Loving With Knowledge and Discernment

Philippians 1:9 states: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment.” This has two aspects that I want to examine. Love must abound, but it must not do so blindly.

We know that love must abound. Look at what Jesus told us in John 15:12-13:

12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

And Jesus demonstrated that love by laying down His life for us. Jesus willingly went to the cross of Calvary on our behalf. He took our punishment upon Himself. Did He wait to do that until after we cleaned up our life and came to worship Him? NO!

Romans 5:6-10 teaches that:

6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. 10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

We are supposed to love other people like that too – even our enemies. We love people in spite of their foibles and weaknesses, but with discernment and knowledge.

People are out to skin the church all the time. They show up with their sob stories that would just tear the heart out of you to listen to them. And they ask for money. Many of them are con-artists. It takes discernment to know.

It’s a terrible thing to waste God’s money by giving it to a con artist, or a drunk, or drug addict so they can get another drink or hit. Nor should we give money to someone simply too lazy to work. Christian charity is a great virtue, but being taken isn’t.

Let’s look at it from a different angle. If love should be with knowledge and discernment. And if that knowledge is knowledge of the Word of God, true love would never cause another person to sin.

So that boy claiming he loves you in the back seat of the car, but expecting you to put out and compromise your virtue and sin with him, he isn’t demonstrating love, but lust. It is not true, Biblical love. Knowledge and discernment would recognize that. It would cause you to flee from that car. It would cause you to keep out of those situations.

Likewise, true love would never whitewash over sin, as the liberal church does. If, for instance, the Bible says that homosexuals will not “inherit the kingdom of heaven,” as it does in 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, and we don’t warn them, we are not loving them. Our deference to their feelings, or our attempt to be politically correct, is hatred, not love. True love would tell them the truth,

Before we leave this, however, just one more thing about loving with “knowledge and discernment.” Yes, we are to love the unlovely, but that doesn’t mean, as J. Vernon McGee says, “we just let our love slop over on every side.” We love with “knowledge and discernment.” There are a lot of people out there spreading damnable heresies, and Jesus, the very one who told us to love our enemies, had nothing but scorn and contempt for those false teachers.

In John 8:44 Jesus told the false religious leaders of his day who were teaching lies:

44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

In Matthew 23:13-36 Jesus repeatedly said to them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.” He dressed them down good, calling them every name under the sun. He called them blind guides, fools and blind, white-washed tombs full of dead men’s bones. He called them serpents, and a brood of vipers. He told them they murdered the prophets and were going to hell. And, by the way, Jesus never sinned you know, so it wasn’t wrong for Him to say it. It was all the truth. He was right in what He said, and He said it as the God of love.

Jesus would never fit into the sappy sentimentalism that has invaded so much of the modern church - a sentimentalism that tolerates just about any sin, any heresy, and any behavior - calling that tolerance love and humility. Jesus has called us to battle. The battle is against Satan and against error

According to 2nd Corinthians 10:4-5, we are supposed to be “pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”

We aren’t supposed to be sweet and kind to them? We aren’t supposed to say, “Well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.” Hogwash! That’s not God honoring. That’s just plain appeasement. That’s wimping out like a coward. We’re supposed to shred their arguments. We’re supposed to smash their fallacies like boys smash Lego towers until nothing is left standing.

In 2nd John 7-10, John, the apostle of love, talks about how to treat false teachers coming to your door. He writes:

7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. 8 Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward. 9 Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; 11 for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.

The mark of a deceiver is that they get the Jesus question wrong. They mess up, “Who is Jesus?” To them, we’re not supposed to offer hospitality. We’re not even supposed to greet them because if we do, if we provide any help or encouragement, we are sharing in their evil ministry that leads people to hell. True love is more concerned with the spiritual well-being of that other person than whether or not we offend them with the truth.

The Test for a False Teacher

When John told us to test the spirits in 1st John 4:1, the point of John’s warning is false church doctrine. What are we to do about false teachers that invade the church? And they will!

Paul warned the Ephesians about that in: Acts 20:27-31
“For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.”

Do you see the problem? It’s not easy to detect who the false teachers are. They don’t come in looking like savage wolves, but, instead, they wear sheep’s clothing. They look and sound like one of us. And they don’t make frontal attacks on truth, or we’d escort them out. Rather, they shade the truth. Like Jude said, Jude 4 , “for there were certain men who crept in unnoticed.” Literally, they entered in by the side door while we weren’t looking.

Like in the parable of the Tares of Matthew 13, Satan sows them in our midst while we are distracted. And we don’t have a clue they are there until after they have taken root. They come in, looking just like us, and they seem to love the fellowship, and make themselves right at home. But then, once they are entrenched, they try to change us from the inside out into something different, something less, something false and dead with no life. Remember, an apostate is one who turned away from what they once professed. So at one time, they would have even sounded like us. But not any more.

But, wouldn’t that be why Paul would pray for the Philippians in: Philippians 1:9, “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment?” People like to concentrate on the first part. Yes, we want to be a loving church where people are warmly received and welcomed, but we have to have “knowledge and all discernment.” We don’t want to be so gullible we’ll be taken in by every false teacher who would lead us astray.

Well, here is the answer: Paul tells us to “test the spirits.” Historically, that’s always been necessary. Wouldn’t Eve in the Garden have been wise to test the Serpent who was tempting her? It has never gotten any less important.
Throughout Israel’s history, they were plagued with false prophets, so much so God gave them criteria to tell which ones were genuine.

The criteria is listed in: Deuteronomy 18:22:
“When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.” And God specified the penalty for a false prophet. It was death. But it’s not always that easy. What about when the teaching sounds kind of right?

The answer is found in Deuteronomy 13:1-3:
“If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Wow! He actually got a prediction right. Just so you are aware, false teachers can often make great eloquent appeals; they can build huge, successful churches; they can do signs and wonders, or miracles. Satan can duplicate much of what we consider miraculous or sensational. But the true test is whether or not they are leading you to God, to truth; or away from it. It’s directional. And as Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” So the test has to be whether or not the teacher is leading us to Christ, or away from Him.