Reflecting On My Vision
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may 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.”
I have always, well not always, loved school. The reading and writing has usually been an easier task for me to accomplish because I actually enjoy reading and writing. Now before you start labeling as some nerdy book worm, you should know that I played all sorts of sports growing up: I played varsity soccer at Southern Wesleyan University, and have coached soccer at the club, middle and high school, and collegiate level. I am not exactly sure how to refer to myself other than to say that my passion has always been to read, write, and teach others.
Over the years, I have tried evaluating this passion in my life. The questions I’ve really asked have been: What can I do with this? How does this help anyone else? Will I make money? Obviously, some of these questions are more important than others, but for me, the biggest question has always been: How can I use my passion to help others?
It was during this self-reflection that I came across the passage above in Philippians 1:9. Paul opens this letter to the church in Philippi with a wonderful word of encouragement and prayer. (If you are ever in need to hear a good word, read the opening lines of some of Paul’s epistles!) Paul writes to this church to remind them of how much he loves them and how much joy he feels when he thinks and hears of them. He assures them that he has them “in my heart” and that he “longs for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus” (1:7-8). In other words, he LOVES them. He is over-joyed in their success and heart-broken in their failures. He is very much the caring parent of these young believers.
However, Paul’s opening remarks to the listeners of this letter is not to just tell them how much he loves and cares for them. Instead, his passion for these people is based in his hope for their lives as Christ followers. Paul’s transition comes in v. 9 when he writes, “And this is my prayer.” When I think of you, this is what I think. This is the hope I have for you. Above all else, this is what I want you to have: “that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”
The stress of this sentence is on the verb: abound. We can infer that the believers in Philippi were already rooted in love. Paul commends them for their “partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” (1:4). Even more, he confirms that they are all “in God’s grace with me” (1:8). Perhaps most convincingly, Paul refers to the collection of believers in Philippi as “God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi” (1:1). Surely these people were not believers who lacked love for God or others. For if they did, Paul would have certainly given a prayer more along the lines of what he praises the church in Thessalonica with: “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing” (2 Thess 1:3). Instead, Paul prays for the believers in Philippi that their love may “abound.”
This word, perisseuō in Greek, can be translated in a number of ways: abound, abundance, exceed, increase, better, or rebound. Whichever word best suits your style, all of them boil down to the same idea: to move above or beyond some limit. The word implies that there exists some sort of perceived limit or line in which a person or thing cannot cross or go beyond. What this limit is, I’m not sure, but Paul believes that the Christians in Philippi can move beyond what they think they are capable of doing. They can love more and love better.
How can this be done? Love may abound more and more through growth in knowledge, insight, and discernment. In other words, the more a person grows in knowledge, wisdom and understanding, he or she may also grow in love for God and others. For me, this works out in this way: (1) Knowledge is what you know and how you know it. All the information you have from the life you have lived becomes your knowledge. Because God made everything, the more you know about this world then the more you can get to know about its Creator. (2) Wisdom, or insight, is how you use what you know. Face it, there are a lot of people who are “book smart” and not “street smart.” That is to say, there are people who know a lot of things but lack the wherewithal to use it. The further you grow in wisdom, the better you become at making the connections between creation and the glory of God in his creation. (3) Understanding, or discernment, is your ability to perceive how others might be impacted in the way you use (wisdom) what you know (knowledge). It is in this way that Paul’s prayer makes sense: a way in which people may grow further in love is through their increase of what they, how they use what they know, and how they better understand the ways others will be impacted by the way they use what they know.
For me, this is what this blog is about. It is about my adventure to grow in love through knowledge, wisdom and understanding. But, it is also about encouraging others along the way. Part of the reason I enjoy coaching and teaching is because I get to use what I know to grow others. It is my hope and prayer that, as I continue to read and write, others may grow in their own knowledge, wisdom, and understanding and, thus, grow in love as well.