Kingdom Partnership I: A Partnership to Proclaim the Gospel

¹ Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers^] and deacons:² Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.³ I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, ⁴ always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, ⁵ because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. – Philippians 1:1-5.

The word partnership is one of those buzzwords that many organizations – from governments, NGOs , and conglomerates  –  are throwing around today. Even in the church your hear of ministries inviting you to become a “Platinum Partner” for a said amount of donation to the point that a perfectly great concept is in danger of being thrown to the garbage pit of clichés.  In fact, without a proper biblical understanding of this concept, the church will not be able to bring about God’s purposes in the earth.

To properly understand partnership, we must first go to the beginning so that we understand God’s purpose in the earth. Ever since Adam and Eve handed over their God-given authority to Satan, the Prince of the power of the air, God has been on a mission of repossession of the His creation (Genesis 3). Because He created the earth for human beings to inhabit and rule, this mission of restoring His authority in the earth cannot be realized apart from people (Genesis 1:26-30). So after the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God decreed that it was through Man that His authority in the earth would be restored (Genesis 3:15). This, of course, is seen in the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, who came to initiate God’s plan of restoring His authority or kingdom in the earth (Romans 5:12-17). For God to act in the earth, He needs human beings with whom He enters into partnership. Enter the people of God: those that have put their faith in Him so that they can bring about His purposes in the earth. In the Old Covenant, these were the descendants of Abraham, the man of faith (Genesis 18:16-19); in the New Covenant, these are those that have put their faith in Jesus Christ’s redemptive work (1 Peter 2:9-10). It is through partnership with the faithful that God is working out His plan of restoring His authority in the earth (Ephesians 3:10).

In fact, Paul reminds us in our key passage that not only are the faithful in Christ in partnership with God through Him but they are also in partnership with each other. But what is the nature of this partnership? There are at least four aspects of this partnership that Paul would have us be reminded. This is a partnership of proclamation of the Gospel, of perseverance in the Gospel, of perfection in the Gospel, and of progression in the Gospel. In this blog, I will deal with the first nature of our partnership as believers in Christ.

Paul writes this letter from the confines of a prison probably in Rome to update this church on what has happened to him, to thank them for the gift that he received from them, to tell them about their messenger Epaphroditus’ recovery from sickness, and to prepare them for Timothy’s and Epaphroditus’ visit to Philippi. Paul seems to be ecstatic as he is writing this letter as he constantly speaks of his joy throughout. He says he thanks God when he remembers the Philippian church and intercedes for them with joy because of their partnership with him from the very beginning until at the time of his writing. So what happened on the “first day” that should make it such a memorable event for Paul? Well, his whole journey to Philippi, a city in the region of the Roman province of Macedonia, was a miraculous one. For the sake of being brief, I will just quickly recap the events Luke records in Acts 16 about how the Gospel came to Philippi. After being forbidden to preach in other cities, Paul had a vision of a Macedonian man pleading with him to assist them upon which Paul and his apostolic company concluded that this was of the Holy Spirit. They go into Macedonia and end up by a river in Philippi where Jews and Jehovah-worshipping Gentiles congregate for worship. Paul preaches the Gospel and Lydia, probably a wealthy businesswoman, and her household come to faith in Christ. Lydia had insists that Paul and company be her guests and the ministry in Philippi grows. One day, a slave-girl with a spirit of a pythoness (that’s the literal rendering in the original language) starts to follow Paul and his crew around shouting “These men are servants of the Most High God”. After several days of doing this, Paul gets tired of this and casts out the demonic spirit from her. It’s right there that Paul gets in trouble with the owners of the slave-girl who exploited her demonized condition for financial gain. They masters report Paul to the authorities and Paul and Silas are thrown into jail. In the middle of the night, as Paul and Silas usually do, they start praising God and all heavens break loose on the little jail and doors are flung open and chains are broken! Knowing that the prisoners are going to escape and that he would definitely be executed, the prison warden grabs a knife to kill himself. That’s when Paul shouts to him and says, “Don’t kill yourself, we are all here!” I’m sure the warden believes this is a miracle: open doors and broken chains but prisoners not making a run for it! To cut a long story short, the warden and his household all put their trust in Jesus and the following day Paul and his posse leave Philippi after rebuking the authorities for incarcerating Roman citizens without due process.

That is what the “first day” was about. But the Philippian church didn’t stop there. They constantly provided for Paul that’s why Paul speaks of their partnership (Greek koinonia – the word partnership was used in the business world of the day to refer to business unions). This was partnership in “giving and receiving” as Paul says in Philippians 4:14-15: “Yet is was kind of you to share in my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.” In other words, the Philippian church partnered with Paul by providing the resources Paul and his group needed to proclaim the gospel. This is definitely consonant with Paul’s teaching in his Letter to the Galatians 4:14-15 when he wrote that “one who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches.”

Here is the point. Believers in Jesus Christ must partner together to ensure that the Gospel is proclaimed everywhere. It starts by being part of a local church that is witnessing to its community as well as standing with other believers that are proclaiming the Gospel globally. It continues with our giving specifically to the cause of taking the Gospel to the ends of the world as “this Gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). Taking the Gospel to the ends of the world has never been easier than in this present age especially with the technology at our disposal. It is time that the church of Jesus Christ took the call to take the Gospel to the nations seriously. This can only happen when we take kingdom partnerships seriously. May the Lord put a passion in your heart for the restoration of His rule in the earth! May you partner with those that extend His rule to the ends of the earth! Come, Lord Jesus!