What Does Philippians 4:12 Mean?

(12) **Every where and in all things.**—The original has no such distinction of the two words. It is, *in all and everything;* in life as a whole, and in all its separate incidents. **I am instructed.**—The word again is a peculiar and almost technical word. It is, *I have been instructed; I have learnt the secret*—a phrase properly applied to men admitted into such mysteries as the Eleusinian, enshrining a secret unknown except to the initiated; secondarily, as the context would seem to suggest, to those who entered the inner circle of an exclusive philosophy, learning there what the common herd could neither understand nor care for. A Stoic might well have used these words. There is even a touch of the Stoical contempt in the word “to be full,” which properly applies to cattle, though frequently used of men in the New Testament. Perhaps, like all ascetics, they mostly knew how “to suffer need,” better than how “to abound.” But a Marcus Aurelius might have boldly claimed the knowledge of both.