“Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.”
King James Version (KJV)
2:14 Do all things - Not only without contention, #Php 2:3|, but even without murmurings and disputings - Which are real, though smaller, hinderances of love.
2:15 That ye may be blameless - Before men. And simple - Before God, aiming at him alone. As the sons of God - The God of love; acting up to your high character. Unrebukable in the midst of a crooked - Guileful, serpentine, and perverse generation - Such as the bulk of mankind always were. Crooked - By a corrupt nature, and yet more perverse by custom and practice.
2:17 Here he begins to treat of the latter clause of #Php 1:22|. Yea, and if I be offered - Literally, If I be poured out. Upon the sacrifice of your faith - The Philippians, as the other converted heathens, were a sacrifice to God through St. Paul's ministry, #Rom 15:16|. And as in sacrificing, wine was poured at the foot of the altar, so he was willing that his blood should be poured out. The expression well agrees with that kind of martyrdom by which he was afterwards offered up to God.
2:18 Congratulate me - When I am offered up.
Php 2:16 Holding forth the word of life. Always preaching Christ in word, in life, and in deed. That was their work. Unless they did this they were a failure. That I may rejoice. Unless they had done so he would be made to feel, in the day of Christ, the day of accounts, that his labor at Philippi was in vain.