Five-minute study · Day 204 · Philippians 1
Philippians 1:6
A word worth stopping on: work ἔργον ergon
Paul writes from a Roman prison to a church he loves: 'Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.' The word for 'work' is ergon. In the commercial Greek of the first century, ergon was a technical term for a building project, a business enterprise, a construction contract. Paul did not say God started a feeling in you. He said God broke ground on a construction project. The foundation has been poured. The framing is going up. The contractor who started the job has every intention of finishing it.
Word study: work
- Greek
- ἔργον
- Pronounced
- ergon
- Strong's
- G2041
- Definition
- Work, deed, action, enterprise, undertaking. In commercial usage: a business project, a building contract, an organized enterprise with a defined outcome.
Ergon appears 176 times in the New Testament. BDAG defines it as 'that which displays itself in activity of any kind: deed, action, thing, work, occupation, task, enterprise.' The word covers everything from a single act (Matthew 26:10: 'She hath wrought a good work') to a sustained enterprise (Acts 14:26: 'the work which they fulfilled'). The range matters because Paul is using ergon for something that takes time.
Fee's commentary on Philippians notes that the phrase 'good work' (ergon agathon) in Philippians 1:6 carries a double resonance. In Jewish usage, 'good works' were acts of righteousness and charity. In Greco-Roman commercial language, a 'good work' was a well-executed project, a building that was sound, a contract fulfilled to specification. Paul's Philippian audience lived in a Roman colony where construction projects, road building, and public works were visible daily enterprises. They understood what it meant for a contractor to begin a project and carry it through to completion.
The verbs reinforce the construction metaphor. 'Begun' (enarchomai) means to make a beginning, to inaugurate, to commence a work. 'Perform' (epiteleo) means to bring to completion, to finish, to accomplish. The pair describes the full arc of a project: ground-breaking to ribbon-cutting. BDAG notes that epiteleo was used in the papyri for completing contractual obligations, finishing a term of service, or bringing a project to its designed end.
The timeframe Paul gives is 'until the day of Jesus Christ.' The project has a deadline: the return of Christ. God is the contractor. The Philippians are the building site. The work will continue, day by day, until the deadline arrives. Paul's confidence (pepoithos, a perfect participle indicating settled conviction) rests on the character of the contractor, not the quality of the building materials.
The theological claim is specific. Salvation is God's construction project. He initiated it. He is executing it. He will complete it. The Philippians' job is to be the site where the work happens, to cooperate with the builder, to trust the timeline. Paul wrote this from prison, chained to a Roman guard, uncertain whether he would live or die (1:20-24). His confidence in the project's completion did not depend on his own circumstances.
Historical context · Approximately AD 61-62, Rome, during Paul's first Roman imprisonment
A Letter From a Construction Site Called Prison
Paul wrote Philippians from prison. The traditional view places him in Rome during his first imprisonment (Acts 28:16-31), around AD 61-62. He was under house arrest, chained to a rotating guard from the Praetorian Guard (Philippians 1:13), awaiting trial before the emperor.
Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia (northern Greece), founded by Philip II of Macedon and re-established as a Roman veteran colony by Augustus after the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC. The city was populated by retired Roman soldiers and their families. Latin was the official language. Roman law, customs, and architecture shaped daily life. The Philippian church was the first church Paul founded in Europe (Acts 16:11-40).
The relationship between Paul and the Philippian church was unusually warm. They were the only church that supported Paul financially from the beginning (Philippians 4:15-16). They sent Epaphroditus to Rome with a gift for Paul during his imprisonment (2:25, 4:18). The letter is Paul's thank-you note, written with affection and without the corrective edge of Galatians or Corinthians.
Fee observes that the 'good work' in 1:6 likely refers to the Philippians' partnership (koinonia) in the gospel, mentioned in 1:5. Their financial support, their prayers, their faithfulness over a decade of partnership: all of this was part of the ergon God had begun. The work was not an abstraction. It had a specific history: a merchant named Lydia opening her home (Acts 16:14-15), a jailer and his household being baptized at midnight (Acts 16:33-34), a community that sent money when no other church would.
The phrase 'until the day of Jesus Christ' places the project on a cosmic timeline. Roman building projects had completion dates tied to emperors: a temple finished in the reign of Augustus, an aqueduct completed under Claudius. Paul assigns a completion date tied to a different king. The contractor is God. The deadline is Christ's return. Every Roman inscription in Philippi that credited an emperor for a public work was a local echo of the claim Paul made about a greater builder.
For reflection
Paul described your spiritual life as a construction project God started and intends to finish. Think about the areas where you feel incomplete, where growth is slow, where the same weakness keeps surfacing. Those are open construction zones. The framing is exposed. The wiring is not yet behind the walls. That is normal for a building in progress. The question is whether you trust the contractor. Name one area of your life that feels unfinished. Then read the verse again: the one who began it will complete it.
Epiteleo means to bring to designed completion. The project has a blueprint and a deadline. The contractor has never abandoned a job site.
Sources: BDAG; Fee, 'Paul's Letter to the Philippians' (NICNT); Acts 16:11-40; Philippians 4:15-16