So Paul is moved with affection for them. The word Paul uses for “affection” in verse 8 is the Greek word for bowels. That means, his intestines, if you aren’t familiar with the word. In that day, they considered our intestines the most tender of places of your human emotions, rather than our blood pumping organ called the heart.
You understand this: When you fall in love, you get those queasy feeling in your belly. We sometimes call them butterflies. Paul is saying that his feelings for them go deep - so deep it moved his emotions. Amen! We truly feel that love and gratitude for one another.
But again, this leads him to pray for them: Philippians 1:9 says, “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment.”
Now remember, they were already showing love for him. They had stood by him and even sent an offering to him. So this isn’t that they will just show love, but that their “love may abound still more and more.”
That’s the truth about love - love grows. When that first baby comes, your heart swells with love toward that precious little bundle of joy, and you wonder how you could ever possibly love any more than you do. But then the next baby arrives, you love that second baby too, and then the third, and so on…. with that same passion. You do it without ever loving that first baby any less, or without lessening your love for your spouse.
That’s the way it is with love. Love grows. You don’t divide up a limited supply of love between your babies so that if you have two, each one gets a half, and if you have three, each one gets a third. It doesn’t work that way. Love doesn’t divide, it multiplies. Love can grow and grow.
Romans 5:5 says, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” God pours His love out on us in a downpour – a gully washer that overflows its banks and floods everywhere. So the source of our love is God. The more we draw close to God and experience His love, the more His love flows out of us to other people - the more it can (verse 9) “abound.”
What happens is this: God pours His love into us so much, it bubbles up and out of us, and everyone around us gets splashed with it. The love that God hits us with also hits everyone around us as we overflow with that love.
Now, because love is dependent upon God, love can be called the very heart of Christian living and even a test of the authenticity of our faith. Look at 1st John 3:14-15:
14 We know that we have passed from death to life, (How?) because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. 15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
A heart that has been touched by God is going to overflow with love.
The same truth is given a few verses later in 1st John 4:7-8:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.But this love isn’t blind. It’s wise and judicious if you look at Philippians 1:9. Love is to abound more and more “in knowledge and all discernment.” Like Christ, who knows us inside and out, yet, still loves us, we love one another all the more the better we get to know each other. This is loving one another in spite of our humanness, not because of it. We’re all a little quirky and a bit odd, and we’re often difficult to love. Lots of times, we just have to learn to put up with that in one another.
That’s the message of 1st Corinthians 13:7, that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” That’s exactly the way we are supposed to love one another. With full knowledge of the failings of one another, we love anyway just like Jesus loves us;
In verse 9, the word, “discernment,” is aisthesis in Greek. We get the English word, aesthetic, from it. It refers to our personal tastes and preferences. We all like different things and appreciate different things. We’re all different people. You might paint your bedroom walls purple, but that color might make someone else puke. You might prefer hunting deer, but someone else might wonder how you could be so heartless to shoot Bambi. We are all different – viva la difference. But we put that all aside in the body of Christ and love one another anyway.
And that is a choice of the will fully informed, fully knowing the foibles and the failures of one another. We love anyway. Why? Because God loves that way. God loves us without regard to any merit on our part. He doesn’t love us because we deserve it.
I want you to look at what Jesus said to us about loving even our enemies. It’s found in: Matthew 5:43-46
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
Now, if Jesus expects us to love our enemies like that, it should be a lot easier for us to love each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, shouldn’t it?
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