Tonight we’re continuing our series on the priorities of Paul’s prayers from his letters in the New Testament. And last week we looked at Paul’s prayer in the book of Ephesians and how we are to get to know God better so that we might love God more. Well tonight we are going to look at the book of Philippians and we’ll see in Paul’s prayer there that he is praying we would get to know one another better so that we would grow in our love for each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. So let’s take up our Bibles and look at Philippians chapter 1. We’ll read verses 9 to 11. That can be found on page 980 in your pew Bibles.
When I was in college, when I graduated from college, one of the job skills that we were told to include on our resumes was electronic mail. That’s right, email! We were actually told to list electronic mail as one of our tech-savvy tools at our fingertips as we entered into the workforce. It’s pretty impressive, if I don’t say so myself. We’re all pretty familiar with this email thing by now, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t blunders and some frustrations that come along the way as we communicate over email. I wonder if you have ever gotten one of those emails that, it’s probably a work email sent out to a group, but it’s actually directed to one person. It’s trying to correct some problem, it’s trying to address some issue that maybe one or two people are exhibiting but it’s sent to the whole group, and as it’s sent to this broad group is really leaves more questions than answers. It leaves you thinking, “Is it talking about me? Is this something that I need to change? Do I need to say something to somebody or can I just disregard this?” It’s not the best use of electronic mail if you ask my expert opinion.
Well Paul’s letter to the Philippians is not like that. And what we find is that Paul is writing to address some problems in and around the church in Philippi. And in Philippians chapter 4 verse 2, Paul writes this. He says, “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord.” Now some kind of dispute, some kind of disagreement had arisen between these two women, between Euodia and Syntyche. And that was at least in part Paul’s reason for writing this letter to his brothers and sisters there in this city. He wanted these two women, along with the rest of the church, to be brought together and to have harmony with one another as they withstood both suffering and false teaching. And he identifies Euodia and Syntyche by name in this letter. Now that may seem awkward and a bit embarrassing for them. I think it tells us at least a couple of things about this conflict, and one is that it was public and well known, and two, it was something that was a concern for the wellbeing and the health of the entire congregation, which for that matter meant that it had a concern for the glory of God and the glory of Christ’s name among the people in Philippi.
And so Paul, under the inspiration and authority of the Holy Spirit penned this letter to the church in Philippi, and his chief concern for the Philippian church, his chief concern for Euodia and Syntyche – and I think we can say his chief concern for us as well – is found right here in this prayer that we are going to read in Philippians chapter 1 verses 9 to 11. This is the fuel for life together. And quite simply, it’s love. So we’ll notice two things from this prayer tonight. We’ll notice it is a prayer of love and it is a prayer for love. A prayer of love and a prayer for love. So let’s go ask God’s blessing and the work of the Spirit as we read to understand His Word. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we thank You that we have this letter to the church in Philippi and we pray that as we think about our own fellowship, our own relationships here in this congregation, that You would help us to see where we need to apply these words and apply the Gospel and apply Christ’s love for us and His redeeming work of salvation, His life, death and resurrection, so that we might grow in our love for one another and exhibit fruit together for Your glory. We pray that Your Spirit would open our hearts and our minds to understand Your Word, to apply it to our lives, and to live it out before You and for Your glory. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Philippians chapter 1 verse 9. Paul writes this:
“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.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
A Prayer of Love
C.S. Lewis, in his book, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, he writes that, “There are times when we are praying for someone when we really should be doing something for them.” He says that it’s often easier to pray for a difficult person rather than to go and lend them help and do something that they need. Well Paul’s letter to the Philippians actually shows us both. It shows us both the prayer and the action on the part of Paul. It shows us what he prays and it shows us what he does. In verses 9 to 11, we have Paul’s prayer. “And this is my prayer…” Think about what that means. Think about what it means that Paul prayed for them. It means that Paul, even in the midst of his own sufferings and trials and hardships, that his focus, his chief focus is on the glory of Christ and on the spread of the kingdom of God and on the good and the welfare of his brothers and sisters in Christ who are living in this city of Philippi.
You see, Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter. We don’t know where he was in prison, we don’t know much about the details of his imprisonment, but it’s obvious that for Paul, in these circumstances, death was a real possibility for him. He didn’t know if the outcome for him would be life or death. “To live is Christ and to die is gain” – but which one would come to him, he could not tell. And in the meantime, while he was in prison, he could not do the very thing that God had set him apart to do, and that was to preach the Gospel and to go and take the Gospel into the unreached regions of the Gentiles. He had made the plans. He had worked to raise the funds for it, and yet all of that was on hold now – maybe forever, maybe this was it for Paul and his ministry of preaching the Gospel. And that’s not to mention that there were people out there who wanted to harass Paul by doing the very thing that he was not able to do. And what was that? By preaching the Gospel.
Now that sounds absurd, doesn’t it? It sounds absurd that there would be the preaching of the Gospel and there would be also with that selfish ambition, but let’s not pretend like I don’t stand up here and not have some mixed motives, even in the preaching of the Gospel. That’s the ugly reality of sinners in the pulpit. That’s just as much the case in Paul’s day as it is today as well. The truth is, we don’t know all that Paul is going through in this part of his life, but later in this letter to the Philippians he will say, “I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.” What were Paul’s circumstances as he writes this letter to the church in Philippi? He had been brought low and he was facing hunger and he was in great need. And yet how does he respond? He responds with prayer. He responds with a prayer that was not merely focused on himself or on his circumstances, although Paul would pray those things. It’s not that he doesn’t pray for his own relief and provision. In fact, in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 he says he pleaded three times with the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh that it would leave him. So Paul prays that way, but even then, even when he prays to have the thorn in his flesh removed, his main focus, his main concern is on the glory and the praise of God. And that means that he is concerned and praying for the welfare of his brothers and sisters in Christ.
Isn’t that a lesson that we all need to hear when we’re going through trials and troubles? For that matter, isn’t that a lesson that we all need to hear when everything is “normal” or when things are going well for us? It’s not all about us. It’s not all about our plans or our desires or our comforts. It’s all about God and it’s about His glory and it’s about what He is doing in the life of His people. And prayer, like Paul’s prayer in Philippians chapter 1, is an expression of both dependence upon God and love for others. You see, prayer puts our own lives and our own circumstances in the context of a bigger picture. It puts it in the context of God’s kingdom, His glory, and His work of salvation. There are bigger concerns in our lives, there are bigger concerns in God’s kingdom than just life or death. There are eternal matters at stake for Paul, and that is why he prays this way for his brothers and sisters at Philippi.
But like I said before, he doesn’t just stop there. He doesn’t stop with prayer. He goes beyond that to serve them and to minister to them. Paul couldn’t do very much because he’s in prison, but what he could do, he takes the effort to do for them. And he sends Epaphroditus to them. Epaphroditus was a member of that church who had gone to Paul to serve and to help him and Paul sends him back to be an encouragement to his brothers and sisters in Philippi. And at the same time, he’s making plans to send Timothy, Paul’s protégé, he’s going to send Timothy to the Philippians in order to minister the Gospel to them as well. And Paul also says in chapter 2 verses 23 and 24 that he hopes one day to be able to come and to see them himself, he just doesn’t know if that will be a possibility. And then at the same time, as he sends Epaphroditus and he makes plans to send Timothy, what else does he do? He sends this letter. He sends this letter to the church there. It’s a letter of thanksgiving and encouragement. It overflows with joy and love for these people. But it’s also a letter of correction and instruction and he has some things that he wants to see that need to change in their lives. It’s a letter that brings the Gospel to bear on exactly what they need in order to grow in their love for one another and to persevere, to endure in the Christian life together.
It’s the same thing, Paul’s circumstances right here as he writes this letter, is the same thing that we find at the end of the book of Acts. You remember in Acts chapter 28 we find that Paul is in Rome. And what are his conditions when he is in Rome? He is in prison. He is in chains. And yet what is the condition of the Gospel? It’s unhindered; it goes out. The Gospel continues to go through Paul’s ministry there even while he is in chains. That’s what’s happening here as he writes the letter to the Philippians. This is at least part of the secret of contentment for Paul. It’s that as he continues to love and serve others, he can face his own challenges and burdens with an infectious joy and a contentment. And I think it’s safe to say that that sort of contentment begins with our prayer life; that in our difficulties, in our challenges, in the unknown of our lives, that we are not merely focused on ourselves and our own needs, we are focused on the needs of others, and in fact going beyond prayer to love and to serve them in tangible ways. That’s what we see Paul doing here in this passage.
I picked up and read this week, I went back over and looked over Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together, and I read a few portions of it this week. If you know Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he was a German pastor who in 1945 was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. And one of his fellow prisoners wrote that on Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer held a worship service in the prison and spoke to them in a way that went straight to their heart. And then he said that he had barely finished his closing prayer when the door opened and two men entered in and said, “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.” And they all knew what that meant. It meant the gallows; it meant death for Bonhoeffer. And they said their goodbyes to him, and as they said their goodbyes and he made his way out, he said, “This is the end, but for me, it is the beginning of life.” And the next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.
You see, Bonhoeffer knew Paul’s priorities for life together – that even in his desperate circumstances, he was seeking to minister and to care for the needs of others. And he could face his death with hope, with joy, with contentment. In that book, Life Together, Bonhoeffer writes this. He says, “A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, but he is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died.” When we pray for others, it grows our love for each other. But it’s a prayer that doesn’t stop there and Bonhoeffer has this to say as well. He says, “Where Christians live together, the time must inevitably come when in some crisis one person will have to declare God’s Word and will to another. There will come a time when we speak God’s Word of encouragement or correction to one another, but isn’t it important to get that order correct? That the prayer for one another, the prayer for the other comes before speaking the word of correction to them. It comes out of love and compassion, to help and to seek their own wellbeing.
A Prayer for Love
Paul’s prayer in this letter is an act of love for the Philippians. His desire for their life together is that they would be strong and healthy. And what is that fuel? What is the fuel for their life together? What does he pray for them? He prays that their love would abound more and more. He says again, “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more.” And notice what this love is like. He says it is 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.” See, Paul’s prayer was a prayer of love for the Philippians, but it’s also a prayer for love amongst the Philippians, for love abounding more and more. Paul is praying for a certain type of love to be at work among this Philippian congregation. The Greek word there is the word “agape.” It’s agape love. It is a love that is full of “knowledge and discernment,” he says in verse 9. It is a word that doesn’t get carried away with emotion or by a personality. It’s not gullible or susceptible to some new teaching or some novel idea. That love and unity does not come at the expense of truth. No, it approves what is excellent, verse 10 says. He is praying that they will do what he later says in this letter, what he later instructs them to do. You know the verses in chapter 4 verse 8. He says, “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.” In their love, they need to focus on what is good and what is right and what is true and to pursue those things; to go after those things and to live in that way so that they would be pure and blameless at the day of Christ; that they would be filled with the fruits of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.
This kind of love that Paul is talking about here, it goes beyond feelings to include good works. He’ll say elsewhere in this letter that, “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” That’s what the fruits of righteousness are. It’s a manner of life worthy of the Gospel. It’s humility and it’s forgiveness and it’s compassion and generosity. In fact, for example, Paul will say in chapter 4 as he encourages their giving and takes up a collection from them, he says, “I don’t seek your gift. It’s not the money that I really need, but I seek the fruit, the fruit that abounds to your credit.” What is that fruit that comes from their giving? It is that they grow in love for those to whom they give. And it’s that they grow in generosity and compassion and selflessness. Those are the fruit that come from seeking and doing for the good of other people. This is the kind of love that brings praise and glory to God. This is agape love. This is the love that people call, “the cardinal virtue,” or “the chief virtue” of the Christian life. One writer says that, “This passage is the New Testament’s most profound and precise treatment of that word for love.” And he lists eight synonyms, eight words that are piled up in these verses that express what agape love is. There’s knowledge and insight and judgment and uprightness and blamelessness and holiness and glory and praise of God.
If I could use the illustration with all that’s going on in the world today, it’s almost like Paul is talking about a love like a Russian nesting doll. You know those dolls that there’s one inside the other and it expands outward as you go. It’s almost what he’s saying to us about love. This is what love is like. There’s knowledge and there’s discernment and there’s purity and there’s blamelessness and there’s glory of God. As he gives us each word about this kind of love, he’s giving us another layer, another aspect, another development of what Christian love is. It involves the heart. It involves the head. It involves the hands and the feet. It extends outward to others but it’s also directed upward to God in praise and glory to Him. And Paul’s prayer is that that kind of love would abound more and more in the Philippian church.
But do you know what is maybe the most amazing or the most surprising thing of all about this prayer and about that love? It’s that this love existed at all in the Philippian church. It was there. He’s not praying that they would love one another. He’s saying that their love for one another would abound, that it would grow. Now remember how the Philippian church began. Acts chapter 16 tells us that remarkable story of what happened when Paul came and preached the Gospel in the city of Philippi. It says that he went to a woman named Lydia and she was probably a woman of some wealth. She sold purple goods. She had a stake in the marketplace and she traded in expensive merchandise. She probably dealt with a refined customer base. And she was either a Jew or she had adopted the Jewish religion for her own. She was a worshiper of God. And then on the other end of the spectrum, there was this slave girl. She didn’t have a name; we’re not told her name in the book of Acts. And she was possessed with some sort of demonic spirit but she was also possessed by her owners who used her for their own prophet as she told fortunes for others. She was poor. She was despised. She was oppressed. She was a nobody. There’s Lydia, there’s the slave girl. And then there’s the jailor in Philippi. And you remember this Philippian jailor. He was a Roman, a Gentile. He was the guard of the prison where Paul and Silas were placed and he came to the point of taking his own life because there was an earthquake that opened the doors of the jail and he thought that all of the prisoners had escaped.
These were three people. They had nothing in common. They came from different backgrounds. They were on completely different paths of life. They would have had no reason to associate with one another but then God opened Lydia’s heart and brought her to faith in Christ. And Paul cast out the demon from the slave girl and he said to the jailor in Philippi, “Don’t harm yourself. We’re all here. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.” And this most unlikely collection of people became the nucleus of the church in Philippi and they had a love for one another in Christ. The love about which Paul prays in this passage is the starting point for their life together. That love in Christ was the starting point for their being together and serving together and bringing honor to the glory of God’s name together.
It’s important for us to get that right also. We love in order to build relationships. We love in order to help one another, in order to bear one another’s burdens. It’s not the other way around. Too often we think that if we spend time together, that if we get to know each other better, if we get involved in each other’s lives, then we will love one another. But that’s not the way it is. As a matter of fact, it’s the opposite. We love each other so that we can get to know each other better and so that we can get involved in each other’s lives. Love is a matter of the will. Love can be and is commanded. Love one another. The foundation of our relationships in the church is love. And if we miss that, if we get that wrong, then what are we going to do? We’ll likely get frustrated and we’ll distance ourselves from people who are difficult to love and we’ll start to look for people, we’ll start to surround ourselves with people who are more like us, with whom we have more in common. We’ll look for people who share a similar background, a similar lifestyle, a similar political party, a similar college team – whatever it may be. But those are natural affinities. They are natural connections. They are flimsy. They are one-dimensional.
Agape love, the love about which Paul prays in this passage, is supernatural. It’s formed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s formed by faith and by the work of the Holy Spirit. And this sort of love is what brings unlikely people together. This sort of love perseveres for the long haul. It lasts forever and it brings glory to God. And Paul is praying that this sort of love which exists in Philippi, that it would abound more and more; that it would grow. He wants their love to grow. He wants them, his expectation for them even is that their love for one another would keep on growing and keep on bearing fruit all the way until Jesus comes back.
That’s a call for us tonight as well. No matter how old or how young you are, no matter how long you’ve been a Christian, the call for us is to keep on growing. The prayer for us is to keep on growing and abounding in love and not to ever think that we have come far enough in the Christian life, but there is always room for us to grow in our love for God and our love for one another.
How do we do that? How do we abound in love for one another? Well notice what Paul says in verse 11. He says that it is through Jesus Christ. Our love for one another exists because Jesus first loved us and He gave Himself for us and He called us to be His own. Our love exists because we are united to Christ by faith, therefore we are united to one another in love. And as our love grows for Christ, as we grow in Christ-likeness, then our love will grow for one another. But notice also what Paul does here in this prayer. He prays with a view towards a long perspective, towards “the day of Christ” – verse 10. He had that view in chapter 1 verse 6 as well. You notice, he says, “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.” You see, we grow in our love for one another when we view each other from the perspective of Christ’s finished work. We see one another for what God is doing through the work of the Holy Spirit. He is working and He will accomplish His complete salvation to smooth our edges and to make us like Christ and to bring us into glory. And when we see each other with that perspective then we will grow in love for one another.
And to know that God uses us to bring about that work, that is amazing. That is a great privilege. But it’s in His time and not in our own. And it’s by God’s grace and not in our own strength. And that’s going to require patience and it requires perseverance and it requires prayer to see each other as God sees us – as a finished work – and to persevere and to grow in our love for one another.
I remember one of the former pastors here, I believe he wrote it in “The First Epistle” one time, he said, “Some of the strangest people that I’ve ever met in life I’ve met in the church.” And it reminds me of a comedian who said a few years ago, he said, “I can’t ever get my wife to leave church when it’s over. She says, ‘Why don’t we stay and talk to the weirdest people here?’” I’m sure there’s a sense in which Lydia and the slave girl and the Philippian jailor, Euodia and Syntyche, they had their quirks, they were strange perhaps, difficult to love, and yet they were bound together. They were bound together by faith in Christ. They were bound together in love so that their love may abound and grow more and more. Do we pray like this? Do we pray like Paul prays? I’m neglectful in that. And oftentimes we can pray for some situation, some suffering to be relieved and that’s good to pray for relief and mercy, but to pray that even in suffering that love would grow more and more and that there would be knowledge and discernment and wisdom, that there would be fruits of righteousness produced in those difficult times, that oftentimes comes through suffering, doesn’t it? And that gives us a good prayer to pray for one another when we are going through sorrows and trials and difficulties and uncertainties – to pray not just for mercy and relief in that situation, but to pray for growing love and greater wisdom and fruit to the glory of God that He would be honored in all that we do.
Let’s pray.
Father, we make this prayer of Paul our own prayer tonight as we go out from here. And I pray that for this congregation, for Your people here, that our love would abound more and more with knowledge and discernment, that we would be able to approve what is excellent and be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, that we would be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of You. Thank You for the work that You have begun in us. Help us to persevere and to run the race with endurance. Help us to look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Help us to bring glory to Your name. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.