The Roman colony that became Paul's favorite church
Philippi sat in northeastern Macedonia, near the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus, on the Via Egnatia — the Roman road that ran from the Adriatic coast to Byzantium. Philip II of Macedon refounded an older settlement here in 356 BC and gave it his name. Two centuries later, in 42 BC, the plains just outside the city hosted the battle in which Octavian and Mark Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius — the battle that ended the Roman Republic. As reward, Octavian (soon to be Augustus) settled veterans there and granted Philippi the *ius italicum*: a small piece of Italy on Greek soil, with full Roman citizenship and exemption from imperial taxes. The Philippians were unusually proud of being Roman.
The city was small — perhaps 10,000 people — and Jewish population was so thin that there was no synagogue, only a prayer place by the river outside the gate. When Paul arrived in roughly AD 49 on his second missionary journey, having crossed from Asia Minor in response to a night vision of "a man of Macedonia… begging him, 'Come over and help us'" (Acts 16:9), it was Philippi he came to first. It became the first Christian church in Europe.
Three converts and an earthquake
Acts 16 tells the founding in three vignettes. **Lydia**, a dealer in purple cloth from Thyatira, hears Paul at the riverside prayer place, believes, and is baptized with her household — and insists Paul and his team stay at her house. She becomes the first European Christian on record. **A slave girl with a spirit of divination** follows Paul for days proclaiming him a servant of the Most High God. Paul, finally exasperated, casts out the spirit; her owners — losing their meal ticket — drag Paul and Silas to the magistrates, who order them beaten and jailed without trial despite their Roman citizenship. **At midnight**, Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns when an earthquake throws open the prison doors. The jailer, assuming his prisoners have escaped and facing execution, draws his sword to kill himself. Paul stops him: "We are all here." The jailer falls trembling before them and asks what he must do to be saved. He and his household believe and are baptized that same night.
Three converts: a wealthy Gentile businesswoman, a trafficked enslaved girl, a Roman official. The Philippian church was socioeconomically improbable from day one.
The letter Paul wrote them from prison
A decade later, awaiting trial in Rome, Paul writes back to this church. The letter to the Philippians is the warmest Paul ever wrote — no doctrinal crisis to address, no apostles' authority to defend, only gratitude. He thanks them for sending Epaphroditus with a financial gift (Philippians 4:18). He tells them how to think about his imprisonment ("What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel," 1:12). He embeds the Christ hymn — possibly an earlier piece of Christian liturgy he is quoting — in which Christ, "being in the form of God," empties himself, becomes obedient to death on a cross, and is exalted to the name above every name (Philippians 2:5-11).
The Philippians had been sending support to Paul from the very beginning of the Macedonian mission. He calls them "my partners in the gospel from the first day until now" (1:5). It is the closest thing in the New Testament to a love letter from an apostle to a congregation.
The city itself was destroyed by Slavic invasions in the seventh century. Archaeologists have uncovered the forum, the prison traditionally identified as Paul and Silas's, the early basilicas built over the riverside prayer place, and an octagonal church on what may be Lydia's house. The Philippi of the letters is gone, but the letters do most of the work of keeping it.
*Related entries: Paul, Antioch, Corinth, Jerusalem, Damascus Road, Pentecost.*