Love Leads

Philippians 1:7-11

In the literary classic Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the protagonist, young Harry, comes into possession of a used potions book – this one is strange: it contains modified processes, ingredients, and insights from the handwriting of the Half-Blood Prince.

What this corrected version does for Harry is that it makes him a wiz at potions! When other students can’t figure out a challenging concoction, Harry is steps ahead with a perfect product.

Hermoine, known for her penchant for trying harder and doing better, becomes flummoxed by the situation and decides to stick with the standard recipes, expecting the right results. She ends up increasingly frustrated when, over and over again, it seems Harry has discovered secret ingredients, and he keeps winning.

No big spoilers there… but this story, I think, gives us a picture of attempts to live well or get ahead. So much of the world is working off of an old playbook – selfishness, greed, despising those different, all key elements — and it's a losing strategy. It makes for a strange brew…

Christians, however, are to approach life with a secret ingredient, a gift to us, that leads to a more excellent way, an abundant life, as long as we stick with the new recipe given to us by the Prince who gave his blood for us!

More often than not, however, I find myself with the same angst as Hermione. I look around and see how other believers are “advancing” in Christ-likeness, or how life seems to be working out according to a preferred plan. And I wonder if I have missed the handwritten recipes… I want to be more, live what I believe, and be a magnetic draw to those far from hope.

Have you ever felt that way? Ever wanted “more” out of life, or maybe even this relationship with Christ?

The remedy is also found where the glory of the gospel is found, in the word. In this block of Philippians, we see some more of the rescripting of the human recipe for life, and we are keen to pay attention to it.

From the heights of the promise that God will bring to perfection the good work he began in you, the Apostle Paul transitions to how that completion arrives. From promise to practicality.

Paul is quick to reveal his love for the church; he holds them in his heart because they are partakers of the same grace, and continue to support him in his imprisonment and the spread of the gospel.

He yearns for them with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Then he recounts his prayer for the church, a prayer for the fuel of transformation and the excellent way of life.

In Christ, you are not just going somewhere; you are growing somewhere.

What lies ahead is growth, maturity, Christlikeness, and the glory of God. So what do we notice about this recipe for life in Christ?

Here is how Paul lays it out:

Philippians 1:9–10 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, [10] so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,” (ESV)

Is prayer the secret? It is vital, but it is what he prays for that reveals the way of Christ for us, and between these two verses, the clues are put before us; the secret isn’t hard to uncover, but it might be more than we think.

It is love, abounding more and more. This love has two characteristics we want to tune in on.

The first is that it is a Love that Learns

Love is a concept that can be hard to define. It is varied; there are romantic, platonic, and familial kinds of love shared among people.

And depending on the object, it can mean vastly different things. “I love chocolate” is not the same as “I love Stacy.”

Then there is the question of what love does.

In our cultural moment, to love seems to mean never questioning, only approving and supporting, which is a terrible one-sided faux love. It leaves us wanting.

In our text, love is more than a virtue; it is a pathway to a redeemed/renewed life.

It is what carries us to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.

And it is a love that learns.

Transitioning from his love for them, which is the affection of Christ Jesus, Paul tells them that he is praying for them so that their love may abound more and more. And this love is not pointed in a specific direction…

The love in this prayer has no object… “This is because Paul prayed that love would overflow up to God and out to each other in limitless abundance. Paul, always rooted in the Old Testament, knew that the two tables of the Ten Commandments were structured in just this way. The first four command love for God, and the last six command love for others. Vertical love first, horizontal love second. Thus Paul prayed that the Philippians’ love would overflow all dimensions in a lavish, ongoing, limitless love—an unremitting geyser of love up to God and a flood of love out to others.” Kent Hughes

He speaks of that virtue of love which is to pervade their whole being and character, and which will then prompt and mark every attitude and action.

More than a good feeling, it is abounding with knowledge and all discernment.

“Paul allows no either-or thinking in his prayers for the Philippians. He does not contemplate a future in which they excel in love or knowledge: love without knowledge is squishy and spineless sentimentalism; knowledge without love is meaningless (1 Cor. 13:2). Paul calls for both light (i.e., knowledge) and heat (i.e., love).” Jason C. Meyer

Knowledge here is not trivia facts, it is knowing God. It is something that Paul consistently prays for the churches.

Ephesians 1:16–17 “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, [17] that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,” (ESV)

Colossians 1:9–10 “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, [10] so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;” (ESV)

So this abounding love is overflowing with knowledge of God.

“A virtuous man may be ignorant, but ignorance is not a virtue. It would be a strange God Who could be loved better by being known less. Love of God is not the same thing as knowledge of God; love of God is immeasurably more important than knowledge of God; but if a man loves God knowing a little about Him, he should love God more from knowing more about Him: for every new thing known about God is a new reason for loving Him.” Frank Sheed

Paul is praying that they won’t settle for what they know, but continue to pursue Jesus and his word, to know more of him, that love would increase with knowledge until the day of Christ.

Knowledge and all discernment – depth of insight.

This Greek word appears only here in the New Testament, but it is used 22 times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament book of Proverbs, where it means practical insight—the insight that informs practical conduct.

A discerning kind of love will enable the Philippians to set their highest affections on the highest virtues, without being distracted by devoting themselves to lesser, peripheral matters. An undistracted love.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, Blink, he highlights the decision-making ability of art appraisers who can discern fakes quickly. They were able to do so because they were so well acquainted with the real thing.

This love works the same way in us; we come to know the real thing with such clarity that we can spot a fraud immediately. This love trains us to know and act, to be so familiar with Jesus and his way that it becomes our default nature.

This is what transformation looks like - what we mean when we use the word.

Forsaking what used to be for what is better, for the people and way of life Jesus has called us to. Brought there by a love that learns.

We don’t learn for learning's sake, we learn for the living.

This is a Love that Lives

“So that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”

So here we arrive at the same destination we had in verse 6. Philippians 1:6 “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.” (ESV)

There, God is bringing us to completion; here, we are living out this love on the way.

From the learning, we know to approve what is excellent.

I vaguely remember having some Christian choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid. Remember those kinds of books? Where a story would begin, it would eventually reach a crossroads where you, as the reader, decide what a character should do, and then you would turn to the corresponding page and continue the story.

Not sure why, but I remember something about being eaten by sharks over and over again. Some people never learn!

Approving what is excellent is making the right choice, deciding what’s best.

This is our life in Christ, not waiting for the end result, refusing to live differently now, but instead joining the Spirit’s work in our lives.

As Paul prays, the result is being pure and blameless on that day. Christian growth was not an end in itself but had an eye to the grand goal of standing before Christ.

Pure equates to being “morally unmixed.” Uncompromised.

Blameless means being faultless in external actions.

Taken together, they represent completeness, which is exactly what we are promised!

Filled with the fruit of righteousness.

This means first that the heart qualities Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit—“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22, 23)—would work themselves out in the substantive fruit of godly deeds.

To the glory and praise of God.

The ultimate goal of love and discernment is not just personal improvement but to bring glory to God and reflect Christ’s righteousness in the world.

“People should see our good works and say, “What a great God!” not “What a good person!” God’s name will be set apart as something to be valued above all else when others can see what he has done for and through his people.”Jason C. Meyer

How different this is from what we see all around us. It all comes by love.

Love is the essential ingredient to our growth and the glory of God.

The key truth is that it is not a love Paul is calling the church to manufacture, or “fake it ‘til you make it.”

It is already theirs.

Paul does not speak to them as people who lack love and need to ask for it, but as people who possess love (your love, verse 9) and desire to have it grow.

This is a love originating from the affection of Christ Jesus; it is filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.

All of it is a gift we position ourselves to see grow.

When we are stuck in what feels like perpetual circular attempts at new tactics, habits, stick-to-it-iveness (which are good things), but on their own, they leave us wanting. Or when I am looking around, noticing the progress of others and longing for the same… it comes from love. Given, increased, lived out.

The Apostle John would spend a long ministry resounding this call to love. It was essential for believers to love one another and to love God. But we only love because it came to us.

1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” (ESV)

Love itself generates love, creating a relational dynamic where our affection for God functions as a response to his affection for us.

The believer’s capacity to love originates from God’s antecedent love, not from human initiative or merit. When we grasp what God has accomplished on our behalf, loving him becomes an inevitable response.

“The remainder of our earthly life is an outworking of what God has already ‘in-worked’. We are called to become what we are.” J. A. Motyer

This is the mighty imperative of Christian ethics. Every other ethical system calls us to the costly effort of becoming what we are not. But in the full salvation already entrusted to us in Christ, the new nature is already ours, waiting for expression, poised for growth, until its potential is triggered by our obedience to the word of God. To this love.

This is where renewal comes, where we see a difference in our lives, where the world notices.

The love of Christ is the most central thing of all and the most gentle and potent force for renewal.

Without it, we are just noise.

1 Corinthians 13:1–3 “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. [2] And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. [3] If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (ESV)

A love that keeps us focused and committed to the completion to come. A love that leads us there.

Love is the essential ingredient to our growth and the glory of God.

Be loved – receive the love of Christ for you. Just like the church in Philippi, know that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (ESV)

Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.

Behold His love — Ask the Spirit to give you abounding love with knowledge and insight.

Christian love comes from a work of the Holy Spirit, bringing the revelation of Christ through the Word of God. And the more you are in the Word, the more your knowledge of God and Christ will increase, and the more your love will overflow. All the Scriptures speak of Christ (cf. John 5:46)! And each new thing you learn of him will become a fresh reason for loving him.

Behold His Love in community, accompany one another along the way, sharing insight, recognizing the fruit that is growing in each other. Pray for it together.

Theo of Golden (Allen Levi) - Buying portraits of residents of the town and giving them to their subjects. But in doing so, he tells them what he sees, and it is life-changing, community-forming for nearly everyone.

This is the accompaniment we do as our love abounds all the more.

Live out what you learn, for the glory of God.

Love is essential. In this love, the church is built. In this love, our lives are transformed. In this love, the gospel advances.

May it be so in us.