Philippians 1:9-11To: Philippians Main MenuTo: Grace Notes Home Page Philippians 1:9"And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment,"---------- "and this I pray"In verses 9 to eleven we come to one of the splendid prayers of Paul. Paul's prayers are very suggestive. They are never superficial and half-hearted. They are always germane to the situation. This prayer has the very whiff of heaven. Paul's prayers are a high water mark of spirituality in the New Testament. A person ought to be at their best when at prayer. Prayer is conversing with God. The white heat of the flame of God's presence melts way all superficiality in our lives. In this prayer there are three petitions all of which begin with the word "that." Verse nine is the first "that." ---------- "that your love may abound"The first essential that Paul prays about is that their love may "abound." It is one thing to have love; it is yet another to have abounding love. Their love needed to be enlarged. The word "abound" means to overflow, to be over and above, more than enough. This is a love that dominates one's life. Love is no mere category. In unbiblical love there are categories of love. In one category there is love yet in another category there is bitterness and resentment. ---------- "still more and more"Here is a piling up of adverbs, an exuberance of love. Wave after wave of love should hit the banks of our souls. The more we grow in grace the greater is our capacity to love. One way we know we are growing is how much we love the unlovely. We rub elbows with people who are more difficult than others. All people do not appeal to us equally. It may be their disposition, their dress or their way of doing things. If we love with abounding love all that melts away. All that is irrelevant. We do not love them for their sake; we love them for Jesus' sake. So the first earmark of a growing Christian is a dynamic love which is both over and against a static love. Immature Christians wax anger at the drop of a hat; they become exasperated quickly; they are aggravated by people who do not seem to appreciate them. But as we grow more and more in love those things become petty. In the light of the stern realities of heaven and hell, sin and righteousness, God and the Devil, such things become irrelevant and inconsequential. They are too tawdry to deflect the child of God from his original purpose of glorifying God with his life. When we let people get under our skin or in our hair, when we let people vex our souls, we are deflected from reflecting God's glory in our lives. When children do something in an immature way people say " that's baby fat, they will outgrow it." Feeling slighted is something we outgrow when we grow in love. PRINCIPLE: Biblical love is dynamic; it both abounds and keeps developing so that it moves the child of God out of childhood and into spiritual adulthood. APPLICATION: Are we still caught up in bitterness and indignation? Are we trapped at the initial stages of Christianity? Have we recognized signs of babyhood? We have already examined 1:9a where we found that our love needed to "abound still more and more." However, a dynamic love is not complete without some other norms. In 1:9b we find two norms which are necessary for a dynamic love: knowledge and discernment. ---------- "in knowledge"Paul's prayer is that love will abound in knowledge. This word knowledge means full, experiential knowledge. To love in God's economy is to love beyond emotion and feeling. There is something at the foundation of this love. To love in knowledge means that we do not call every "honey" or "darling." This is not saccharin, imitation love. This is not authentic love. Authentic love loves on the basis of substance or content. Love has nothing to fear from light. Suspicion puts the light out; it kills love. Intense love makes people sensitive to slights and misunderstandings unless they apply full knowledge. This word denotes fineness of perception. Knowledge is important for any specialist in any field. I do not want my plummer to perform surgery on me. Neither do I want my surgeon to work on my plumbing! Each specialist is adept at his specialty because of what he knows. A Christian is to be a specialist in love. That love is to abound in knowledge. An indifferent, vague, sloppy love is not Christian love. It is an informed love. Love grows best in the radiant light of knowledge. ---------- "and all discernment"Knowledge is the accumulation of facts. Discernment, however, is an advance upon knowledge. Discernment is the correct use of the facts. But we must have knowledge to have discernment. The more we know the more we can divide things that differ. We can separate and make distinctions. Discerning love can tell the difference between maudlin love and authentic love. Maudlin love may not employ "tough love" when necessary. Maudlin love loves on the basis of sympathy, not empathy. PRINCIPLE: Authentic love requires both knowledge and discernment. As well, God wants us to "abound still more and more" in love that loves on the basis of knowledge and discernment. APPLICATION: Do you love purely with your emotions? Can you dislike someone and still love them? It is valid biblically to deplore the foolishness of an individual and still love them. Philippians 1:10"That you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ."In this passage we have two more items for which Paul prays. Today we will study the second petition--"that you may approve the things that are excellent." ---------- "that you may approve"The word "approve" means test for approval. This is spiritual discernment. Discernment is the ability to distinguish between the chaff and wheat, the dross and the gold, the genuine and the superficial. Automobiles need to be tested on a torture track before they are sold to the public. If a car's breaks do not meet the test they are sent back for redesign. You do not put a car with faulty breaks on the market. Lives are at stake. In order to test those breaks some standard for testing needs to be applied. A standard or measure for what is good breaks is needed. God wants us to test for approval, have a criterion for whatever comes into our lives. That criterion is "excellence." If we have this criterion we can resolve the priorities of our life. Any problem or set of alternatives which is set before us should be measured by this standard. If we operate by this standard we should be able to resolve any priority. ---------- "the things that are excellent""Excellence" is a sense of what is vital. Greek--excellence means to bear apart, like metals, you learn how they differ from lesser metals. So excellence means things of greater value. We should be able to test for approval the things which are the most valuable in life. None of us operate in life without some scale of values. The question is not whether we have a scale of values but the question is more which scale of values we choose. Do we chose God's highest values or some set of values we may chose? Where there is no scale of values utter confusion follows. If we want to live a flustered life, then live life without an adequate set of ultimate values. In this situation nothing is of value, nothing of importance. To live life with everything of equal importance is to live life at a trivial level. Lesser things are as important as greater things. If we chose our ultimate value to make and save as much money possible, then we have chosen a lesser value in God's economy. If we chose to put God's glory first no matter how much money we make, then we live by God's scale of values. It is a matter of what comes first. If our main objective is to make money then we are number one in our values and God is number two. We need to decide what is important. PRINCIPLE: Christians need to test for approval the things of greatest value in God's economy. APPLICATION: Do we have God's scale of values? What is the highest item on our scale of values? What is first or most important to us? A good way to measure these questions is how do we use our time? Answering these things will reveal what is important in our lives. Then we will have a sense of what is vital. Verse ten is the second and third petitions of Paul for the Philippians. Today we will study the third petition "that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ." ---------- "that you may be sincere""Sincere" literally means "unmixed, pure, unsullied." Therefore, this word means to be genuine or authentic. The word "sincere" comes from two Greek words: "sun" and "to judge." It means to judge by holding up to the light of the sun. Broken pottery in the ancient world was often covered with wax and painted over. People were deceived into thinking they were buying a sound vase, for example. However, if a person were to hold this vase up to the sun, the sun would reveal the cracks. The believer should be transparent, when held up to the light of the sun, of who God is. There is nothing to hide. No "wax" can be found in his life. There is no dilution or hypocrisy. God expects us to be the "real thing." ---------- "and without offense""Without offense" is blameless. The word means "a trap." This was a crooked stick on which a bait is fastened, which, being struck by the animal, springs the trap. Therefore, it is anything which one stumbles against. The believer is to be void of offense. This word also occurs in I Cor. 10:32, "Giving no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God." One of the greatest criticisms the world has of the church is that it is "hypocritical." This has become a standard, stock excuse that those without Christ have for not receiving Christ. "There are too many hypocrites in church." We admit that there are hypocrites in church. Yet there are hypocrites at the office. Do we quit work because there are hypocrites? Do we turn in our membership at the lodge because people are inconsistent? There is hypocrisy about hypocrisy! The teaching of the Word of God has a tendency to create a spiritual atmosphere that is difficult for hypocrites to thrive in it. They become annoyed by the hammer like blows of the Word upon their lives. If we are not genuine, if we are a counterfeit Christian, a make-believe Christian sitting under the conviction of the Word, we will become more of a counterfeit or move out from under the influence of God upon our lives. ---------- "till the day of christ"This is the day when Christ comes back again. This day terminates the Christian life in time for all Christians. Paul prays in this phrase that the Philippians will live an authentic life and a life that is not susceptible of censure until Christ comes again. PRINCIPLE: When people examine our lives God wants us to be viewed as authentic ("without wax"). If people see that Christians are genuine then they will not have an occasion for accusing us of hypocrisy. APPLICATION: Have you moved into a mode of covering rather than confessing your sin? Is it more comfortable for you to rationalize sin than to deal with it? Philippians 1:11"Being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God."Verse eleven sets forth the characteristics of those who produce the three requests for which Paul prays: 1. "...that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment," Those who have these characteristics in their lives will produce fruit. ---------- "being filled with the fruits of righteousness" "Being" indicates this is something we receive. We receive it by God's grace. We do not earn it or work for it. "Fruits" is singular in the Greek. This may refer to the filling of the Holy Spirit. This is the produce of righteousness. The harvest. "Of righteousness"--produced by Christ and so supernatural. The word "of" indicates source= this is imputed righteousness (righteousness which God unilaterally gives). The believer has a righteous stand before God, resulting from being clothed in Christ's righteousness, ought to produce fruit for God. Practical righteousness is to flow from what God has done. Filled with the fruits of uprightness which come through Jesus Christ: The term of Christian growth and development is the status of uprightness before God, yet it is not a status that one achieves by oneself; rather it is begun by God (1:6) and has its fullness in that which comes only through union with Christ (see 3:9). Such inner qualities, partially described in Galatians 5:22-23, will be evident to others. The fruit of the Spirit comes through Jesus Christ, for it is really His life lived out through believers. Such fruit magnifies God, not self. PRINCIPLE: God is the source for the fruit that is produced in our lives. God has given us imputed righteousness (a legal righteousness which he put in us) so that we might produce a practical righteousness. APPLICATION: Do we recognize the "harvest" of God's work upon us? Do we praise him for what he has done? ---------- "which are by Jesus Christ" "By" means "through"= instrumentality. It is through the instrumentality of Christ that fruit is produced in our lives. The Greek has a definite article before the word "through"--"the through"= "by that I mean the kind which is through Jesus Christ." This would mean by the death of Christ on the cross, for example. The death of Christ makes it possible to be delivered from our sins. The death of Christ makes it possible to live the Christian life. ---------- "for the glory and praise of God." A life that exhibits such traits is to the glory and praise of God. God produced the fruit so God gets the glory for doing it. If God does the doing, God gets the glory. God is glorified by the fruitfulness he produces in our lives, John 15:8, "In this is my Father glorified...bear much fruit". There are three kinds of Christians in this passage: those that bear "fruit", "more fruit" and "much fruit." But there is no such thing as no fruit in the Christian. If a person is a believer there is going to be fruit. The purpose of Christ's death was to glorify God. His attributes are glorified such as righteousness, justice, mercy and love in his death. As in 2:11 the career of Jesus and his influence on man are ordained only for the glory of the Father (cf. Rom 15:7; 1 Cor 10:31; 2 Cor 4:15). We glorify God by utilizing divine provisions. Glory is provided inside each believer because the Holy Spirit resides in each believer, I Co 3:16; 6:19,20. The ministry of the Holy Spirit produces the character of Christ in the believer, Gal 4:19; II Co 3:3,18; Eph 3:17; Gal 5:22,23. Mt 5:16 "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." I Pet 4:11 "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God gives: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever." PRINCIPLE: If God does the doing in our lives, he gets the glory. If we do the doing, we get the glory. APPLICATION: One of the saddest things in the family of God is a case of arrested spiritual development. We reach a spiritual plateau and there we remain. We need to realize that something is stunting our growth. We need our spiritual vitamins. Paul prayed for the Philippian church for 3 things. What KIND OF GRADE would you get on these 3 items? Each one would count 1/3. If you have all three you get a 100! How would you make out with love for 1994? If your mate would grade you, what would you get? How would you do on discernment? Did you live your life with a sense of priority? How did you do with glorifying God by righteousness? Did you live before Him as His exclusive use. ---------- Copyright © 1995, Dr. Grant Richison. All rights reserved. There is no charge for Grace Notes Materials. You can help further this work by your prayer and by sending a contribution to: Grace Notes 1705 Aggie Lane Austin, Texas 78757 wdoud@bga.com Grace Notes Web site: http://www.realtime.net/~wdoud/ Anonymous FTP site: ftp://ftp.bga.com/vendors/wdoud/ Grace Notes is a ministry of Village Missions International. |
|
|