἀγών. He had himself been persecuted at Philippi (Acts 16:1 Thessalonians 2:2); now the Philippians heard of his Roman imprisonment, and were themselves suffering similar persecutions. which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me; when he and Silas were at Philippi, and first preached the Gospel there, they were exceedingly ill used, and shamefully entreated; they were dragged to the market place, or court, were beaten and scourged, and put into the inner prison, and their feet made fast in the stocks, Acts 16:19; of all this the Philippians were eyewitnesses, and to which he here refers when he says, which ye saw in me; and now he was a prisoner at Rome, as they had heard, hence he says, "and now hear to be in me"; for they had sent Epaphroditus to him with a present, as a token of their love to him, and to support him under his affliction; and which he mentions, in order to animate them to bear their sufferings patiently for Christ's sake, since the same were accomplished in him, as well as in the rest of their brethren and fellow Christians in the world. |