The Secret Mystery

οὐχ ὅτι καθ’ ὑστέρησιν λέγω, ἐγὼ γὰρ ἔμαθον ἐν οἷς εἰμι αὐτάρκης εἶναι· οἶδα καὶ ταπεινοῦσθαι, οἶδα καὶ περισσεύειν· ἐν παντὶ καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν μεμύημαι, καὶ χορτάζεσθαι καὶ πεινᾶν, καὶ περισσεύειν καὶ ὑστερεῖσθαι· πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῷ ἐνδυναμοῦντί με.

Phil 4.11-13, SBL Greek NT

This passage of Philippians has deep personal significance for me; reading it in the Greek completely changed my understanding of the Kingdom of God. And before you jump to the conclusion that this was where I learned to be content in every situation: no, not so much.

Immediately beforehand, Paul thanks the Philippians for once more sending him a gift; afterwards he says “yet it was good of you to share with me in the pressure (τῇ θλίψει). What on earth comes between verse 10 and verse 14?

Here’s my rather literal rendering of vv 11-13:

It is not from lack that I say this, for I have learnt, in whatever case I am in, to be self-sufficient; I know how to be humbled, I know how to be over and above; in everything and all things I have been initiated into the mystery, whether eating my fill or going hungry, overflowing or coming up short; I prevail over all things because of Him strengthening me.

As ever with Paul, his Greek is hard to render precisely into good English; precise or good, choose one. But what is unarguable is that αὐτάρκης has never meant “contented”, not when William Tyndall mistranslated it in his groundbreaking English translation of 1525; and certainly not when every other English translator since just copied Tyndale. αὐτάρκης means self-governing and by extension self-sufficient, and the equivalent English word, autarky has passed straight into the field of political economy with meaning unchanged.

And Paul says that what he has learned – to be self-sufficient in whatever situation he finds himself – is a mystery into which he has been initiated. Paul uses the perfect passive of the verb μυέω, to be initiated into a mystery, in v 12; Jesus uses the related noun, μυστήριον in Mark 4.11 – the secret (mystery) of the Kingdom of God. In both cases this is the language of pagan so-called “mystery religions”; and yet both are happy to use this language.

And what is the mystery? How is Paul able to be self-sufficient in every situation? I would argue that Paul’s mystery is one and the same with what Jesus said of the disciples, and which they surely did not understand at that point; the mystery is Emmanuel: God with (and now in) us.

If God is in me and He has assigned me to do x or go to y, and I haven’t any money or food; seriously, how can a little lack stop me? I can do this.

Or as Paul says, I prevail over all things because of Him strengthening me (from the inside!)