02 Why Paul Didn’t Pray for Comfort And What He Asked for Instead (Philippians 1:9-11)

Speaker: This is the Wednesday in the Word podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Krisan Marotta. Today we're looking at Philippians chapter one, verses nine through eleven. This is the second talk in our series on the book of Philippians. For links and lecture notes related to today's talk, please go to our website, which is wednesdayintheword.com slash Philippians 2. Glad to have you along. Today we're going to be looking at Paul's short prayer for the Philippians. Paul typically begins his letters with a prayer. He usually talks about the fact that he's praying for his readers, which is the section we looked at last week, which you can find on our website at wednesdayintheword.com slash Philippians 1. Then he usually goes on to say something about the content of his prayers. That is, he reveals what he's praying about for them and what he's asking God to do for his readers. I find Paul's prayers very instructive. When studying his letters, it can be tempting to skip over these opening prayers and rush on to the quote, good stuff, the commands, the exhortations, the applications, or the didactic teaching. But I think we can learn a lot by asking, what kind of thing is Paul praying about, and what does that teach me about his attitude toward prayer? Paul tends to tell us what he most wants God to do for his readers, which can be very informative, and he often says what he expects God to do for his readers, which can also be very instructive. So his prayers reflect what he thinks is most important and what he confidently expects God to do in the lives of his readers. Studying Paul's prayers then can give us this window into what things we most need in our lives and what we can expect God to do in our lives, and that's very valuable. Well, let's just review a little bit from last week. Paul founded the church at Philippi during his second missionary journey. Philippi was a Roman colony, its citizens were largely Roman, they held Roman citizenship and proudly followed a very Roman way of life. There was probably no synagogue in the town and very little, if any, Jewish influence. While Paul was in Philippi, he was beaten and jailed for undermining the Roman way of life. An earthquake released his bonds and led to the jailer coming to faith. So the jailer in his household and a merchant named Lydia and her household formed the core of the new church at Philippi. The Philippian church joyfully embraced Paul's ministry and his gospel, and they began to support him financially of their own free will almost immediately after Paul left the town. So now it's several years later, it's probably it's around 60 to 62 AD. Paul is once again in prison, this time in Rome, and the Philippians have sent him a generous financial donation and news of their town and their church through a man named Epaphroditus. Paul is sending Epaphroditus back to them with this letter thanking them for their gift and with news of his situation. Paul began his letter by expressing his joy and gratitude for all the things he sees God doing in the lives of the Philippians. In part, he's grateful for the fact that they sent him money, but I argued last week that he's not grateful for the money itself so much as he is grateful for the fact that they have so embraced the gospel and so deeply come to care about it that they want to help Paul in this proclamation of the gospel. So they're showing their commitment to the faith through this financial gift. And Paul is grateful for what that gift reveals about their faith, not so much for the money itself. He talked about his joy because he knows that God having begun a work in them will bring it to maturity or completion. And he gives evidence for the fact that he cares about them, the fact that he repeatedly prays for them and expresses his gratitude for them to God in his prayers. So we finished with 1.8 last week, which says, For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. So he wants to see them again. God can bear witness to that because Paul prays to God about this very thing, and now he's gonna go on and tell them what he expects God to do for them, what he's asking God to do and what he expects. So chapter one, three through eight focused on his gratitude and the fact that he prays for them. And now in nine through eleven, he's gonna tell us what he is in fact praying for them. So here are the verses. This is Philippians chapter one, verses nine through eleven. 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. So I'd like to go phrase by phrase through this little section and then put it together in the big picture, comparing it with some of Paul's opening prayers in his other letters. Because in many ways, this is the theme of the letter. We talked last week about how Paul's main point is choose life, and we looked at the verse in Deuteronomy where Moses says, choose life by loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. We don't want to be the kind of people who are always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. The truth that Paul is most concerned about is the gospel. And just to review, embracing the gospel means embracing four essential truths. I call these the four aspects of saving faith. You may have heard the phrase, you're saved by grace through faith. Well, what is faith? How are we saved by it? And I would say it's by these four essential beliefs. So the first is a genuine desire for holiness in and of itself. That is, I realize I'm a sinful person and I want to be changed. I realize I'm not the kind of person I ought to be. I'm selfish, I'm prideful, neglectful, thoughtless, bitter, and so forth. It's not just that I've made a mistake here and there, it's that I am flawed and broken. I am not the truly good, kind, generous, perfect person I ought to be, and I want to be different. I want to be changed into someone better. So, or we could say I want to be holy as God is holy. So the first is a genuine desire for holiness in and of itself. The second is a genuine understanding that left to myself, I am totally incapable of making myself holy. So there's nothing I can do to change my sinful state any more than a leopard can change its spots or a tiger can change its stripes. I am a sinful broken person just as a tiger is a tiger. There's no defined spark within, there's no scale you can measure on where my good outweighs my bad, and that's good enough. Because for God, the standard is all or nothing. You're holy or you're not. One strike and you're out. So faith involves knowing I'm sinful, wanting to be changed, and realizing that God is the one who's going to have to change me. If I could muster up holiness now, I wouldn't have to trust Him for it. So the first is a genuine desire for holiness in and of itself. The second, a genuine understanding that left to myself, I'm totally incapable of making myself holy. The third is a genuine understanding that God owes me nothing and I am unworthy of any gift from God. So this is kind of a corollary to the second point. I have done nothing to deserve God's forgiveness. He doesn't owe me anything. He's not obligated to save me, he's not obligated to forgive me or change me in any way. Any gift he gives me or anything he does for me will be based on his own generosity, his own grace and mercy and loving kindness. There's nothing I can do to deserve or earn or require God to save me. So I have no standing before God whatsoever apart from his grace and the work of Jesus Christ. I make no presumption on him, I expect nothing from him because I realize I'm unworthy. So we have a genuine desire for holiness in and of itself, a genuine understanding that I'm incapable of making myself holy, third, a genuine understanding that God owes me nothing, and then finally the fourth aspect is a firm trust that because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God both intends to and will in fact forgive me and make me holy in the eighths to come. So saving faith is trusting God to forgive me, to save me because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, he will free me completely from the sin and corruption and failure I hate and grant me the goodness I long for. And Paul's primary task in this letter is to encourage his readers to hold fast to that truth and to continue to choose life. So let's look at his prayer. Let's start with verse 9. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. Now it's easy to read a verse like that and have this vague idea of what love is and to rush on to the next verse. But as part of Bible study, we want to start asking questions. And you'll see if you're using the study guide that I've asked you to use the five W and H to ask questions, and that is who, what, when, where, why, and how. So let me give you an example of what I mean when I say use those W questions. So we look at a verse like this and we say, well, what kind of love is he talking about? Why did he say love? Why not say grace or mercy or forgiveness? How does love abound? What does it look like when love abounds? If love was abounding in my daily life, what would I see? What would be different? And you can see I'm asking all those kinds of questions. What is love? How does it manifest itself? What does it mean that it abounds? And so forth. So Paul's implying that they have a certain amount of love already, and he wants to see that love grow or continue multiplying or to abound. Now remember the context. He's just expressed his gratitude for their love for the gospel as evidenced by their generosity toward Paul and his ministry. So we can inguess at least that loving the gospel, the kind of love he's talking about, is a love for God, the Savior He sent, and for someone like Paul as a minister of the gospel, or a love for the gospel itself, because that's what he's just been expressing his gratitude for. We can also assume they have a certain amount of love for each other as fellow believers, as we're going to see that develop into a theme in this letter. And I suspect it's already in his mind as he begins it, but we'll see that as we go on in the upcoming verses. So he wants their love to grow and abound, to overflow. And does he give us any clues in the letter as to what he means by that, what abounding love looks like or what he's hoping would happen for them? What would it look like for their love to abound? And I think he does give us those clues. When he starts giving them exhortations later in the letter, here's the kind of thing he says. So this is Philippians 2.2. Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. So being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Then later in 2.14 he says, Do all things without grumbling and questioning. And finally in chapter 4, verse 2, he says, I entreat Euodia and Synthiche to agree in the Lord, or as the NASB translates it, to live in harmony. So we can see three places there where he's talking about unity, or what he calls being of the same mind. And that's one of his primary concerns in this letter. He hopes their love for the gospel will influence how they treat each other, and one of the ways he hopes they will treat each other is this unity or harmony or being of the same mind. So I think in part he's praying that their love for the same gospel will lead them to unite and love each other, even though they have differences, even though they still need to be patient and forgiving and forbearing and so forth. So they have a certain amount of love for the gospel and for each other, and he wants that love to abound, to overflow, to continue to flourish. And we'll see as we go through the letter that he frequently ties this love for the gospel with a love for your fellow believer. And we're going to talk more about that in future talks. But notice he gives that love a particular context right here in verse 9. He says, And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. Now we're inclined today to think that knowledge and love are two unrelated things. Like you have your head stuff and you have your heart stuff, and those are separate. And maybe they're even in opposition to each other, interfering with each other. You know, you've got your head knowledge, your heart knowledge, and those two things are separate and distinct. But here in this verse in Philippians, Paul is tying them together. So let's think. What kind of knowledge does he have in mind? Well, we see this same connection in his other prayers where he's writing a similar idea to his other readers. Look at Ephesians. This is Ephesians 1, 16 through 18, Paul's opening prayer in that letter. He says, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. So again we see this spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge, leading to the eyes of your hearts, being enlightened such that you understand your hope. Essentially, Paul is praying that they would fully and deeply come to understand what Christ has done for them, and thus what their hope and their inheritance are. So, what has Christ done for them? I'm holding my hands up so the palms are facing each other, and assume my left hand is us and my right hand is God. So we start out in the garden before the fall, face to face, in fellowship with God. So my hands are up and facing each other. The problem started when we sinned, we rebelled. There's a sense in which we turned our backs on God and said, okay, I don't want to do things your way, I want to do things my way, I want to decide what's right and what's wrong. I'm going to be my own God. So I have turned my left hand away to face away from my right hand. Well that rebellion had two consequences. The first consequence is that we now experience sin and death, because God is the only source of life, and we have turned our back on that, so we don't have life, we now have death. And by death, I don't mean the fact that one day our heart will stop beating and we will cease to breathe, although it certainly includes that, but I mean more than that all the corruption, the decay, the futility, and the brokenness in our worlds and in ourselves now. And we see this every day in divorce, alienation, war, murder, strife, hatred, bigotry, hostility, bitterness, depression, grief, neglect, abuse, isolation, alienation, all of that is death, and all of that is a result of sin. Every human relationship left to itself without working at it falls apart. Marriages fall apart, parents alienate their children, nations go to war, offices are overrun with politics, friends stop speaking to each other, all of that is brokenness. All of that is the death that results from the fact that we are sinful. And we are trapped in that sin because God, who is the only source of life, turns his back on us. And by life, I mean life, like we might say with a capital L, all the opposite of that kind of futility and brokenness I just named. So the first consequence is that we now experience sin, futility, and death. But there's a second, more serious consequence, and that is we're now guilty. Our rejection of God was not simply unfortunate, it was wrong. We committed a crime and we now owe a debt to justice. And since the injustice and the wrongness of our choice angered God, he would not impart life to us until justice was satisfied, because it was wrong. I have turned my right hand away, so now the backs of my hands are facing each other. So we turned our back on God. God in his justice and righteousness, because what we did was wrong, turned his back on us. There's now justice that needs to be satisfied. There's a judicial penalty for our rebellion. So our rebellion was to turn our back on God. Doing that means we experience sin and death, but the penalty for our rebellion is for God to turn his back on us. And that consequence is devastating. Because in that state, we are under God's wrath, and justice must be satisfied. We are criminals convicted and found guilty of a crime, and now there's a judicial penalty that must be paid. And until that justice is satisfied, God will no longer grant life. This is what the Bible means by saying we are under the wrath of God. We are under wrath until our debt to justice is satisfied. Well, justification is the forgiveness of our debt to justice, which qualifies us once again to receive life. So to be justified is to be in a position where God's justice is satisfied and he can turn around once again and give us life. And justification is a gift from God. You may have heard probably the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Or Romans 3 23 and 24, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So we can find justification because God is profoundly merciful in nature, not because of anything we've done, but because of what God did for us. He was so profoundly merciful that he wanted to create a way for us to escape his wrath, but he's also just and he knew justice had to be satisfied, so he sent his son to live a righteous life that we could not live and to die in our place, to pay the price that we could not pay, solve our debt to justice so that God could forgive us. So justification, that is being right with God, having that debt to justice satisfied, is granted because of God's grace, that is his just unmerited favor, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves as a pure and complete gift. So it's granted to those who have faith by the grace of God. And we talked about what faith is those four aspects: a genuine desire to be made righteous, a genuine understanding that I'm not capable of getting there myself, a genuine understanding that God owes me nothing apart from the grace, His grace, and the work of Jesus Christ, and then a firm trust that because of the blood of Jesus Christ, he will forgive me and make me holy. So part of the knowledge here is they would they would fully and deeply come to understand what Christ has done for them in securing their justification. Let's look at another opening prayer. This is in his letter to the Colossians, Colossians 1 9 through 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, so that you may 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. So again we see this prayer for knowledge, for understanding. And in Colossians, he uses the phrase to have a knowledge of God, and do I have to have a knowledge of God's will. And I think by that he means more than the rules. He doesn't, he's not praying so much that God made rules and you need to understand the rules. He uses this phrase that it's based on spiritual wisdom and understanding. So it's more than knowing rules and studying theology. It's the kind of knowledge you gain from a spiritual transformation or a conversion. Before this conversion, before gaining this understanding, I was, in a sense, blind and dumb. But then after this conversion, after gaining this knowledge, I am now I can now see and understand. Before I didn't get it, now I get it. Before I didn't understand, now I understand. And as I understand, my whole life. Begins to change. That's what he talks about, bearing fruit and living your life in such a way that you're pleasing to God. So I not only know factually and intellectually what God values, what God thinks is important, what he says is right and wrong, and so forth. Now I love what God loves. I seek after what God values. I long for the things that he says are pleasing and right such that my life changes and I make different choices. Later in Colossians 2, Paul picks up this theme again. He's talking about how he's working with great effort on behalf of those he's preached to, and then he says, so that, Colossians 2, 2, so that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. Here again we see this connection between love and knowledge. Once again it's praying for a knowledge of what Christ did, who he is, what he did for us, what his kingdom is about, and this knowledge is connected with encouragement and what he calls the riches of full assurance, of understanding who Christ is, what he's done for us, and therefore what my hope and future are. So looking at these other prayers can give us a clue what Paul might mean here in Philippians. Now, it's not that Paul must always pray the same thing in all his letters, that's not the case. But his other prayers, especially when they go into more detail, can give us a window into his theology and into his worldview, and then we can apply that worldview here where he says more briefly, and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. Well, we can look at his other prayers and say, what kind of knowledge and discernment was he talking about or does he think is important? And we can conclude he's not praying that they would have a warm, fuzzy feeling toward each other more often. Rather, love is a choice we make based on how we understand the world. And God is in this process of renewing our minds, of changing what we understand and believe, changing how we think about what is true and what is not, what is valuable and what is not. And it all comes from knowing who Christ is and what he's done for us. So one of the results of this knowledge is that we will now see each other differently. Our love of the truth works its way out into a love for our fellow believers. Paul doesn't say exactly how that happens here, but he will as we go on into the letter. So for now, note that he wants the kind of love for each other that is rooted in this new knowledge and understanding of who God is, who Christ is, and what Christ has done for them. He wants them to have this discernment, knowledge and discernment. And this is the this word discernment is only used once here in the New Testament, right here in Philippians. But I think the idea is that he wants this knowledge to go hand in hand with a certain perspective or an understanding of life. And that perspective is explained in the next phrase he uses. The purpose of this knowledge and discernment is 110, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. So this kind of perspective on the world and understanding of life leads to you being able to approve the things that are excellent. So, what does he mean by that? Well, approving is all about choice. In this life, we have things to do. We have possessions and positions and goals we're pursuing, and wisdom is about sorting out the essential from the non-essential, the valuable from the futile, the worthwhile from the worthless. So I have these choices to make. What should my life be about? How should I spend my time? Which choices are right and valuable? Which choices are wrong? And I think what Paul is praying for is that their love would be characterized by this knowledge and discernment such that they can pursue what is worth pursuing and value what is worth valuing. And then he adds this next phrase that further explains the purpose. He says, in order to be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, or some translate that sincere and without stumbling. This word blameless is a little hard to explain. We all know that sin is blameworthy, and none of us have ever lived a blameless day in our lives, not even once. Paul does not mean that there would be no sin in my life that I could be blamed for. That doesn't fit with the rest of his theology or with our experience or the rest of Scripture, and it wouldn't be a realistic goal. I don't think the Bible ever says that we will arrive at a place in this life where I can look back and say, oh, nothing I regret, nothing I can be blamed for. Rather, I like the translation, sincere and without stumbling, and I think that captures more of the idea. I think the idea is that we would be the kind of person who does not stumble or cause others to stumble, and that would be in terms of my faith. That my faith would turn out to be sincere and real and pure as opposed to fake or phony or worthless, such that I don't stumble, I don't fall away from the faith, I stay with it and persevere because my faith is blameless, that is, without stumbling. I persevere until the day Christ returns. How is that related to having a knowledgeable, discerning love? Remember, he's praying that their love might abound in knowledge and discernment, so that they might approve what is excellent and be sincere and without stumbling until Christ returns. How does that chain work out? How does one lead to the other? Well, I think verse 11 helps us answer that question. He says, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. So he gives us one more result of this kind of abounding love, and that is the fruit of righteousness. Now, righteousness is one of those words that can be understood differently in different ways in different contexts. In some contexts, this word should be understood as justification, which we talked about earlier, and that is I am righteous in the sense that I am right before God. My debt to justice has been paid, and I am now no longer under his wrath. Sometimes in context, it should be understood more as holiness. That is, I am right in the sense that I am holy and made better. So justification is being right with God as in my debt to justice has been paid. That's why Christ died for us in order to pay the penalty for our sins and make us right with God. So he could be talking about the fruit of that comes from being justified by Jesus Christ. That's a good possibility. The other possibility is that he's emphasizing holiness or a right way of living. That is, as I grow in knowledge and discernment and I learn to value what is valuable and reject what is worthless, that I will see more and more this kind of right way of living, of living wisely and rightly and choosing well. So I lean toward the second possibility, but I would even with that, I would not understand it to mean that I am living my life in such a way that I am without sin. Rather, I'm living my life in such a way that it is clear who my father is, that I'm seeking after the things of God, and I want the things of God, and it's clear from the choices I'm making and the way I'm living my life, who I'm trusting, what I'm counting on, and that I am seeking after holiness, pursuing what God calls holy and good and right. So I will still be flawed and sinful in that pursuit, but it is nonetheless what I am pursuing. And Paul says there's fruit that results from following Christ, and that fruit has something to do with the way we live and what we pursue, and that faith is changing us, it's making us these kinds of people. As we grow in knowledge and our faith matures, we have this different way of living, a different kind of love. We approve the things that are excellence, we have love for Christ and for each other, and as that all process grows and matures, we see changes, and these are some of the kinds of changes that we'll see. So Paul is praying that this kind of change would come upon the Philippians and produce these kinds of fruit. Now we'll still struggle with sin, but we will also begin to experience change and see progress. And our actions will demonstrate, yes, we're still sinful, and yes, we still need a savior, but we have faith and repentance, and that faith is growing. And if we genuinely believe the gospel, it's going to start affecting our values and our choices and our goals and change the way we live. So I would understand him to mean here that we are filled with the fruit that comes from this new right way of living. Not a perfectly sinless way of living, but a new way of living that arises from a genuine faith in Jesus Christ and brings glory and praise to God. So last week we saw that Paul was thanking God for the faith of the Philippians, that they had already demonstrated a measure of faith. True, it belonged to the Philippians, but he thanked God that they had that faith because faith itself is a gift from God, and that he was confident that having given them this gift of faith, Paul was going to go on to make sure they crossed the finish line. And now he's praying that that faith would continue to grow and abound, that this knowledgeable love, sincere faith, this fruit of righteousness, all of that is the work of God, all of that is a gift that he gives us. And when he does that in our lives, it results in his glory and praise. So he's praying that the lives of the Philippians would be marked with this genuine faith that reflects glory and praise to God as they display these great things he's done. So to put all this together, there are still three questions we need to talk about. That is, what's the connection between knowledge and love? What's the connection between knowledgeable love and a sincere, persevering faith? And how can a sinner be said to be living a righteous life? Well, all three questions find their answer in the same place, and that's an understanding of the connection between what we believe and how we live. And we've alluded to this already, but I want to go into a little more detail. So we have a worldview, all of us has a worldview, which is a picture of reality that we live by. So the way we think about things and how that affects the life we live and the choices we make. So let me give you an analogy. Imagine that you are working hard in the hot sun and you're digging in the dirt doing backbreaking work. How you feel about that depends on how you understand your situation. If you are a prisoner working on a chain gang, you may feel angry and despairing, you might desperately want to escape, and you might even try to escape. And every thought might be on how you don't want to be doing this work and you just can't wait to get out of it. If you're a farmer and you're preparing to plant crops that will support your family and will bring life and security and support those you love best, then you may feel satisfied and productive and you might even find some measure of joy in the labor. Now the two folks in my analogy are doing the exact same work under the exact same conditions, but they see themselves very differently. The way they understand their circumstances is very different, and that affects the choices they make, the things they value, and how they might react in any given situation. So one wants to escape, one wants to finish. And that's what we mean when we say our worldview affects how we live and what we choose and how we respond to life. It all depends on how we picture our situation. Now, my analogy breaks down in a sense because they actually are in very different circumstances. It's not just how they understand their circumstances, they actually are in different circumstances. But you could stretch the analogy a bit further and say coming to faith, coming to an understanding of the gospel is a conversion and a worldview shift such that the circumstances actually switch from being prisoner to being farmer in a sense. So having been justified before God, life, hope, joy, and fulfillment become possible in a way they were never possible before because God has provided a way for us to escape from sin and futility. And He's promised to free us from all that sin and death and corruption that we hate and change us into the people we long to be. So on the outside, my life might look the same. I might be doing the exact same backbreaking work, digging in the dirt, but I'm no longer a prisoner to sin. I am now a child of God, and that shift changes everything. I have hope where before I had no hope, and that changes how I see myself, how I understand my labor, how I understand what's true and right and good and wise, and so forth. So all those questions: what kind of world do I live in? How and where do I find life? How will I find fulfillment? What is hope? Is hope real? Where do I find hope? What's true? The way you answer those questions affect how you respond to your the situations, the opportunities, the circumstances, and temptations that come into your life. When we say that we're saved by faith in Jesus, in a sense, we're saying that we are have willingly embraced a new worldview, a new picture of reality that changes everything about how we live and work and respond. So, what's the connection between knowledge and love? It's this worldview change. Knowledge, coming to that knowledge, that understanding, is a worldview change. It's a shift from seeing yourself as a prisoner, so to speak, to seeing yourself as the farmer, to continue my analogy. And when Paul asks that they would willingly embrace the gospel worldview and grow in knowledge of God, he's asking God to work in their lives such that they embrace the promises of God, they fully come to understand the grace of God and the mercy of God in a real way such that God changes their worldview. And one of the questions that we have to sort out then is who are my people? Are my people those of the same race, the same gender, the same political party, those from the same state, fans of the same sports team? Who are the people who see the world like me? And once I embrace the gospel, my people ought to become those who believe the gospel and share with me the grace of God and the hope of his kingdom. All that other stuff, race, gender, socioeconomics, all that is secondary. It ought not to matter. The more I come to know God, the more I begin to love the things of God, and one of the things that God loves is his people, and I begin to love them too. So the other people of God that are like are like me, and that we now share the same worldview despite what other differences we may have. And that like thinking bonds us in a real way. And that's one of the ways knowledge and love are connected. So, what's the connection between a knowledgeable love and a sincere, persevering faith? Well, knowledge and faith are two sides of the same coin. Faith is believing the gospel, and that means embracing this new understanding of reality. And Paul's praying that their love would grow through knowledge and discernment, in other words, that their faith would grow and take root. And as faith grows, our knowledge, our understanding of reality, our new worldview also sharpens and grows, and that changes the way we live, leading us to choose to love God and his people. As our lives reflect this growing love for God and his people, it's a sign that our faith is real and deeply rooted, and that's part of what persevering faith is. So how can a sinner be said to be living a righteous life? Well, in one sense it's impossible. If by righteous we mean morally perfect, that's not true of anyone. If by righteous we mean perfectly holy, that's not true. But if by righteous we mean we are justified, we are right before God, we are no longer under his wrath, then sinners can be said to be righteous. We are still sinful, but we have been forgiven. We have been made right with God, and we have had our debt to justice paid by the blood of Jesus Christ. Also, in a broader sense, to live righteously is to live a life concerned with God and His will, to live a life of faith. So to pursue righteousness in life often has this sense of pursuing the life of faith, to pursue a worldview that comes from embracing the gospel and changing our lives as a result of our new understanding. So, yes, we're still sinners, we still make wrong choices, but our understanding of those choices and their consequences and our values will change. One of the marks of believers is how we respond to sin and holiness. So when I sin, do I make excuses and justify my behavior and say, oh well, it's not that big a deal, I was tired, it doesn't really matter. Well, maybe at first I might think that, but eventually I come to a point where I'm shamed by it, I grieve over it, and I beg God to show me forgiveness and mercy. When I do right, do I say, hey God, look at me, look how wonderful I am, and what a great thing I've done, or do I say, Wow, thank you, Lord, for making me the kind of person who can do right. I couldn't do that five years ago. Now I see you've been at work and I'm a new kind of person. So here's my paraphrase of this section, and I'll put a link to this in the lecture notes, which you can find at Wednesday in the Word.com slash Philippians two. Philippians, your support of my ministry shows me that God has done a great work in your hearts. You have a genuine love for God and for his people. My prayer to God is that this love would continue to increase and overflow. I want your love to be rooted in a knowledge of God, understanding his promises, his character and his mercy toward you and his will. I want this knowledge to make you discerning about your lives, willing to embrace and value what is indeed true and valuable. When God does this for you, then the sincerity of your faith will become apparent, and you will persevere in that faith without stumbling until the end. Then your life will indeed be marked by a godly love and everything else that characterizes the righteous life of a genuine believer. All this comes about through the work of Jesus Christ, and it reflects great glory on the God who sent him. So what does this prayer tell us about what Paul wants for the Philippians? And I'm assuming that's one of the most important things to want. One, he wants them to have a real faith, to embrace the gospel, to know and believe it. Two, he wants the reality of this faith to show itself in the way they live, so that they believe in such a way that it changes how they live, and in the Philippians case he emphasizes that part of this change will be in unity, loving their fellow believers. And third, he wants them to persevere in this faith so that they receive their inheritance when Christ returns. Essentially, he's praying that they would have a real and persevering faith that shows itself in our lives now and results in eternal life when Christ returns. And I think this is what we ought to want for ourselves and what we ought to want for each other. But we get so easily distracted by the cares and worries of this life. Paul's prayers remind me that this is how I ought to think, this is what I ought to want and ought to be about, and it can put our other desires into perspective and in scale. Now he hasn't fully explained what he means by love here. We're going to see more of that explanation as we go on in the book, but one thing that's clear from his prayer is that love is not a warm, fuzzy feeling. Love is a response, a choice based on my worldview. It's a choice that shows what I value and what I think is important, and it's a choice that results from knowledge and discernment and from embracing the gospel. It arises from how we think about the world, and that choice is significant. So when someone commits an act of love, that's a good thing, and the world is a better place, but Paul's emphasis is not really on the effect or the result we're having, but on the choice that we make and what that choice shows about the state of our faith. Let me give you an analogy. Imagine you're a parent and your son is going to spend a day at a water park, and you are urging him to take his younger sister along, but he doesn't want to. Well, while you're urging him to be generous and kind and considerate of his sister, the younger sister gets a phone call and her best friend invites her to go with her family to the water park. Problem solved. Both children get to go to the water park. How do you feel about this? Of course you're glad that both kids get to go, but you're disappointed. That your son didn't generously offer to take his sister. He faced a choice, and you wanted him to make that choice wisely and to make it well. So it wasn't so much the outcome that was the main important concern, but the basis upon which the choice was made. And I think this is a large part of Paul's concern here with love. Yes, being kind, being loving has a positive effect on other people. But what Paul's concerned about is what that choice says about who we are. Because love is a choice that reflects the kind of people we are. Making a wise choice is an important thing. And Paul's not so much concerned that everyone gets along and that Philippi is a great place to live. That would be nice, but he wants them to get along because they're making wise choices, and they're making those wise choices because they have embraced the gospel. His prayer shows us something of what he means by knowledge. As a teacher here today, I can impart knowledge to you. I can tell you things, you can write them down, and there's a sense in which you would now know them. You would have information that you didn't have before, and you could say, I've imparted knowledge. But I think the kind of knowledge that Paul's talking about is the knowledge that involves the will, where I tell you something or you learn something and you willingly embrace it and make it your own, and then you make choices based on that new knowledge. So exercise is a useful analogy here. All of us have probably heard that exercise is good for you, and you should exercise at least 30 minutes a day, three times a week. But many of us struggle to know it. We know that factually that's true, but we don't actually make it part of our lives. And we could say that we truly have that knowledge when we begin to act on it and we actually choose to make exercise a part of our daily lives. Because now we have knowledge in such a way that it changes us. Well, it's the same with the knowledge of the gospel. I may know that God exists, I may know that he sent his son Jesus Christ into the world to die in my place and to secure my forgiveness for sins. And you can I can have a knowledge of those facts, but when I start to act on that, when I start to live my life as if that was true and embrace it in such a way that I you begin to see it in my choices, then you can say, I have really true knowledge. And finally, remember this is something that God is doing in us. The extent that our knowledge and our beliefs change and our lives look different is a result of the work of God in our lives. I imagine as I was going through this, many of you pulled out that old spiritual large yardstick and you measured yourself and you said, Oh gosh, I just I don't measure up. And you probably resolved in some way to try to do better. Well, there's a sense in which that is a good thing, but there's a sense in which that is a bad thing. Because the way you do better in the future is not to try harder and harder. The way you do better is to humble yourself before God. Acknowledge that you lack, that you're not the person that you should be, that you don't deserve any of his gifts, and ask him to make you that kind of person because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Then live your life trusting that he will do it. It's really that easy and wonderful. All you have to do is ask for faith and forgiveness, and you will receive.