Philippians 1:18

Philippians 1:18. What then? i.e., what is it then? What is the outcome of all their conduct?

only that in every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. The feeling expressed in these words of St. Paul may be com-pared with our Lord's lesson to His disciples (Mark 9:39). John had told Him how they had forbidden one who was casting out devils in the name of Jesus, and who yet followed not with them. But Jesus said: Forbid him not, such a man cannot lightly speak evil of me. St. Paul must have had some thought akin to this when he thus answers his own ‘What then?' He must have felt that though the preachers might be of no right feeling towards himself, yet there could only be gain to the people of Rome by the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus. And so he continues.

and therein I do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. For the population of the imperial city could not have too many preachers of Christ in it. If we may take the apostle's description of the heathen world given in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans as a true picture, and there is no doubt it was so, all who would go forth in the name of Christ and tell the story of His life and death and its object, were to be welcomed from whatever motive they did their work. It was not as in the case of the Galatian church, where men were being led from a pure to a debased form of the Christian religion. Then the apostle has no word of joy for those who preached that the only way to Christ was through the door of the Mosaic law. Rather he has no words strong enough to express his anger at them, and wonder at the infatuation of those who hearkened to them. But to have Christ preached at Rome, even though the preacher were a self-seeking Judaizer, was a clear gain and source of congratulation, when the city was in the degraded moral condition in which it lay in the days of St. Paul.