God effect[ed] ‘salvation in Christ,’ and thus creat[ed] a people for his name, whose present existence is thoroughly eschatological; predicated on the death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the eschatological Spirit, God’s people are both ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ as they live the life of the future in the present, awaiting God’s final wrapup, the final consummation of ‘salvation in Christ.’
Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1995), 47.
The fact that the future has already begun…means two crucial things for Paul: that the consummation is absolutely guaranteed, and that present existence is therefore altogether determined by this reality. That is, one’s life in the present is not conditioned or determined by present exigencies, but by the singular reality that God’s people belong to the future that has already come present. Marked by Christ’s death and resurrection and identified as God’s people by the gift of the Spirit, they live the life of the future in the present, determined by its values and perspective, no matter what their present circumstances.
Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1995), 51.
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