Practice These Things
9 Do the things which you learned, received, heard, and saw in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Four verbs of transmission, and the last one is the test — what was watched, not only what was taught.
The things which you learned, received, heard, and saw in me: do these things.
Four verbs, and they divide into two pairs. Learned and received describe instruction handed over — the second is the word for taking delivery of a tradition. Heard and saw describe observation, and the last is the one that costs something to write.
Paul offers his own conduct as evidence twice in this letter Philippians 3:17, and the Philippians had seen him at his least dignified: stripped, beaten, and singing in the stocks at midnight Acts 16:23–25. What they saw was a man's behavior under conditions nobody chooses.
The command is a present imperative — keep doing these things — so the instruction is habitual rather than a single decision.
And the promise attached is not success or safety: and the God of peace will be with you.
Verse 7 promised the peace of God as a garrison; this promises the God of peace himself. The gift and the giver are named in two consecutive paragraphs, and the second is the larger. What follows the first is guarding; what follows the second is company.
settled What this mark means