As we listen to Paul’s words in his letter to the Philippians, we may be surprised by his warm and intimate conversation. This is surely correspondence between close friends in true community. What has drawn them into such authentic relationship? And how might we connect with others in the same way? Paul’s greeting and prayer in Philippians 1:1-11 begin to show us the way.
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Jon Stallsmith
Series: Philippians: The ‘What Ifs’ of Faith
September 15, 2013
What If We Interceded for Others?
Philippians 1:1-11
If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them up to the book of Philippians. That’s where we’re going to be for the next several weeks walking through this book of Philippians and this series. As Buddy was walking through this passage of the Scripture, he really felt like we needed to be asking the question, “What if?”
If you need a Bible, slip up your hand. We’ll give you a Bible. If you need a sheet there to take notes with, you can have that also by raising your hand. Our good guys will help you out with that.
Buddy was just talking about these what ifs of faith, because what we see in Philippians is such a beautiful portrait of the relationship between Paul and the church in Philippi. It’s like getting a glimpse into community the way it’s supposed to be. Paul has some wonderful words as an advisor, as a spiritual father, as a friend, as family really for these Philippian believers. The insight he gives them is so powerful for us also.
As we’re going through this, we’re just going to be asking the question…What if we were able to live this way? Always the answer is through faith in Christ we can. So it’s not an entirely hypothetical series. Last week, we met this church in Philippi, at least the beginnings of it, when we walked through Acts 16, talking about how the early little team of Paul and Timothy and Silas arrived in Philippi after the Lord had shut doors on either side.
They show up. They’re trying to find some folks to share with. They go down to the river, find the place of prayer, discover Lydia, who invites them back to her household. She’s coming to faith. She’s baptized. They have the little center of the community of God’s people there in the household.
Sometime later, the little girl who’s demon possessed is tormenting them, following them around. It says Paul is grieved actually, annoyed. So he casts the demon out, and the people who are using that woman for financial gain are so upset that they start a riot. Paul is thrown into jail with Silas, and in the middle of the night as they’re imprisoned in the dark place, they begin worshiping, singing, actually modeling the joy we’re going to see as we’re read through Philippians.
While they’re singing, there’s an earthquake, and the whole jail basically breaks open, and the jailer responsible for all the prisoners realizes, “Surely, all of these prisoners have escaped.” So he’s ready to fall on his own sword, and Paul says, “Stop! Stop! Stop! Don’t do it! We are all here.” He says, “What must I do to be saved?” because he’s thinking quite literally he will be killed because the prisoners are about to escape.
Paul answers in a much more profound way, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” So the jailer and all of his family come to faith. They’re baptized. Right out of that little vignette, we realize that the people in Philippi… You have a middle class to upper class businesswoman in Lydia. You have a little slave girl who has been set free from demonic influence. You have a jailer, kind of a blue collar worker and his family. All of these different peoples are brought together in this fledgling church in Philippi.
Now, when we pick up the book of Philippians, it’s later in life. Paul is actually in prison, and he’s writing back to these Philippians. As he’s writing back to them, he begins, as he does often in his letters, with a prayer. That’s what we’re going to be talking about. The what if tonight is…What if we really interceded for others?
Intercede is one of those words that’s a bit of a code word in a lot of Christian circles. You know, “I’ve been interceding for you.” If you’re not a Christian or you haven’t heard that language before, you’re not really sure what that means. “You’ve been what for me? You’ve been interceding?” You start thinking about all those words. There’s supersede, precede, Johnny Appleseed, intercede, recede.
I just cut my hair. You may have seen Tommy on the way in. His granddaughter, Imogen… We talked about they found a tumor on her spine, and so she’s undergoing the chemotherapy. Just last week, her hair began to fall out, and so several of us have shaved our heads just to be on her team like that. So Tommy has also a clean cut scalp there. Anyway, I haven’t shaved my head like this for probably seven years or so.
What happens is when you cut your hair like this again, you realize what hair you do have and what hair you don’t have. So that word recede is an interesting one for me right now, just to be completely transparent with you.
But intercede, the more important word, really means prayer. It means to set yourself between two things. Then the idea of prayer, it’s like we’re placing ourselves and our requests between the people we’re praying for and God himself. We’re trying to link them together. “God, hear our prayer and work in this person’s life.”
The model for this, of course, is Jesus. We see in Hebrews 7, it says Jesus is the great Intercessor. He lives to intercede. That’s an amazing phrase. There are a lot of things I would say I live for and I love, but I don’t know if anyone looking at my life would say, “Jon Stallsmith lives to intercede,” but the Scripture says Jesus lives to intercede, that this is a crucial part of Jesus’ own ministry in heaven at the right hand of the Father.
As we look at this, we’re going to see there is some really important stuff we can draw out of Paul’s way of praying in Philippians 1. It’s interesting. You learn a lot about a person from the way they pray. We’ve all been in those situations. We’ve been praying together, and some people… You’re at the meal and you’re ready to pray, and they kind of launch into the preaching prayer. There’s not really a request anywhere in there. It’s mainly just, “O Lord,” and then they say whatever they want to say to you, but they say it to God while you’re listening. That’s okay.
There are the story prayers. You know, “O Lord,” and they start praying, “God, I remember the time I was on the beach and the sun was setting and I saw the birds flying over the horizon, and I knew in that moment that you were…” That’s not really interceding; that’s just telling a story while God is listening. He’s listening all the time, so just tell the story. You don’t have to be praying to do it. Just tell the story. That’s no problem.
You have the quick prayer. We have our conventions in prayer. I realize that pretty much every prayer I ever prayed from about the time I was in first grade until I was like a freshman in college, every one of them started with, “Dear Heavenly Father,” to the point where I wasn’t even thinking about dear, heavenly, or Father. It was just like, “Dear Heavenly Father, now I can start praying.”
But you learn a lot about what matters to a person when you’re praying with them and you hear what’s going on. You learn about the quality of a person’s relationship with God and maybe more significantly the quality of the relationships that surround a person when you’re hearing them pray or when you’re interceding for something together.
What we see here in Philippians is a really authentic relationship between Paul and the Philippians. This thing isn’t shallow. This isn’t like Facebook-level interaction. We’ve all seen those. You go on Facebook or maybe Instagram or some other social media site, and someone posts a picture and another picture or whatever. You look at all the comments underneath. There’s a lot of, “Yeah’s” and, “You’re gorgeous,” and, “Oh my gosh,” or, “I might die; this is too cute.”
You get a lot of that, which is very sweet. It’s great to encourage each other that way, but you wonder just how deep those interactions are really. If they’re not built on the substance of true community, then they’re just kind of shallow.
By the way, most people when they’re putting things up on the Internet about their own lives, they don’t post the picture of their cry face after a big fight in their marriage or like, “Here’s my son rebelling again.” It doesn’t happen as much. It’s usually like people are just Instagramming and Facebooking their perfect life. You look at everybody else and you’re like, “Wow, that’s amazing how happy they are all the time in their key happy events.”
But what Paul is getting at here and what we’ll see in this prayer is not just a shallow interaction. It’s not just a guy writing a letter from prison, sending it off to some strangers. This is real community, real connection that’s happening between Paul and the Philippians.
So Philippians 1:1. The way ancient letters began was with the writer usually introducing himself or herself and then speaking about the audience, making a greeting and then going on to the bulk of the letter. This begins, “Paul and Timothy, servants [literally, bond slaves] of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:1-2)
He’s addressing the whole church at Philippi and he singles out those who are in leadership at the church overseeing, also those serving. That’s what the word deacon means in Greek. It literally comes from the root to serve.
Then he says, “Grace to you and peace.” He begins his letters this way, and it’s always this order. It’s always, “Grace to you and peace.” It’s not even so much as some translations have it, “Grace and peace to you.” It’s really, “Grace to you,” first, resulting in peace. What is grace? Well, some people define it as unmerited favor, the free gift of God.
For Paul, grace is summarized in that story of Jesus coming to the earth and while we were yet sinners dying for us and then raising again on the third day and inviting us into his life without any contribution on our own part. This idea of grace is something that can’t be earned. It’s only something that can be given.
The grace of God actually enables us to do the things we cannot do on our own strength. On our own, we can’t make ourselves right with God. On our own, we cannot live righteously. On our own, we can’t love the way God calls us to love. There are so many things in the walk with Christ, the walk of faith, that are absolutely impossible on our own. We can’t save ourselves.
So many times we mess up, and after we mess up, we think, “Oh, I’m going to make this right,” and so we try to do a bunch of other things to get back in with God and to make the wrong right. There’s nothing wrong with repentance. That’s a wonderful thing, and if you’ve hurt others, it’s good to be reconciled to those folks. But we have to understand even when we mess up, we can’t save ourselves by doing something to cover it up.
What would we need? We need grace. We need that free gift of God. It’s interesting because actually the saints (and this is written to all the saints; it’s not just an exclusive category of people who have performed a miracle and met this certain set of standards or something like that), but no, all those who are in Christ in the Bible are considered to be saints, set apart, made holy by the sacrifice of Jesus.
Here it’s talking about the saints receiving grace. Saints, we need grace perhaps more than even sinners. We’re burning through grace constantly because God is calling us to do things we cannot do our own. So we’re just tapped into that source of grace. What happens is when we recognize the grace of God at work in our lives and we really come to that place where we are relying authentically on God, trusting him to carry us through the situations we just can’t do on our own, the result is peace.
We don’t have to maintain it ourselves. We don’t have to make this succeed. We don’t have to fix this huge problem. We just rely on grace and what flows out of it is peace. So this is what Paul says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” that together Jesus and the Father are the source unified of grace and peace.
I don’t know if you heard Buddy’s sermon this morning and he was preaching the morning services, but he went on like a 30-minute riff on grace that was really profound. You can go online and just listen to that sermon. It was powerful.
But as we look at this passage, I’m going to read 3-11 and then we’re going to kind of dig a little deeper into three ideas. After this greeting, Paul begins talking about his intercession, his interaction with God about these issues. He says, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:3-11)
You can learn a lot about a person from the way he prays. Beautiful prayer from Paul. The things we’re going to see here… We’re going to look at three things. First, Paul is very clear that these guys and himself and really all the body of Christ, the saints together are all in Christ. That’s the first thing. The second thing we’re going to look at is how to be loving with Christ’s own love. Then finally how to be approving excellence for the day of Christ.
1. All in Christ. This word all makes a lot of appearance. If you were paying attention, in verse 1 Paul says, “To all the saints.” Then again in verse 4, “Always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy.” Then twice again in verse 7. “It’s right for me to feel this way about you all.” I don’t know why they didn’t just translate it y’all. That would’ve been shorter. “Because I hold you in my heart for you are all partakers with me of grace.”
There’s a very inclusive element to Paul’s communication about this church, about this community. He wants them to recognize that they’re all in this together. They’re all in Christ together. As we read further on in the letter, we’ll see why this is so important to Paul. There are some big things that threaten this little community.
As we’re going to be reading, discouragement is on the horizon. They’re having some disputes among themselves. They’re going to be challenged. There are some folks in their midst who are bringing up strange doctrinal issues. There’s going to be disagreement. So Paul from the very beginning is saying, “Hey, I’m writing to all of you.”
What connects the community in Christ? What’s the foundation? What’s the glue? What holds all this together? For Paul, the first word he uses is this word partnership. “Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until day.” Partnership is the Greek word koinonia. Oftentimes we hear it translated fellowship. The interesting thing about partnership is that it is a mutual participation.
Let me say it another way. It’s a partnership. This Greek word has the sense that you’re actually doing things together. It’s not that you’re just holding something in common, like we both believe the same thing; it’s that you’re actively engaged together in a common task. It’s the difference between feeling connected to somebody…
Like let’s see. Let’s say you walk into Waffle House and you see someone wearing a Braves hat, and you’re also a Braves fan. You walk up and you say, “Hey, you’re a Braves fan. Me too.” And they’re like, “Yeah, I’m a Braves fan too.” Okay, that’s like you’re kind of connected. You haven’t done anything together. You just kind of hold something in common.
It’s a whole different level of connection or fellowship (the way the Bible uses the word) when you walk in and you see a guy in a Braves hat and you say, “Oh, you’re a Braves fan. Yeah, me too.” Then you say, “I was at that play-in game to the playoffs last year when all the Braves fans threw the water bottles out on the field.” Was anybody else there? I guess we have no fellowship in that. Well, I was literally there.
But let’s say I’m talking to this guy and I’m like, “Hey, on that day the playoff game and everybody threw the water bottles on the field and we booed them because they had that horrible infield fly.” He’s like, “Yeah, I was there too, and I was done here. Actually a water bottle hit my head.” “I was in the upper deck because I couldn’t afford more expensive seats.”
So we’re just talking back and forth. This is a whole different level of participation. We were at the same game together cheering for it. It’s not just we’re just both wearing Braves hats. This is when Paul is talking about the community of Christ. He’s not just saying you all who hold this common truth of loving Jesus or having faith in Jesus. He’s talking about you all who participate together tangibly for the advance of the gospel. You guys are in this thing together actively.
As we read through the rest of Philippians, we’ll see what this means in practice. He says in verse 19 they pray for him. They’re carrying on the work in Philippi in verses 27 and 28. They’re suffering along with Paul in verse 30. They give him a gift. In chapter 4, he talks about Epaphroditus. They actually send one of their own to be with Paul whiles he’s in prison. This isn’t just like, “Hey, I’m really glad you’re still following Jesus”; this is they’re in it together. They’re going through it.
This participation, partnership together, is the partnership in the gospel. Remember that word gospel literally means good news. I love that because we’ve all seen communities, and maybe we’ve even been a part of communities that come together and are unified around bad news or gossip or a mess or icky or whatever. We’ve seen that happen.
Sometimes that does happen where something’s really rotten. It’s a drag and there’s just some of that dissension or some of that faction in there and you get together around that and you almost become participants in bad news. I can tell you that does not end well. You get bitter and start moving from place to place. It’s hard, very hard to sustain a community on negativity.
But for Paul, it’s partnership in the gospel, good news, the very best news that Jesus is the true King and the true Lord. It’s not just that they’re partners in the gospel, but they’re also unified in the purpose God is working out in them. He says, “He who began a good work in you is going to bring it to completion.”
I’ve started a few projects in my life that are still unfinished. You think, “Oh, today’s the day I’m really going to fix up that back bedroom that is just kind of a mess in the house, and there are all those holes in it.” So you go over there and you take your hole filler and you fill them in. But then, if you’re really going to finish that wall, you have to go back and you have to sand it and you have to buy paint. You have to prime it and you have to paint it again. Our back bedroom still has filler in just half the holes. I’ve started stuff and just not finished it. Maybe you’ve done the same thing. God doesn’t do that. He finishes what he starts.
Paul is wonderful. He says, “I am sure of this. I am confident of this. If I know anything about God, I know this that he finishes what he starts, and he’s going to finish it in you guys, so hang in there. Let him carry you through to the next place. You’re unified in your purpose. You’re partnering in the gospel. You’re actively participating in what this kingdom of God is doing in the world, what God is doing through Christ in the world. And he’s going to finish it out in you even if it seems really rough or really tough right now.”
I remember several years ago I went on a trip with Buddy and Jody and a few other folks from Grace, and we were in Cambodia. The main reason we went was to do some training with pastors out in the back jungle of Cambodia. It was a pretty wild experience. I remember they gave us these pink banana tamale things one day. That was not the best outcome, but that happens sometimes as you’re out in other places eating pink banana tamales.
After we had done the training with the pastors, we spent a couple of days hanging out with some guys who were leading a really sweet ministry. We talked a little about this last week, but human trafficking is a big problem in Southeast Asia and particularly in Cambodia. We were there in Cambodia and we saw in some of the regions, the capital city of Phnom Penh, how we drove through some of the red light districts.
It’s really tragic. That whole human trafficking world sometimes gets glamorized by Hollywood or you see it on TV and you think, “Oh, that’s such a glamorous…” No, it’s not. It’s really tragic, and it’s hard, and it’s brutal. People being bought and sold. The most precious things in life treated like a commodity goes against everything God made us for.
But these guys in this ministry had one of these sorts of ministries where they would buy women out of those slavery situations and help to rehabilitate them. They would invest in them spiritually, but they’d also teach them a trade. So when we were visiting the school, the orphanage area where they were helping to rehabilitate these girls, we were sitting with 20 or 25 of them they had that year. They were learning how to sew dresses, and they did beautiful seam work. Then they were also learning how to do hair, cosmetology stuff and all of this.
Then that afternoon, the leader of the ministry, the Cambodian guy, asked Buddy to share with these girls a little bit. It’s very humbling to meet these young women who have experienced and really suffered so much and yet they love Jesus. I still remember part of their schooling was to learn to read and write. They learned in English also. I just remember seeing their drills. They’d put it up on the wall. It was just, “I love Jesus. I love Jesus. I love Jesus.” It was just written over and over and over again to practice their English. That was what they wanted to do.
That afternoon, we were gathered under a tree in the shade a little bit, and they asked Buddy to speak. That’s one of those challenging situations. What do you share with the girls in that situation, in that spot? I remember Buddy started talking. He was talking to the girls who’d been learning how to be hairdressers.
He said, “Imagine you had someone sit down in your chair and you started to cut their hair. Maybe you got through half of their hair, and it was all short. But you only cut half of their hair. Then all of a sudden they just stood and said, ‘I’m leaving,’ and they walked out. What would you say? You’d say, ‘Wait! Stop! Stop! No, no, no, it’s not finished yet! In fact, it actually kind of looks worse than it did when you first came in.'”
Then he looked at them and he said, “You might look at your lives, and they feel broken, and they maybe don’t even feel very beautiful. It may feel like your life looks worse than when you first started, but here’s what God wants you to know. It’s not finished yet. He’s still working. You’re still in the chair, and God, who began a good work in you, is faithful to bring it to completion. He’s going to finish what he starts.”
I just watched these girls. This was such good news to them to know that God in heaven had a purpose for their lives, both now and stretching onward into eternity. Paul, as he’s writing to these Philippian believers, he’s saying, “Guys, don’t be discouraged. God has a purpose for you. He’s going to fulfill it in your lives.”
Then he comes forward to verse 7. He says, “It’s right for me to feel this way about your all because I hold you in my heart for you are all partakers with me of grace both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.” Again, that word partaker is a different from, but it comes from the same basic word as partnership, from koinonia. It’s literally synkoinoia. Together a partnership. He’s like ramping it up a little bit saying, “We’re really unified in this venture.”
The way this word was also used in the ancient world is almost like a business partnership. It’s almost like Paul is saying, “Hey, we’re in the business of the gospel together. As we work and everybody does what God has assigned them to do, this gospel thing advances, and it grows, and it profits. Not like with financial gain, but for the kingdom it’s profiting.” Paul is really helping them see the stuff that unifies them.
In my own experience, it’s interesting because I’ve had other jobs and had coworkers in those jobs. I remember when I was working at Furman I was an admissions counselor. In the intense season, we had all these thousands of applications that would come in, and we’d all have to read them. So all of us who were admissions counselors would be reading them. It’s like, “SAT score; check. Junior class vice president; okay, check. Okay, no big deal. B+ in history.” We’d be reading through all that stuff. It was a very intense time.
We all participated in that together. We had stacks of files just coming up. But to tell you the truth, the connection that came out of that shared experience… It was good and we could talk about it and we’d go out to dinner afterwards and say, “Man, did you see that essay?” “Yeah, I read that essay too. It was really interesting. That girl had a great story about her life.” There was a certain connection that happened there.
Or maybe you’ve been playing on sports teams. I remember the partnership, the fellowship, the connection that happened on some of the best baseball teams I was a part of. We won a state championship when I was a junior in high school. I remember for like three golden weeks we were like a pretty good team through the year, but then when the playoffs hit, we just gelled. We won a bunch of games in a row and we won state. It was wonderful. It was so exciting.
Then other teams I played on, you’d think, “We’re together. We have a common goal and everything else.” But then, I started working at Grace. I started having projects that weren’t about winning a sports game or admitting the best kids to university, but they were projects that were like projects of eternal value.
Not to say that playing baseball and winning is not important or admitting kids to Furman. I mean, you want to do your job well, but I think we all know there’s something that really knits us together, unifies us when we’re on mission together and we’re serving the Lord together.
We were in Cambodia together or maybe we’re just like doing KidzLife on Wednesday nights together. I think of Bo Hooper and Shane Mullennix. Their kids have grown past the age of fifth graders, but for years, Bo and Shane together have been leading fifth grade groups in KidzLife ever since we’ve been doing it. So this is our fifth year.
I just am up there teaching every year, and I’m looking, and I see Bo and Shane back there close-knit friends united. Why? Because they’re in a kingdom business together. They’re in that kingdom adventure together. The connections that can happen, the community that can happen right there transcend every other kind of connection or community I’ve ever experienced.
In your marriage, in your family, with your friendships. If you want that relationship to go to the next level, to really deepen and get tighter and to actually go into territory that you never even knew was possible, become a partaker of grace for the defense and confirmation of the gospel together. Get out on mission together. That’s where it happens. It’s incredible to see.
Serve. Hang out with some kids and help teach them the Bible. Go feed some homeless folks. Whatever it is, when you go out like that, there’s a deepening of the connection, and that’s what’s defining the relationship between Paul and the Philippians.
That word partake is a good word because it suggests this idea that even as this is happening, it’s not just in the human world that this relationship is happening. It’s actually a connection to God also, that they’re partaking of grace, that God is enabling them to do things they couldn’t do on their own, that they’re drawing from the grace of God.
2. Love with Christ’s own love. The truth is as we’re talking about community, we’re talking about partnership, we’re talking about connection, partaking of grace together, God accomplishing his purposes in us together, that’s wonderful, but people are annoying! Maybe they aren’t to you, but for all the wonderful stories of doing things together and feeling connected, people hurt your feelings.
They treat you badly. Sometimes it feels like they’re forsaking you. Sometimes it feels like, “We have this plan. We’re going to do this together. Hey, we’re going to lead KidzLife together, and you’re bailing? What?” It feels like the unity of the all, all the people together, starts to fray a little bit. And that’s tough.
Though we are saints, we often hurt each other. Sometimes we’re really hard to love and sometimes really hard to love other people. But listen to the way Paul writes about this. He says in verse 8, “For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:8)
That word affection in the original language, it means literally like your bowels. That’s the way in the ancient world they said it. “I love you with my guts.” We would probably say today like, “I love you with all my heart.” But it was an intense feeling of affection. But for Paul, he doesn’t have to generate this from his own constitution. He says, “I’m loving you with Christ’s affection, with Christ’s guts.” It’s almost like Christ is at work in him to enable him to love these guys at an amazing level.
The truth is that’s what we need. If we’re going to do this community thing together, we need to learn how to love not with our own love, because that runs out pretty quickly. I know mine does. We need to learn how to tap into that love God makes available in Christ. We need to learn how to get into the stream of God’s love for people and let that carry us along in our own love.
Jesus got up at the Feast of the Tabernacles in John 7 and he said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit…” (John 7:37-39) Jesus’ promise is that when we are following him, trusting him, drinking from him, that draft of spiritual water wells up to be a river flowing out from us. Unless we’re loving others from that source we run dry pretty quickly.
Sometimes praying for people if they’re driving you crazy. I know it happens. You’re praying for people. You can pray that God will perhaps change them, but another really big prayer is say, “God, would you just increase my own love for that person because it’s not easy right now? We’re frustrated. The last five conversations we’ve had have been rough and full of friction. I don’t want to love and I feel like my own love reserves are kind of like the light is on. It’s not empty yet, but I’m driving and the light is on. You know, the fuel gauge? God, would you just help me to have affection from your own guts? Let me love with your love.”
I need that. I need to love with God’s love. When your kids are driving you crazy and not listening, “Lord, give me your love, your guts, the source, the substance of that love. Let it be in you and not in me.” When your dog won’t come in at night and you really want her too but she just keeps barking at the neighbors and you’re very frustrated about this, “Lord, give me your love for my dumb dog.” In our marriages and our workplaces, “God, give us your love, the source like that.”
Then Paul goes right on into his big request actually, the number one thing. He says in verse 9, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment…” (Ephesians 1:9)
This is Paul. He’s saying, “I yearn for you with Christ’s own love. I’m tapped into that, and I feel it. I feel the way Jesus loves you and I’m feeling it myself and I own it myself. I love you too. I want to see you. I want to be with you. I feel connected to you. My prayer is that that same kind of love, that sacrificial, deep love would abound and overflow out of you with knowledge and discernment.”
It’s interesting. He doesn’t pray for knowledge, discernment, and love, because the truth is if we approached every relationship in our communities in that order…knowledge, discernment and wisdom, and now love…it would not be a very good relationship. We would hardly ever get to the love part. We were processing all the knowledge, and then the wisdom. Is it even wise to make myself this vulnerable with this person and actually express how I feel? Probably not, and we never get to love.
The church has done this too. Through the years, the church has elevated knowledge over love. Knowledge is important, knowledge is crucial, knowledge creates an environment where love can flourish, the true experiential knowledge of God which he’s talking about here is absolutely essential, but Paul prays for love first.
Discernment. Ah yes, what kind of decision should we make here? What’s the wise thing to do? There are times when communities or even churches will put discernment over love. But Paul says, “No, pray for love. Pray for that love that emanates from the source of God himself to fill you and overflow.”
When we begin to live that way, when God begins answering that prayer in our lives and the knowledge and the discernment that goes with it, the experience and the wisdom joined to love where we really know how to love people wisely and well, that’s when a community like this between Paul and the Philippians begins to blossom.
3. Approving excellence for the day of Christ. What’s the outcome? In verse 10, he says, “…so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:10-11)
What matters? What’s the excellent stuff? Approving excellence. What for Paul is really excellent? Well, from what we’ve just seen in this passage, it’s relationships. Relationships are some of the most excellent things into which we can pour our lives…relationship with God and relationship with the people around us. That’s the stuff that really matters. That’s the stuff that endures. That’s the stuff that is truly excellent according to Paul.
As we pursue that excellent way of true relationship and true community in purity and blamelessness, not with cracks, not inauthentic interactions, not this sort of Facebook only you get to see my perfect life, but like really loving each other well, that is what brings great glory and praise to God. That’s when the fruit of righteousness really begins to overflow from our lives.
So as we close looking at this, some questions to ask ourselves. Who is your all? When Paul writes about the all, all the saints in Philippi, all of you, you all, whose your all? When you look around the people in your life, who are your partners you have that shared experience? It’s not just a shared ideal or not even just a shared same local church. “Yeah, you go to Grace? I go to Grace too. Wonderful. That’s great.” It’s not that. It’s like that shared life, the commitment, the connection for the advancement of the gospel. Who’s your all? Where is that?
If you don’t have an all, or maybe you have a spotty all, say, “Lord, how can you lead me into a deeper connection with the body of Christ? Where can I jump into the advance of the gospel? Where can I serve?” because that’s really where that connection happens.
There’s a great C.S. Lewis quote talking about how the person who only seeks friends will never have friends because true friendship happens when we’re both looking in the same direction, going after a goal, going after a task. That’s when we’re really united as deep friends. When people show up and say, “Oh, I just really need community,” okay, the way to discover that is to participate, to partner, to partake of grace together on mission. That’s where it comes from. So who’s your all?
Then secondly, who’s supplying your love? You think about that. When Paul’s talking about that deep well of love, the affection of Jesus himself, do you feel that? Do you know what it’s like to feel that? Do you have it? Have you had it in the past but lately it’s just kind of been flat lined?
You just go through the world insulated, everything’s a bit gray, and nothing really grips your heart. Man, it’s time to return to the source and say, “Lord, I’ve exhausted my own supplies. I need your love to be flowing through me toward others for this situation for those people, for this.” Who is the source of your love? Really be thinking about that. From where are you loving?
Then finally, are you investing in the excellent things, the eternal relationships, loving God, loving your neighbor, the two most important things that Jesus says? The two most important commands…love God; love your neighbor. Where are you investing the majority of your effort in your spiritual impact in your day-to-day time?
Yeah, we all have to work jobs and we have to provide for our families. Some of us have to go to school. There are a lot of responsibilities we invest in, but when we really peel back the layers on our lives, are we pouring into the really excellent things? So let’s pray.
God, we thank you for this passage, powerful passage. Lord, just to quote Paul, tonight we pray that our love would abound more and more. Lord, give us knowledge, experience with you. Give us discernment, wisdom about how to make the decisions we need to make, even the hard ones, so you may approve what is excellent. Lord, let us be pure and blameless, authentic, sincere for the day of Christ. Lord, let us be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
We pray that would happen in us. Lord, reveal, strengthen our connection with the all around us, with the body around us. Lord, well up the spring of water, the river of living water, your love in us for others. Just ramp it up, God. Let us be partakers and sharers of grace. Lord, finally, let us arrange, organize, and intentionally structure our lives around the excellent things. We ask all this in the sweet name of Jesus, amen.