Love, Truth, and the Path to Fruitful Unity

Have you ever had something done for you that was so intentionally for you? Like, someone went above and beyond and truly had to KNOW you to know that it would be a good idea, you’d enjoy it?

We start out by understanding that these three verses are a prayer that Paul prays over the Philippians. He wants the Philippians to grow in these ways. And when you consider the sentence, its structure and its verbiage, scholars have found that this was a very intentionally-crafted sentence. It likely didn’t just pop out of thin-air for Paul. This was a prayer that had been developed over time. So when Paul said that this was his prayer, he truly meant that, and you can tell by the way he structured it. Intentional, meaningful, and what I want to do is unpack that prayer today.

Love, divorced from truth, is weak and powerless to achieve that which God has set out for it to do. Truth, without love, is bitter, cold, dusty, and unengaging.

Today, we will look at truth and love together as the means by which God communicates His message to us and through us.

Cultivate Love

Philippians 1:9 ESV

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,

So here we see the first part, and Paul prays for the love of the Philippians. He wants the Philippians to grow in their ability to love, and in the outpouring of their love. This love had many facets to it, because the love that Paul was speaking of was Christian love. Love that flowed from Jesus. Love for one another.

You know the love I’m talking about… Love that doesn’t come with strings attached or mixed motives. That kind of love. Paul is praying that this kind of love would abound. That it would multiply. Why? Because this kind of love isn’t just something you stumble upon. It’s not something that just ebbs naturally through the world. It must be cultivated!

Paul prays over their love abounding more and more because he knows how difficult it is for this love to take root in our hearts. We could go on for a long time about why love is so difficult to come by, but let’s just take a short glance at the reason that the love Paul speaks of here in Philippians is so foreign to our daily lives…

What the world misunderstands about love:

Love is love

Love is purely romantic

Love has no objective definition

Love comes effortlessly

Love is made to serve me

Instead, the biblical definition looks like:

Love starts with God (1 John 4:7)

Romance is just ONE type of love (1 John 3:16)

Love has an objective meaning and purpose (1 John 4:16ff)

Love comes by self-denial (1 John 3:17)

Love is made to serve others (1 John 4:11)

If you want to know what love is, go read 1 John.

So Paul wants the Philippians to love one another. Yet another appeal for unity within the body.

The world tells us that we have to love ourselves. The Bible tells us to deny ourselves. The difference is stark. Now, of course, denying yourself does not mean neglecting yourself. You’ve still gotta take care of yourself so that you can love others. But we must learn to reject the message that tells us to embrace worldly comforts for ourselves while denying it to others, and leaves no room for self-denying love.

Keep a Tight Grip on Truth

Philippians 1:9b–10 ESV

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,

It’s interesting that Paul immediately follows that up with knowledge and discernment. It’s popular today to divorce truth from love. To say that we can love someone while hiding the truth from them. According to Scripture, it doesn’t really work like that.

Paul is telling the Philippians that he wants them to grow in love, but the cart that comes with the horse includes knowledge and discernment. Your translation may say understanding. It’s a tough word to translate there, but it makes contextual sense that it would be something along the lines of the application of knowledge, so discernment or wisdom would be my preferred translations there. It’s a package deal. Why? V. 10, so that you may approve of what is excellent. Not what’s half-true. Not what’s okay. What is excellent. These are the types of things Paul wants to keep their focus on. Not what they can get away with. What is excellent.

Love and truth help us to know and approve of those excellent things. So how do those interplay to do so? It works like this:

We covered what love is just a moment ago.

Knowledge is knowing what is right from wrong. It’s the easy level of truth of making distinctions between what is biblical and unbiblical.

I’ve heard it said that discernment is knowing what’s right from almost right. That’s a pretty spot-on definition. We need discernment to help us see when someone is using biblical language to make a case for something that is biblically untrue. And that’s certainly the situation in which we find ourselves today. There are many warring for our minds to have us approve of and follow things that go against God’s plan for humanity and the church.

You need discernment to be able to tell when someone is saying something that sounds true, but isn’t.

You know, next week we’re celebrating our graduates, and I’m giving out a book that’s exactly what you need as you graduate, maybe fly the nest, and go out on your own. It’s called, “Getting Over Yourself,” by Dean Inserra. Dean’s a great guy, and in one of the chapters, he talks about how we’ve been so focused on not letting anyone become an atheist that we’ve missed helping people against being atheological.

Atheological describes the new pandemic sweeping churches today that describes the symptoms of loving the Jesus we don’t know very well. It’s the attitude that says, “I don’t need to know things about Jesus, or the church, I just need to love Jesus.

To counter that, I have to ask… Which Jesus are you worshiping? Without theology, who’s to say if the Jesus you worship is the Jesus of the Bible, or the Jesus of the Book of Mormon, or the Jesus of the secular culture?

Let’s look at it from a different perspective. Let’s say you’ve been a tried-and-true Atlanta Braves fan for years. You suffered through the postseasons of the 90s all the way up through today. You can name the entire roster, bench, and bullpen. You’ve gone to the games, cheered on your boys, and roll your eyes every time the wave starts.

Then someone comes and just goes on and on about how they’re such big Braves fans, but they can’t name any of the players. As a matter of fact, they go on to tell you that Bryce Harper is their favorite player.

For those of you not following, Bryce Harper is public enemy number 1 to the Braves organization.

Now, see, Braves fans would be getting all up in arms about their team being mocked and offended by false claims, but not about their God having untrue things said about Him. Why do we excuse it this way when the Bible is clear that God will not be mocked?

Galatians 6:7 ESV

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

As Christians, we should be passionately motivated by pursuing the truth about God, and not settle for cheap things about God that sound nice, but end up hollow. Be careful of preachers and teachers whose teaching sounds more like Oprah than the Bible. Be careful of those who would tell you that “You just need to unlock your God-given potential,” or “Dream God-sized dreams.” These things sound good, but what happens when you decide that your ordinary marriage just isn’t cutting it for you anymore, and you decide that your happiness is more important than your commitment to your spouse? These are the kinds of things that lurk under the surface of those half-truths.

There’s another side to the truth coin. You know that when we refrain from speaking the truth in love to one another, it actually hinders us from loving one another. I’ve seen it time and time again, those who refuse to tell the honest truth to spouses, friends, fellow Christians see their relationships deteriorate because they’re not telling one another what’s really on their hearts. You see, when we withhold truth from one another, it does something inside of our hearts that corrupts our ability to love the other person. We harbor bitterness, and it poisons our affections for our friends and family. Don’t neglect the role of truth in your relationships.

Some of y’all are bitter at each other because you don’t know how to ask someone a question, or keep the truth about how you feel hidden behind a mask.

Now understand that when you share truth with others, perhaps your perspective isn’t truth. So at times you have to share the truth about your perspective in order to find the truth!

Do Both to Create Fruitful Unity

Philippians 1:11 ESV

filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

And when we do these things, it creates a common bond between brothers and sisters in Christ. And it is out of this common bond that we bear the fruit of Christian unity. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing this summer. Giving the church the opportunity to reconnect in some fun, yet meaningful ways. If there’s the opportunity to build a relationship, it creates the opportunity to communicate truth. It’s really that simple.

One way we’ve been creating a fruitful unity is through our food box ministry. I’ve loved serving with the folks who show up for that, and we’ve seen sides of each other through that which propel us further into our mission as the church body. And we’ve gotten to share the love of Christ, pray with, and share the Gospel with every person who receives a box. Every box that is given out has a short Gospel message and an invitation to our church.

And truthfully, we’ve been every bit as blessed as the folks receiving the boxes. This is fruitful unity.

As we gather in groups outside of the worship service for bible study, prayer, and encouragement, we create a fruitful unity through experiencing the Word of God together. Honest, loving relationships are the fertilizer to the seeds of our Christian growth. Listen, if you’re coming to church and not building relationships, we’ve got to work on that. All of us need the people in our lives who will push us closer and closer to Christ. Simply put, we just can’t do it on our own. I’ve been talking with Stewart, our Sunday School director, and this Fall, we’re going to launch a brand new Sunday morning class for adults. Don’t know what it’s going to look like just yet, but that’s our goal. And hey, maybe we’ll get real lucky and start more than one!

This is really important to me that we get that going. The heart of every Gospel-driven church is its fruitful unity. What happens in the service is great, but I believe, and I have seen how life-change happens in groups.

Story of Ethan Shaw