Pop quiz. Which epistle has the verse “To live is Christ, to die is gain”? If you answered Philippians, you are right. That’s Philippians 1:21. Today’s author has long since died and gained his heavenly reward but before he died he wrote a whole book on Philippians so let’s get to it.
Hi, my name is Terence and I’m your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review Philippians, a commentary by J. B. Lightfoot, originally published in 1868 but more recently republished as one volume in the Crossway Classic Commentaries series edited by Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer in October 1994. 144 pages. Available in Amazon Kindle for USD 12.34 and in Logos for USD 15.19. But I got it for free, yes free!, because it was the free book of the month for November.
I was excited to read this book because:
- I love Philippians. When someone comes to me in anguish, really down in the dumps, I prescribe Philippians. Read it. Memorise it. Meditate on it. It’s the most joy-stirring letter from the Apostle Paul.
- I respect Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer’s aim for the Crossway Classic Commentaries series. They take old commentaries and give them new life. Because of them, I was able to read and review John Owen’s commentary on Hebrews. For more on that you can listen to Episode 27 for my review on John Owen’s commentary on Hebrews.
- I have heard of J.B. Lightfoot. Smart people would quote him in their books. The people I respect respect Lightfoot, ergo I respect Lightfoot. I never had the chance to read Lightfoot, so thanks to Logos Free Book of the Month offer, I now do.
With so much excitement going into the book, I am sorry to say it was all a big disappointment. This is a massive surprise because others have positive things to say about this book. And I will respond to those positive statements at the end of the review.
The book is divided into two parts: Introduction and commentary.
Introduction Five Articles
The introduction contains five articles.
The first is titled “St. Paul in Rome”. Why Rome? Because that’s where Paul was imprisoned when he wrote the Epistle to the Philippians.
The second article is titled “The Order of the Letters of St. Paul’s Captivity”. As Lightfoot explains, Paul wrote four letters while enjoying Roman prison hospitality: Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians and Philemon. Depending on what order you take them, you get slightly different interpretations of Paul’s situation.
The first and second article tell us about the sender, so the third article tells us about the receipients. The article is titled “The Church of Philippi”. Noting that there is so little information about Philippi after Paul’s letter, Lightfoot ends the article, I quote:
Born into the world with the brightest promise, the church of Philippi has lived without a history and perished without a memorial.
Before we get into the details of the letter, it’s good to get a general lay of the land. For that we have the fourth article titled “The Character and Contents of the Letter”. In the article’s introduction, Lightfoot writes of the letter:
It was not written, like the letter to the Galatians, to counteract doctrinal errors, or, like the first letter to the Corinthians, to correct irregularities of conduct. It enforces no direct lessons of church government, though it makes casual allusion to church leaders. It lays down no doctrinal system, though incidentally it refers to the majesty and the humiliation of Christ, and to the contrast of law and grace. It is the spontaneous utterance of Christian love and gratitude, called forth by a recent token which the Philippians had shown of their loyal affection.
One of the benefits I get from reading commentaries is to hear an expert articulate the unique characteristics of the book or letter. The comparisons he draws makes us sensitive to the subtle differences, for us to better appreciate what each sacred scripture offers to believers.
Finally, the last article is titled, “The Genuineness of the Letter”.
I think this is the weakest of the five articles.
After reading this chapter, I don’t know why apparently brilliant scholars say Philippians is a fake. Lightfoot gives us their names: Evanson, Schrader, Baur, Schewegler and one or two others but he doesn’t see the need to present their case. He just dismisses them.
What he does is give us a list, a ten-item list, of the early Christian writers who have quoted Philippians. Thus, he shows that this letter is not a late fabrication but was attested early in the church history.
This list also gives us an early indication of Lightfoot’s prowess. He has a solid familiarity with the early church writings, references Clement of Rome, Polycarp and so-and-so which is useful in the commentary.
The Introduction is the appetiser. Now on to the main course. The great man’s unpacking of Philippians, my favourite book in the Bible.
Staccato Road Trip
This commentary moves through 2-3 verses at a time. Lightfoot picks some aspect or phrase to elaborate. This leads to a staccato reading experience.
Let’s consider an example. On his commentary on Philippians 1:3-5, which reads:
I thank my God everytime I remember all of you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now…
Lightfoot breaks it down. First he deals with the grammar, he remarks on the clauses and punctuation. Then he zooms to verse 3, where he elaborates on the phrase “My God” and “I remember you”, then he picks a few more phrases in verse 4, then on to verse 5. Once he is done, he zooms out and we move to the next chunk of verses.
The reading experience is similar to a road trip. You drive along a road, stop and look for something to take a photo of, take the shot, get back in the car, drive further down the road, then stop, get out and do the whole thing again. You will get a well-documented photo album of the trip but it can be a tedious process getting there.
Nothing wrong with the approach. This is the default, normal, for many technical commentaries. But if I can give three words to describe Lightfoot’s commentary on Philippians, it would be: Redundant, Irrelevant and Uninspiring.
Redundant
First, the redundant.
Remember Philippians 1:3-5 just now? He zooms into verse 5 to pick a phrase. The verse Paul wrote is: “I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” The phrase Lightfoot zooms into is “the first”.
This is what he wrote.
The first. The article is frequently omitted, because the numeral is sufficiently definite in itself: compare …”
and he gives us Scripture reference in Mark, Acts and Ephesians. Still don’t know what I am talking about? In the Greek, the sentence is missing the definite article ‘the’, t-h-e, ‘the’.
Lightfoot is saying, “Don’t sweat it.” Which you would if you were reading the original Greek. And I imagine Lightfoot would be aghast at the thought nobody except for the very very few could read the Greek and care that it is missing the definite article.
But my criticism is not that he is a Greek Grammar Nazi, that can be useful, it’s how unhelpful he is, almost to the point of stating the obvious.
Let me give you few more examples.
In his commentary on verse 7, I quote:
You. The word is repeated: compare Colossians 2:13.
In his commentary on verse 12, I quote:
Really. Rather than the reverse, as might have been anticipated.
In his commentary on Philippians 2:3, I quote:
Each. For the repetition of this word: compare 1 Corinthians 7:17.
I am not saying he gives a one liner for every mundane word but it does it often enough to be ruin my reading. It’s great if we stop the car to get a shot of a glorious sunset, a rare bird or a horrific accident but not to take a boring ordinary piece of lint.
Irrelevant
Second, I said Lightfoot’s commentary was irrelevant. I don’t need him to hammer me with real world applications. That’s not what I am asking for.
All Scripture is God-breathed, so I have learnt to appreciate what may seem at first to be not relevant. And be pleasantly humbled by the truth.
Lightfoot has lengthy discussions on various topics. Some topics are really good and insightful, like the comparison between bishops and presbyters or the difference between Morphe and Schema. These are topics that can be useful on discussion on church polity or the divine-human nature of Christ. But he spends so much time on “Who is Clement in 4:3?” which is a long drive to a dead end.
Nothing here for the preacher preparing for a sermon. Nothing here for the Christian seeking edification. But is it a good puzzle? Because I can appreciate a good puzzle and its solution. Not really.
Uninspiring
Lastly, I find Lightfoot’s writing to be uninspiring. Maybe I am too hard on the man. He did not write this commentary to inspire his readers in 1868.
My favourite verse in Philippians is Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”
This powerful verse can send, has sent missionaries to live and die in far away lands, this is what Lightfoot writes, I quote:
To me. Whatever it may be to others: so “our,” 3:20.
To live is. “I live only to serve him, only to commune with him; I have no conception of life apart from him.” Compare “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20), and Colossians 3:3–4.
To die is gain. “To die is gain, for then my union with Christ will be more completely realized.” The tense denotes not the act of dying but the consequence of dying, the state after death: compare “live or die with you” (2 Corinthians 7:3).
Oh my goodness. That just sucked the life out of this verse. If I heard a preacher preach Philippians 1:21 in that way, you would see me knocking my head on the wall over and over again, no, no, no, don’t preach it that way.
You would argue that Lightfoot is not preaching. I wonder whether there is a Lightfoot sermon I can read to get a measure of him as a preacher. Sure, he is not preaching but he is also barely unpacking. He is just pointing the reader to other related Scripture verses.
I was so frustrated that I checked my other Philippians commentaries on Philippians 1:21. Am I too heavy-handed on Lightfoot?
Gordon Fee in his commentary on Philippians (NICNT), which is a technical commentary, wrote:
This is rhetoric at its best; its potency, however, lies not in form alone, but in its singularly focused affirmations.
Later he writes:
Such singular focus does not make him otherworldly; rather, it gives heart and meaning to everything he is and does as a citizen of both worlds, his heavenly citizenship determining his earthly.
Fee has more to say on verse 21 but his commentary is 543 pages long, three times Lightfoot’s 144 pages. But Fee’s insight on Paul’s singular focus and the citizenship of both worlds is more fruitful than Lightfoot’s hyperlink to other verses.
Response to the Series Editor
So you now know why I find the book redundant, irrelevant and uninspiring. I came to the book with such high hopes. Hopes that were shored up by the series editor, Alister McGrath. He wrote as an introduction to this Lightfoot commentary.
Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828–1889) is widely regarded as one of the finest nineteenth-century interpreters of Paul. He established his reputation as a superb lecturer on Paul at the University of Cambridge, England, where he began teaching in 1857. These lectures would later become the basis of his much-admired commentaries on Paul.
Later he continues:
His commentary on Galatians (1865) established his reputation as a careful expositor of Paul. The later commentary on Colossians and Philemon (1875) showed his great knowledge of early Christian history, as well as his love and understanding of the writings of Paul. Yet it is the commentary on Philippians (1868) which is especially remembered; it is still regarded as a landmark study of the letter.
A landmark study! And he heaps more praises on it:
What is it about this commentary that has been the cause of so much admiration? The commentary shows up Lightfoot’s obvious love of Paul, and his concern to understand him. It also shows his real concern for the issues of Christian living, which is especially obvious from his careful study of Paul’s views on ministry and how they were understood by the early church. The work is written with great clarity. It is clear that Lightfoot has taken considerable trouble to avoid technicalities and minor scholarly controversy, and to make it as easy as possible to understand and appreciate the message of Paul in this much-loved letter. Readers of this commentary will be challenged and stimulated by what they find in its pages.
I wish I was challenged. I wish I was stimulated. But I wasn’t.
I was left confused. Is this all from the great J.B. Lightfoot?
Kraven
This is like the just released Kraven movie. If you are listening to this episode some years after 2024, you probably don’t know the movie. It bombed so badly. At the moment it is known for turning great actors like Russell Crowe into terrible ones.
Why is Lightfoot’s commentary on Philippians so bad? I didn’t experience this with John Owen’s commentary on Hebrews. Maybe something happened to me. Oh no! Has my consumption of Internet and social media junk food turned my brain to mush so that dimwit that I am now, I can’t recognise the brilliant light of Lightfoot?
Could be.
But maybe it’s the nature of the book. Philippians is not Hebrews. It’s quite easy to read Philippians, that’s why I so easily recommend it to others to read it. Not so for Hebrews. You need a grizzly guide for Hebrews cause someone needs to explain it!
So a technical commentary for Philippians would not yield the sort of insights you would get for a commentary on Hebrews. No big controversy. No doctrine to decipher.
The other possibility is simply this, I didn’t read the Greek. It is possible (likely?) that the reason why so many people offer profuse praise for this book is Lightfoot ably answers the question a reader of the Greek faces.
“Why is there no definite article? Oh, Lightfoot says it happened in these other verses. Ah okay, no great mystery here then. Moving on.”
And if true, then this review just shows how big of an idiot I am.
And on that humbling note…
Outro
This is a Reading and Reader’s review of Philippians, a commentary by J.B. Lightfoot from the Crossway Classic Commentaries edited by Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer.
Don’t be too light on your feet and leave early. Just before you go, I ask that you visit readingandreaders.com and support me by clicking on the “Buy me a coffee button”. With just USD 3, you can lightly foot the bill to keep this podcast running. After all, you save a tonne of money whenever you hear me review a great book when it’s free or deeply discounted.
I’ve finished the next book I am going to review. It’s a good one. But until the next episode comes out, I must remain silent.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
Book List
- Philippians: Crossway Classic Commentaries. Amazon. Logos.
Pop quiz. Which epistle has the verse “To live is Christ, to die is gain”? If you answered Philippians, you are right. That’s Philippians 1:21. Today’s author has long since died and gained his heavenly reward but before he died he wrote a whole book on Philippians so let’s get to it.
Hi, my name is Terence and I’m your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review Philippians, a commentary by J. B. Lightfoot, originally published in 1868 but more recently republished as one volume in the Crossway Classic Commentaries series edited by Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer in October 1994. 144 pages. Available in Amazon Kindle for USD 12.34 and in Logos for USD 15.19. But I got it for free, yes free!, because it was the free book of the month for November.
I was excited to read this book because:
With so much excitement going into the book, I am sorry to say it was all a big disappointment. This is a massive surprise because others have positive things to say about this book. And I will respond to those positive statements at the end of the review.
The book is divided into two parts: Introduction and commentary.
Table of Contents
Introduction Five Articles
The introduction contains five articles.
The first is titled “St. Paul in Rome”. Why Rome? Because that’s where Paul was imprisoned when he wrote the Epistle to the Philippians.
The second article is titled “The Order of the Letters of St. Paul’s Captivity”. As Lightfoot explains, Paul wrote four letters while enjoying Roman prison hospitality: Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians and Philemon. Depending on what order you take them, you get slightly different interpretations of Paul’s situation.
The first and second article tell us about the sender, so the third article tells us about the receipients. The article is titled “The Church of Philippi”. Noting that there is so little information about Philippi after Paul’s letter, Lightfoot ends the article, I quote:
Before we get into the details of the letter, it’s good to get a general lay of the land. For that we have the fourth article titled “The Character and Contents of the Letter”. In the article’s introduction, Lightfoot writes of the letter:
One of the benefits I get from reading commentaries is to hear an expert articulate the unique characteristics of the book or letter. The comparisons he draws makes us sensitive to the subtle differences, for us to better appreciate what each sacred scripture offers to believers.
Finally, the last article is titled, “The Genuineness of the Letter”.
I think this is the weakest of the five articles.
After reading this chapter, I don’t know why apparently brilliant scholars say Philippians is a fake. Lightfoot gives us their names: Evanson, Schrader, Baur, Schewegler and one or two others but he doesn’t see the need to present their case. He just dismisses them.
What he does is give us a list, a ten-item list, of the early Christian writers who have quoted Philippians. Thus, he shows that this letter is not a late fabrication but was attested early in the church history.
This list also gives us an early indication of Lightfoot’s prowess. He has a solid familiarity with the early church writings, references Clement of Rome, Polycarp and so-and-so which is useful in the commentary.
The Introduction is the appetiser. Now on to the main course. The great man’s unpacking of Philippians, my favourite book in the Bible.
Staccato Road Trip
This commentary moves through 2-3 verses at a time. Lightfoot picks some aspect or phrase to elaborate. This leads to a staccato reading experience.
Let’s consider an example. On his commentary on Philippians 1:3-5, which reads:
Lightfoot breaks it down. First he deals with the grammar, he remarks on the clauses and punctuation. Then he zooms to verse 3, where he elaborates on the phrase “My God” and “I remember you”, then he picks a few more phrases in verse 4, then on to verse 5. Once he is done, he zooms out and we move to the next chunk of verses.
The reading experience is similar to a road trip. You drive along a road, stop and look for something to take a photo of, take the shot, get back in the car, drive further down the road, then stop, get out and do the whole thing again. You will get a well-documented photo album of the trip but it can be a tedious process getting there.
Nothing wrong with the approach. This is the default, normal, for many technical commentaries. But if I can give three words to describe Lightfoot’s commentary on Philippians, it would be: Redundant, Irrelevant and Uninspiring.
Redundant
First, the redundant.
Remember Philippians 1:3-5 just now? He zooms into verse 5 to pick a phrase. The verse Paul wrote is: “I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” The phrase Lightfoot zooms into is “the first”.
This is what he wrote.
and he gives us Scripture reference in Mark, Acts and Ephesians. Still don’t know what I am talking about? In the Greek, the sentence is missing the definite article ‘the’, t-h-e, ‘the’.
Lightfoot is saying, “Don’t sweat it.” Which you would if you were reading the original Greek. And I imagine Lightfoot would be aghast at the thought nobody except for the very very few could read the Greek and care that it is missing the definite article.
But my criticism is not that he is a Greek Grammar Nazi, that can be useful, it’s how unhelpful he is, almost to the point of stating the obvious.
Let me give you few more examples.
In his commentary on verse 7, I quote:
In his commentary on verse 12, I quote:
In his commentary on Philippians 2:3, I quote:
I am not saying he gives a one liner for every mundane word but it does it often enough to be ruin my reading. It’s great if we stop the car to get a shot of a glorious sunset, a rare bird or a horrific accident but not to take a boring ordinary piece of lint.
Irrelevant
Second, I said Lightfoot’s commentary was irrelevant. I don’t need him to hammer me with real world applications. That’s not what I am asking for.
All Scripture is God-breathed, so I have learnt to appreciate what may seem at first to be not relevant. And be pleasantly humbled by the truth.
Lightfoot has lengthy discussions on various topics. Some topics are really good and insightful, like the comparison between bishops and presbyters or the difference between Morphe and Schema. These are topics that can be useful on discussion on church polity or the divine-human nature of Christ. But he spends so much time on “Who is Clement in 4:3?” which is a long drive to a dead end.
Nothing here for the preacher preparing for a sermon. Nothing here for the Christian seeking edification. But is it a good puzzle? Because I can appreciate a good puzzle and its solution. Not really.
Uninspiring
Lastly, I find Lightfoot’s writing to be uninspiring. Maybe I am too hard on the man. He did not write this commentary to inspire his readers in 1868.
My favourite verse in Philippians is Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”
This powerful verse can send, has sent missionaries to live and die in far away lands, this is what Lightfoot writes, I quote:
Oh my goodness. That just sucked the life out of this verse. If I heard a preacher preach Philippians 1:21 in that way, you would see me knocking my head on the wall over and over again, no, no, no, don’t preach it that way.
You would argue that Lightfoot is not preaching. I wonder whether there is a Lightfoot sermon I can read to get a measure of him as a preacher. Sure, he is not preaching but he is also barely unpacking. He is just pointing the reader to other related Scripture verses.
I was so frustrated that I checked my other Philippians commentaries on Philippians 1:21. Am I too heavy-handed on Lightfoot?
Gordon Fee in his commentary on Philippians (NICNT), which is a technical commentary, wrote:
Later he writes:
Fee has more to say on verse 21 but his commentary is 543 pages long, three times Lightfoot’s 144 pages. But Fee’s insight on Paul’s singular focus and the citizenship of both worlds is more fruitful than Lightfoot’s hyperlink to other verses.
Response to the Series Editor
So you now know why I find the book redundant, irrelevant and uninspiring. I came to the book with such high hopes. Hopes that were shored up by the series editor, Alister McGrath. He wrote as an introduction to this Lightfoot commentary.
Later he continues:
A landmark study! And he heaps more praises on it:
I wish I was challenged. I wish I was stimulated. But I wasn’t.
I was left confused. Is this all from the great J.B. Lightfoot?
Kraven
This is like the just released Kraven movie. If you are listening to this episode some years after 2024, you probably don’t know the movie. It bombed so badly. At the moment it is known for turning great actors like Russell Crowe into terrible ones.
Why is Lightfoot’s commentary on Philippians so bad? I didn’t experience this with John Owen’s commentary on Hebrews. Maybe something happened to me. Oh no! Has my consumption of Internet and social media junk food turned my brain to mush so that dimwit that I am now, I can’t recognise the brilliant light of Lightfoot?
Could be.
But maybe it’s the nature of the book. Philippians is not Hebrews. It’s quite easy to read Philippians, that’s why I so easily recommend it to others to read it. Not so for Hebrews. You need a grizzly guide for Hebrews cause someone needs to explain it!
So a technical commentary for Philippians would not yield the sort of insights you would get for a commentary on Hebrews. No big controversy. No doctrine to decipher.
The other possibility is simply this, I didn’t read the Greek. It is possible (likely?) that the reason why so many people offer profuse praise for this book is Lightfoot ably answers the question a reader of the Greek faces.
“Why is there no definite article? Oh, Lightfoot says it happened in these other verses. Ah okay, no great mystery here then. Moving on.”
And if true, then this review just shows how big of an idiot I am.
And on that humbling note…
Outro
This is a Reading and Reader’s review of Philippians, a commentary by J.B. Lightfoot from the Crossway Classic Commentaries edited by Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer.
Don’t be too light on your feet and leave early. Just before you go, I ask that you visit readingandreaders.com and support me by clicking on the “Buy me a coffee button”. With just USD 3, you can lightly foot the bill to keep this podcast running. After all, you save a tonne of money whenever you hear me review a great book when it’s free or deeply discounted.
I’ve finished the next book I am going to review. It’s a good one. But until the next episode comes out, I must remain silent.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
Book List
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