Working on an exegesis paper this week over Paul's letter to the Philippians. It's due on Friday, but I haven't made much progress yet beyond reading through the letter as a whole several times and looking for the overall structure.
The thing that has struck me with the most force so far is the repetition of "Christ" - the Greek χριστός, "the Anointed One", the "Messiah".
It shows up in the first verse, the last verse, and 36 other times in between! Seems like Paul has a lot to say about Jesus as the Christ here.
Although we have grown up familiar with talk of Jesus being the Christ, I am certain Paul had his hands full in developing a helpful Christology for his 1st century audiences.
I think it's really difficult for modern Christians to grasp all of the drama left in the wake of the small band of Jesus followers who went about proclaiming Him to be the long-awaited Messiah, God's Anointed.
Especially since Jesus Himself hadn't been interested in fulfilling the role everyone assigned to the Messiah in their imaginations.
Then you add a wave of Gentiles coming into this new community of believers and the Gentiles don't even know what a Christ is.
And everyone coming at these theological discussions assuming they already have it figured out and everyone else is wrong.
What a mess!
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