And in nothing terrified by your adversaries
Not by Satan, though a roaring lion, for Christ is greater than
he; nor by the world which Christ has overcome; nor by false
teachers, though men of art and cunning; nor by violent
persecutors, who can do no more than kill, the body; let not the
power, the rage, the cunning, or the violence of one or the
other, move, discourage, or affright from a close attachment to
the Gospel and the truths of it:
which is to them an evident token of perdition;
when men wilfully oppose themselves to the truth, and show a
malicious hatred to it, and hold it in unrighteousness, and
either turn the grace of God into lasciviousness, or persecute it
with rage and fury, it looks as if they were given up to
reprobate minds, to say and do things not convenient; as if they
were foreordained to condemnation; and were consigned over to
destruction and perdition; and very rare it is, that such persons
are ever called by grace:
but to you of salvation;
when men are reproached and ridiculed, are threatened and
persecuted for the sake of the Gospel, and are enabled to take
all patiently, and persevere in the truth with constancy, it is a
manifest token that such are counted worthy of the kingdom of
God; that God has a design of salvation for them, and that they
shall be saved with an everlasting one: so that the different
effects of the opposition of the one, and the constancy of the
other, are made use of as so many reasons why the saints should
not be terrified by their enemies: it is added,
and that of God;
meaning either that the whole of this is of God, as that there
are adversaries, heretics, and persecutors; this is by divine
permission, and in order to answer some ends and purpose of God,
and the perdition or everlasting punishment of such persons will
be righteously inflicted upon them by him; and that the
constancy, faith, patience, and perseverance of the saints and
their salvation, are all of God: or it particularly respects the
latter, the salvation of those who persevere to the end; this is
not of themselves, or merited by their constancy, patience, and
perseverance, but is God's free gift. The Syriac, Arabic, and
Ethiopic versions, join this clause to the beginning of (
Philippians 1:29 ) ,
thus, "and this is given of God to you"