Catholic Commentary
Salutation: Paul and Timothy Greet the Church at Philippi
1Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and servants:2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:1–2 presents Paul and Timothy as servants of Christ addressing the saints at Philippi, including the overseers and deacons, and extends grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The salutation establishes apostolic authority through shared servitude rather than hierarchical claim and identifies the community's holiness as constituted by their union with Christ rather than personal merit.
Paul doesn't greet the Philippians as subjects but as slaves with him — holiness isn't a reward for the heroic, but the birthright of the baptized.
Philippians 1:1 — "Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ"
Paul opens by naming himself and Timothy as douloi Christou Iēsou — literally, "slaves of Christ Jesus." The word doulos (slave/servant) carried sharp social connotations in the Greco-Roman world: a slave possessed no legal standing of his own; his identity, labor, and very existence belonged entirely to his master. Far from being a title of humility adopted for rhetorical effect, doulos was the most radical claim Paul could make: his apostleship is not a career or a civic honor but a total belonging to Christ. This self-designation has deep roots in the Old Testament, where the great figures of salvation history — Moses (Deuteronomy 34:5), Joshua (Joshua 24:29), David (Psalm 89:3), and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (Isaiah 42:1) — are each called ebed YHWH, "servant/slave of the LORD." By taking this title, Paul locates himself within that prophetic lineage and points to Christ as the ultimate ebed, the obedient Son who took "the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7) — a theme he will develop with stunning force in the Christ-hymn just one chapter later.
Notably, Paul does not here invoke his apostolic title (compare Galatians 1:1, Romans 1:1, where "apostle" appears prominently). With the Philippians — his most beloved community, from whom he has received material and spiritual support — he writes as a friend and fellow servant, not as a superior. Timothy is included as co-sender, reinforcing the collegial, communal character of apostolic ministry.
"To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi"
The addressees are called hagioi — "holy ones" or "saints." In Paul's usage, this is not a title reserved for the heroically virtuous but a description of the baptized: those who, by union with Christ, have been consecrated, set apart, and made participants in divine holiness. The phrase "in Christ Jesus" (a characteristically Pauline en Christō formula) is the theological key: it is incorporation into Christ — through baptism and faith — that constitutes their holiness, not their own moral achievement. Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia, a place proud of its Roman citizenship; Paul subtly reorients their identity: your true citizenship is in Christ Jesus (cf. Philippians 3:20).
"With the overseers and servants"
This is one of the most significant ecclesiological texts in the New Testament. Paul addresses the episkopoi (overseers/bishops) and diakonoi (servants/deacons) as distinct offices within the community. The plural episkopoi has generated much scholarly discussion — Catholic tradition, drawing on the Fathers and subsequent development, understands the monarchical episcopate to have developed from precisely these early collegiate structures, with the fullness of Holy Orders being present even where terminology was still consolidating. St. John Chrysostom noted in his Homilies on Philippians that Paul greets the bishops first because of their governance, and the deacons second because of their service — an ordered, hierarchical community even in the Church's infancy.
Philippians 1:2 — "Grace to you and peace"
The greeting charis kai eirēnē is Paul's distinctively Christian adaptation of both the Greek greeting (chairein, "rejoice/greetings") and the Hebrew shalom ("peace/wholeness"). By transforming chairein into charis (grace), Paul signals that the entire letter will operate in the register of gift, not obligation. Grace (charis) is the unmerited, freely given favor of God — the very foundation of Christian life. Peace (eirēnē/shalom) is its fruit: right relationship with God, with neighbor, and within oneself. Crucially, both gifts flow from a dual source: "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." The conjunction and (Greek: kai) linking God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ on equal footing as the joint origin of grace and peace is a quietly profound Trinitarian datum, pointing toward the Church's later dogmatic articulation of Christ's full divinity.
From a Catholic perspective, these two verses are a compressed ecclesiology. Three elements stand out with particular doctrinal weight.
1. The Theology of Holy Orders. The explicit mention of episkopoi and diakonoi alongside the apostolic author anticipates the Church's teaching on the three degrees of Holy Orders: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate (CCC §1554). The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (§20) traces the episcopate to apostolic succession; the seeds of that ordered ministry are visible here in embryonic form. St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing just decades after Paul, drew directly on this Philippian structure when insisting that a valid Eucharist required the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons — a catholically ordered Church.
2. The Universal Call to Holiness. Paul's address of the entire community as hagioi (saints) is the scriptural foundation for what Vatican II proclaimed as the "universal call to holiness" (Lumen Gentium §39–42): every baptized person, by virtue of their incorporation into Christ, is called to and capable of sanctity. St. Thomas Aquinas (STh II-II, q. 184) grounds the pursuit of perfection not in a special state but in charity — the same charity infused at baptism in all the faithful.
3. Grace as the Foundational Category of Christian Life. The Catechism (§1996) defines grace as "favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call." Paul's reforging of the Greek greeting into charis (grace) signals that Christian life is, from its very first word, a response to gift — never an achievement. This stands against every form of Pelagianism and grounds the Catholic understanding of the supernatural order: nature is elevated by grace, never replaced by it.
Most Catholics know their parish priest or bishop by name but rarely think of themselves as hagioi — holy ones. Yet this is precisely how Paul addresses ordinary, struggling believers in a Roman colonial city. One concrete application: examine how you introduce yourself in your own Christian context. Do you own your identity as one made holy by baptism, or do you reserve "holiness" for canonized saints on stained glass?
Second, Paul's self-description as doulos — slave of Christ — directly challenges the modern instinct to treat faith as a personal enhancement, one commitment among many. To be a servant of Christ is to relinquish the fiction of self-sovereignty. For contemporary Catholics navigating careers, digital identities, and competing loyalties, the question Paul implicitly poses is pointed: Who owns your agenda?
Finally, the greeting "grace and peace" is worth recovering as a genuine spiritual posture before each day — not as a pious phrase but as a reminder that the day's encounters will be held together not by personal competence but by the same divine gift Paul invoked over Philippi.
Commentary