Love, Knowledge, and Discernment
Tom Groelsema, Speaker
Philippians 1:9-11 | February 2, 2025 - Sunday Evening,
I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 1. Philippians 1 will begin at verse 1 and read through verse 11 in our text tonight, particularly as verses 9 through 11 as we continue tonight in our study of the prayers of the Apostle Paul. So Philippians chapter 1 beginning at verse 1 and reading through verse 11.
Hear now God’s holy word. Paul and Timothy, servants 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. 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 in 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 the praise of God. The grass withers, the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.
Where there are people of God the Apostle Paul, I think all of you would agree with me tonight was a great teacher/preacher, a wonderful pastor, and also a great prayer and those three things in Paul’s life overlapped one another. In other words, what Paul taught, Paul also prayed. You see Paul teaching truth as you read through the epistles, but also you can see him teaching truth in the prayers that he prayed. In other words, his prayers were packed with doctrine and truth and teaching and his prayers also reflected his pastoral love for the church and so Paul could write affectionately to the churches that he was ministering to, but you see in his prayers also his love bleeding out for the sheep that he was shepherding. Well the prayer that we’re looking at tonight arose out of a deeply personal relationship that Paul had with the Philippian Christians. One person has said that the book of Philippians was one of Paul’s most personal letters, he had kind of set it alongside second Corinthians and first Thessalonians and Philemon, but it is one of Paul’s letters in which he expresses his love and his affection for the Philippian church. You may remember that he wrote it while he was in prison so Paul was under house arrest when he penned this letter. He wrote it having been prompted by a visit from Epaphroditus and Epaphroditus had come with a gift from the Philippian church for Paul so their love was strong for the Apostle Paul as well. And Epaphroditus also brought a report about the church and then Paul wrote it to instruct the church about how to keep going and growing in the Christian faith and you can easily see the affection Paul had for these Christians in the early verses that we just read here from chapter 1.
So in verse 3 he says, “I thank God for you in all of my remembrance of you.” Paul could look back and just gush with gratitude for what the Philippian church had meant to him. Or in verse 5 he calls them partners in the Gospel. In verse 7 he says, “I hold you in my heart.” In verse 8, “For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. As Jesus loves you, so I love you.”
And I think it’s important to see all of this affection that Paul had for the church because it was out of that affection that Paul began to pray for them. It’s because he loved them so deeply that he prayed, and in fact it’s true isn’t it, that when we pray for somebody this is one of the ways that we go about expressing love or if we love someone deeply one of the ways that we love them is to pray for them. I’m thinking, for example, of last week, when Christopher Yuan was here with his mother and for eight years she prayed for her son, her beloved son who was in prison, praying, praying, praying, and praying because she loved him so deeply and that’s exactly what Paul did here, he prayed because he loved this church so much. Well we have the substance of his prayers in our text tonight in verses 9 through 11, and it’s a rather simple prayer, but a very powerful prayer. It’s a prayer for love, for knowledge, and for discernment, all of these things aiming toward the praise of God.
So I want to look at this prayer with you tonight just under four things. The first is this, that this is kind of a puzzling prayer that Paul makes or maybe another way of putting it, it is a surprising prayer that Paul offers here in these verses. The essence of the prayer is this, Paul prays for this Philippian church that they would be maturing in Christian discipleship. Paul doesn’t want the Philippian church to be in maintenance mode in their Christian life, but rather he prays for them to grow as Christians. He uses the word here abound, I pray that you may abound, that you might excel, and it’s exactly what he said about himself a bit later on in this letter. In chapter 3 you may remember Paul saying this, “One thing I do I forget what lies behind and I strain forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God.”
Paul says, “I forget what’s back there and I’m straining for what is to come, for what’s out ahead of me for this prize that Christ has laid aside for me I strain toward it”, and here he prays the same kind of thing for the Philippian church. And I say this is a surprising prayer for this reason. It’s surprising because of what Paul had just gotten done saying in verse 6. It was very familiar words of Paul, “I am sure of this Philippian Christians that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.” Paul says, “I am confident that God will finish what He has begun in you.” It’s really a comforting verse, isn’t it? And when God starts something in the life of a believer, God finishes what He starts, God completes it, God carries us along towards maturity until that day that we are glorified. And then you come to this prayer and you say, “Okay Paul, if it is true that God will complete the work that he has begun in Christians, then Paul why are you turning to prayer that these Christians would mature, why are you turning to prayer that these Christians would grow? Is it God who completes his work in us or is it us who strains toward maturity, is God sovereign and if it is his sovereign work to complete what He starts, then why do we go about praying for it, won’t God just do it, won’t God complete it?”
And I think all of us here tonight know the answer is this, it’s both right, it’s the sovereign work of God and yet there’s the need for prayer because it is our responsibility to strain forward. And that’s part of the lesson of the prayer here, that God’s sovereignty doesn’t cancel the need to pray and surely our prayers do not empty God of his sovereignty, but God in fact works out his sovereign will as we pray, as we go about seeking and asking and knocking. Should never have in our minds that God will just do what He is going to do. Ya know when it comes to saving a close friend of ours, or changing the direction of our country or supplying our daily needs or helping us on a test, or leading us to a spouse, and we just say well just God’s just gonna do it, there’s no need to pray for any of those things, that God is sovereign, He is just gonna accomplish what He is going to accomplish. Indeed He is sovereign over all these things, but He calls us at the same time to pray. This may be something like evangelism. God is sovereign in his electing love over those whom he will save, but he also tells us the means by which he saves and he says to us, “Go evangelize, go preach the Gospel, go share the good news”, and so it is in prayer Paul could say God will finish the work that He has started in you and I am praying for that work to be accomplished, for God to do his work in you.
And so tonight let God’s sovereignty encourage your prayers, let Him inspire them as you think about God being at work. So first of all surprising prayers. Secondly a pointed prayer and this gets us into what Paul prayed for here. I have already mentioned he prays for three things, he prays for love and for knowledge and discernment, all of these in verse 9. Love is at the start of it. It is my prayer Paul says that your love may abound more and more. Paul is praying here, it’s very clear, not that the love of the Philippians would begin, it’s already there, Paul prays that it would abound. He is praying that their love would grow, that their love would expand, that they would be filled more and more and more with love and love for what? I think Paul’s prayer here is primarily that they would be filled with a deeper and a growing love for God himself. Of course that love overflows into the lives of others, but it is primarily love for God. He prays for them to delight in God more and more, praying that they would find greater joy in Christ, that more and more of themselves would be given over to the Lord in service to Him and I think the reason why Paul prays this is because Paul understands how unnatural this is for us, that love is not what naturally flows out of us because of our simple hearts.
We have three sworn enemies, one of the confession says. Those enemies being the world, the devil, and our own flesh and those enemies are constantly at our heels, those enemies are constantly approaching us and confronting us and pushing us not toward love for God right, but for a self-love, love for ourselves more than the Lord where we become the center of our own world and so Paul prays for these Christians, may your love abound, may it increase, may it grow more and more and more, and then he prays for knowledge. You notice how he puts this in verse 9, “It’s my prayer that your love may abound more and more along with knowledge.” Paul understood that knowledge without love is dangerous. Remember how he puts it in First Corinthians 13 when he says, “Knowledge puffs up and love builds up.”
Knowledge can be kind of dangerous, you know a lot of things, it’s powerful and if it’s not accompanied with love, knowledge can kind of go off on it’s own and be a dangerous matter, but Paul also understood that you cannot really have love without knowledge, you can’t have knowledge without love, but you also can’t have proper love without knowledge, knowledge is the gateway to love just as knowledge is a gateway to faith, true faith. The first part of true faith is knowing something and a way to love is through knowing things. So think back on this. Those of you who are married tonight think back or those who have been dating just think back to how your dating experience began and how did you fall in love with that person that you’re married to or the person that you’re dating today or somebody you’ve dating in the past, how did you fall in love? You fall in love with somebody by getting to know them, right? You get to now more and more and more about them and as you get to know them better the more that your love grows. Love comes by way of knowledge. And so Paul prays here for love and prays also for knowledge and the knowledge that he’s speaking of here, I think, is particularly of spiritual things. The word that he uses here is only used in fact of spiritual things and so he’s praying that these Philippian Christians would have a growing knowledge of God, a knowledge of His love, a knowledge of His will, a knowledge of His ways, a knowledge of His commands and truth and Word and so on. He is praying that the Philippians would know God better and better and the result of that is that their love would grow more and more, and then he adds this last piece to it, discernment. He says, “I pray that your love would abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment.”
Discernment is simply this, it’s applied knowledge. It’s putting knowledge into action. It’s along the lines of wisdom. That’s why we’ve singing so much about wisdom tonight. Knowing how to live for God in the everyday events that come along in your life, the nitty gritty of everyday life, knowing how to take God’s Word, this knowledge, using it with love and then knowing how to apply it. That’s Paul’s prayer. A deeper love for God shaped by knowledge that would lead to a wise application in life.
Now for the most part the rest of what Paul does in this text is to really answer the question why. Okay, so Paul says, “This is what I’m praying for, for knowledge, for love, for discernment”, but now here comes the purpose for this prayer and he really gives us two reasons for it. You’ll find them in verse 10. The first is this, Paul says, “I pray these things so that you may approve what is excellent.” Some translations will put it, what is best, what is superior?
Lloyd Jones said that word is “What is vital, what is excellent is what is vital.” Paul’s purpose in praying for love, knowledge and discernment is that we might be able to judge well what is most crucial in life, the right choices to make, the hundreds of things that are in front of us and say, “Should I go that way or should I go that way. Should I do this or should I do that”, understanding what is excellent, what is vital, what is superior. Lloyd Jones goes on and he says, “This is a prayer to know what to leave out, what to ignore, what to put to one’s side. How prone we are to dissipate our energies and to waste our time by forgetting what is vital in giving ourselves to second and third rate issues.” In other words, it’s a prayer that with abounding love and knowledge and discernment we would be able to sift through the hundreds of choices that come our way every single day and note, this is what God would want me to do. This is where I should land.
I think what Paul says later on in this book, in Philippians chapter 4 verses 8 and 9 just flip over the page and turn there with me. Philippians 4:8-9 is really a commentary on what Paul was talking about here in terms of excellent, what is excellent. This passage here in Philippians 4. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise – think about these things and what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.
The excellence that Paul prayers that we will approve of or accept or live by is that which is true, over against that which is false, that which is honorable over against that which is vial or dishonorable. That which is just versus that which is prejudiced or wrong, that which is pure versus that which is hypocritical, that which is lovely versus that which is immoral, that which is commendable versus that which is not commendable or not admirable. The pursuit of such excellence, you see, does not turn on obvious distinctions often in our life between what is right and wrong. Let me just say that again. The pursuit of such excellence does not turn on obvious distinctions between right and wrong. In other words, we are faced with so many things in our life where it isn’t exactly clear what is the excellent way, is it this, is it that. Things are always so black and white in other words in our life, right or wrong and this is where the rubber meets the road in this prayer. Love, knowledge, discernment are crucial and are needed to help us to live out what is vital, what is most important.
So Carson, his book The Prayers of Paul, asks a few questions that might help us think about these things. He says for example, what do you do with your time, how many hours a week do we spend with our children, witnessing to someone, watching television, and are we committed to what is best or excellent. Or he says, what have you read in the last six months, newspaper, internet, a couple of whodunnits, a novel, Christian literature. Are we committed to what is best or excellent? People of God we could think about this with the use of our money, we could think along these lines in how we use our homes or how many homes we have or what mission agencies we support or what is the balance between work and leisure and exercise or what foods we ought to eat, and we could go on and on and on and on, and I think you can see that light is not as simple with all of these things as just hunting in the Bible for some explicit command on what you ought to do with your time. The Bible doesn’t give us commands to determine some of these things. Broad prescriptions perhaps, but not individual laws that meet all of these dilemmas and because it does not, that doesn’t mean we have the right to just do as we please, but we need to act in wisdom.
What is most excellent? What’s most excellent for you tomorrow? What is most excellent for you tonight when you go home and after worship and spend a few hours before going to bed? And that may mean different choices between different people. What is excellent for you may not exactly be what is excellent for me. Paul’s prayer is, “I pray that you might be able to approve this, so that in these nitty gritty things of daily life you might understand what is best and live that way.” We’ll see in a moment to the glory of God. Along with this Paul prays, really the second reason so that you would be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness. This was really just an outgrowth of the first point, the first purpose, that you would be filled ultimately with the fruit of righteousness.
I remember back in seminary when I was at Westminster in California, we had one day a homeless guy come onto the campus and he must have known something about his Bible because he went up to one of our professors and he said, “You guys around here, you ought to be filled a lot more with the gifts of the spirit.” And my professor, one of these professors quickly came back and he said, “Well, ya know you should probably be filled with more of the fruit of the spirt.” And this guy, he said to my professor, he says, “Ya know, I am so filled with the fruit of the spirit I can hardly walk.” Loaded down right with the fruit of the spirit. Is that what Paul is saying to us tonight, “I pray that you may be filled with the fruit of righteousness, the fruit of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness, gentleness and faithfulness and self-control.” The kind of fruit that comes out of First Corinthians 13. “Love is patient, kind, it doesn’t envy or boast, it’s not arrogant or rude, it doesn’t insist on it’s own way. It’s not irritable, resentful, doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth and bares all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Paul is saying, “I pray that you will be overflowing this way. You have this discernment to understand these choices and dilemmas and ultimately so that you would be filled with the fruit of righteousness pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” You understand the day of Christ is the day of his appearing. Praying all this so when you stand before Christ one day you would not be ashamed, but I think even more what Paul is saying here is that the day of Christ would be your incentive. I think Paul brings it up here not as a veiled threat. In other words, in Paul’s mind is not this kind of question, ya know, where will you be when Jesus returns. You sure don’t wanna be in the movie theatre, right? I don’t think that’s what Paul was trying to do for these Christians, but rather he’s saying remember the day of Christ is coming, the day when all things will be made new, the day when you will be transformed and let that day incentivize you now to live for Christ.
Sometimes we hear people saying, well I’m gonna pay it forward. Maybe what Paul is saying here tonight is how about living it forward. Live now as if the day of Christ had already come, begin to live that way now. It’s what Martin Luther said, “I’ve only got two days on my calendar, this day and that day, so I live this day in light of that day that is to come.” That’s what Paul is praying for. And friends, all of this leads then to this final point that this was a praise filled prayer so it’s a puzzling prayer, it is a pointed prayer, a purposeful prayer, and a praise filled prayer, because Paul doesn’t want us to miss where this kind of transformed life would lead. It leads ultimately to the praise of God. So Paul says I’m praying all these things, for love, knowledge, discernment, you would approve what is excellent, that you be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness to the glory and praise of God. It’s a huge blessing in our life, isn’t it? When love is abounding, discernment is occurring, fruit is being born, I mean there are blessings that come for sure in walking with Christ. Life goes much better.
But Paul wants us to be thinking about something more than that. This last verse reminds us that our maturing and Godliness is not an end in and of itself, but the end of all of this is God. The end of all of this is his glory and his praise because really if we are to be changed as Paul prays for the Philippian church to be changed, ultimately we will understand that this is a work of the grace of God in our life, that it is God who does the transforming, it is God who does the changing, it is God who works in us to transform our living. And friends, this is nothing less than the work of our Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three. This fruit of righteousness that leads to the glory and praise of God, God our father is praised by our worship and obedience. He is the one who is completing his work in us, He is the one who always finishes what He starts in the life of a believer.
It’s like what Paul says in the second chapter that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, never forgetting that it is God who works in us, both to will and to do for his good pleasure and so any maturity, any fruit bearing, any growing in grace is the work of God and therefore to his glory and to his praise, God the Father. But it is also the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ verse 11. The fruit of righteousness comes through Jesus Christ, Paul is simply affirming there what Jesus taught so clearly in John 15, “I am the vine, you are the branches and the only way that you can bear much fruit, the only way that you can abound is by being attached to the vine and drawing life from the vine. In fact, apart from me you can do nothing.” You see the only way that we are transformed is through Christ. The fruit of righteousness comes by being connected by faith to Christ. It is his work, the work of the Father, the work of the Son, and it is also the work of the Spirit. Maybe not quite as obvious in this passage, but Paul tells us that we need to filled with the fruit of righteousness and the word filled there is a passive verb, in other words we don’t fill, somebody else fills us. To translate this verse actually having been filled. Well who does that filling? It’s nothing less than the work of the Spirit, filling us with fruit. Father, Son and Holy Spirit doing this work of grace in our life, answering the prayer that Paul made for the Philippian church and for us, and if all of that is true then indeed what Paul says, all of this to the glory and praise of God. This is not about patting ourselves on the back, it is not about any kind of accolades that we would receive, this is all about God’s work and therefore all to his glory and his praise.
So let me summarize, Paul prays that God’s people would love God more as they come to know him better and as a result would live for him increasingly. That they would approve and live for what is vital and good and so bear fruit to God’s glory. Paul is praying for a transformed life. He’s praying for a transformed heart which corresponds with love. He’s praying for a transformed and renewed mind which corresponds with knowledge, and he’s praying for changed hands and feet, eyes and ears that correspond with discernment. And if this was a prayer that Paul thought to pray for the church, then this is a prayer that we need to pray for the church. Pastors, we need to pray this for our people. Parents, this is a prayer to pray for your children. Grandparents, pray it for your grandchildren. Husbands, pray this for your wife. Wives, pray this for your husbands. And saints, let’s pray this for each other, that God would so transform us to his praise, to his glory. Let’s pray together.
So Father in heaven we do pray this prayer for ourselves, we do pray that we might abound in love more and more with knowledge and discernment, that we might be able to approve what is excellent and so to be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and the praise of God we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.