Partnership in Prayer
If you’re a returning or first-time visitor this morning, I want to take a minute to welcome you again to our church. A couple weeks back, we started a new series through the book of Philippians. And the plan for the next few months is to work through this part of the Bible, verse by verse, part by part, so we can have discernment about what God has said here and why it matters.

We’ve spent a couple weeks unpacking some of the background and early verses of this letter. The letter is written by a man named Paul. He was a Christian leader in the early days after Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. And Paul traveled across the Roman Empire, going city to city, teaching people the good news about Jesus Christ, and gathering them into churches. This is how the church in Philippi got started. Paul was the spark that lit the fire there. And Paul followed up by sending this letter to provide further instruction and guidance for them.

Last week I highlighted Paul’s comments about the partnership that Christians are called to together. And this morning, we’re going to see how Paul operated as a partner and co-worker with the Philippian church – specifically, by taking a look at how he prayed for them.

So if you have your Bibles with you, please turn with me to Philippians Chapter 1. I’ll be reading verses 9 through 11. Philippians 1, verses 9 through 11. But before I read the text for us this morning, please pray with me:

[Pray and Read Text]

Introduction 2.0 (4 min)

I can’t meet all your needs. I can’t change your heart, or anyone else’s heart. I can’t take away your love of sinning and give you a love for God. I can’t do that for you. You can’t do that for your neighbor. Even Paul couldn’t do that for the Philippian Christians, or for anyone else.

When it comes to this sort of work – to transform the human soul – this is a work that only God can do. The power to change lives doesn’t come from the type of music we play, or from the force of human persuasion, or from anything related to our personal skills or performance. God himself is the only one who can open our eyes to our sin. He’s the only one who can enable us to hate our evil, and to grieve over it, and to love Christ, and to turn to Him. God is the only one who can give us life by His Spirit, to grow into greater Christlikeness. These things require nothing less than a work of God!

And so Paul recognizes that there are two things he must do if he’s going to serve people, and care for their souls. He needs to proclaim the Word of God – because Paul’s Word isn’t what matters – they need the power of God, working through the Word of God. And Paul needs to pray for the work of God. That’s what Paul’s ministry was. These two things were the bread and butter of what he did as a servant of Christ Jesus. And at the start of his letter, here, Paul specifically shows us his commitment to prayer.

We saw glimpses of Paul’s prayer life back in verse 3. Paul told us there that he’s been giving thanks to God for the Philippian church. And in verse 4, he says that he’s been making his prayers with joy. But it isn’t until we reach verse 9, that Paul finally tells us what he’s been praying for.

I expect that there are a few different reasons why Paul would list out the things he’s been praying for. For one thing, Paul wants the Philippian church to be encouraged. He wants them to know that the name of the Almighty God has been invoked to wield his divine power for their good. Second, Paul’s prayer requests here are also a list of things that Christians should be aiming for in life. Paul’s prayer here teaches us what’s good for us and what we should be prioritizing. But in addition to these two things, Paul is also setting an example. He’s teaching us to pray for one another, and he’s giving us a road map on how to do that.

So as we dig into Paul’s prayer here, I want to give attention to three things. First, I want to review the People of Paul’s Prayer. Second, I want to draw attention to the main Petition in Paul’s Prayer. And finally, I want to identify the purposes of Paul’s prayer – and list out a few different outcomes Paul is hoping to see. These will be my three points: the people, the petition, and the purposes of Paul’s prayer.
The People of Paul’s Prayer
So first, the people of Paul’s prayer.

If we’re going to understand and appreciate Paul’s prayer here, it’s important to make sure it’s fresh in our minds who He was initially writing to, and what sorts of concerns these people were facing.

One interesting thing to note is that the Philippians here likely had very little, if any, background in the Old Testament before Paul showed up. If you read through the book of Acts, you’ll notice that when Paul went city to city, normally he would start in the synagogues. The synagogues were places where the Jews would meet and someone would read the Scriptures. People didn’t have Bibles at home like we do today. Books were expensive, and many people didn’t know how to read. So going to the synagogue was really the only way that the average person had access to the Word of God.

If you turn back to Acts Chapter 16, though, starting around verse 12, you’ll see that Paul didn’t go to the synagogue when he first came to Philippi. Instead, on the Sabbath day, it says that they went outside the gate to the riverside, where He and his companions supposed there was a place of prayer. And it should seem a bit strange to us that no synagogue trip is mentioned during Paul’s time in Philippi.

But a number of scholars have concluded from all this that Paul didn’t go to the synagogue that day because there wasn’t one. In order to have a synagogue, you needed to have a quorum of a certain number of godly men. And you’ll notice, when Paul showed up on the scene, the only people who are gathering to pray in Philippi appeared to be women. So it would seem there was no synagogue – no public reading of God’s Word. So the Philippians likely weren’t well-grounded in the teachings of Scripture. And this might explain why Paul’s letter here isn’t full of Old Testament passages, like many of his other letters are.

Another thing to keep in mind about the Philippians here is that they were dealing with a few different kinds of threats. They were threatened by conflict from within – Chapter 4 verse 2. They were facing opposition from the outside – Chapter one verse 28. They seem to have been in danger from false teaching – Chapter 3, verse 2. They were in danger from physical suffering – Chapter 1, verse 29. And as a result they seem to have been tempted toward anxiety, doubt, self-pity and self-preservation and many of the same types of things we’re tempted toward when life feels hard.

And there’s one more thing I want to point out here about the Philippians. Paul makes a point of insisting that the people in this church – they were the recipients of his love – and not only of his love – Paul’s love – but also the recipients of Christ’s love. Right before our text, there in verse 8, Paul insists “For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Paul is essentially taking an oath before God, and he’s saying, “I solemnly promise, in the presence of God, that I love you with the same love that Christ has for you.”

It’s helpful to keep these things in mind about the Philippians, because they help us to gain a fuller appreciation for the petition Paul is making for them in verses 9 through 11.
The Petition in Paul’s Prayer (for Love with Discernment)
So let’s turn our attention there, to the petition in Paul’s prayer. This is my second point: the petition in Paul’s prayer.

Paul says, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.” This is Paul’s main petition. Everything else we see down in verses 10 and 11 – those are the positive results Paul hopes to see downstream. But here in verse 9, there’s really just one primary request Paul has: “that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.”

Now I do want to make sure we’re clear here – when Paul talks about love, he’s not just talking about having sentimental feelings toward someone. Instead, he’s talking about something deeper and more resilient. He’s talking about the loyalty and allegiance that ties together families and friends for lifetimes. He’s talking about the decisive, self-sacrificial love that motivates heroes to leap on a grenade to save their countrymen. This is the type of love that Christ Jesus has shown for his people. This is the type of affection that Paul has in his heart toward the Philippians. And this is precisely the type of love that Paul wants the Philippian church to grow in.

Paul recognizes that these people already have genuine love, to some degree. But later on the letter, he gives us a few valid reasons to believe that the love of the Philippian church was at times inconsistent and imperfect – which is what our love is often like. And so Paul’s prompted here, to drop to his knees and to pray that God would cause the love of the Philippian church to “abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.”

And I want you to notice here, Paul’s one petition has two parts to it. Paul wants the love of the Philippian church to have two attributes. He prays that that the Philippians would have plentiful love – abounding more and more – and that they would have prudent love – with all knowledge and discernment.
Love in Abundance
When it comes to having plentiful love – a love that abounds more and more, Paul’s literally saying that he wants their love to overflow. Of course, we know that cups overflow when they’re too full of apple juice. Bathtubs overflow when their too full of water – and so on and so forth. So we get the idea that Paul wants the Philippians to have a lot of love. But perhaps wrapped up in this idea, we could also say that Paul wants their love to keep spilling over and flowing out rather than being artificially limited in some way.

Because I think in each of us, there’s a temptation to ask the question, “what’s the bare minimum I need to do in order to be a loving person?” Or a slightly different version of this would be, “What level do I need to reach before I can be considered a mature Christian?” For some reason, we tend to think about love in a limited way – “what’s the least amount of money I can give without being perceived as stingy? What’s the least amount of time I can spend without being perceived as rude?”

But the ability to walk in love is a gift that Christ purchased for us when he set us free from sin at the cross, and poured out his Spirit to us – it’s a fruit of the Spirit (cf. Galatians 5:22-23). And this Spirit-empowered love is a glorious and beautiful thing that the world can never have too much of. It shouldn’t make any sense that we’d want to limit our love, or restrict our forgiveness to seventy-times-seven.

Instead Paul’s reminds us here that our love is something that should abound more and more. So it’s worth asking – how can we deepen our resolve to care for one another? How can we express our love more tangibly? How can we continue to spur one another on to love and good works?

Paul wants the Philippian church to remember that they’ve been loved by God with a constant, over-flowing, everlasting love. While the Philippian church was still ungodly and unlovely – back when the Philippians were still in conflict with God, stubborn and unfriendly – that’s when God sent His divine Son, Jesus, to be born as a human and to suffer in our place, for our wrongdoings. And if we know anything of what it means to be loved by God like this, it should propel us to want to love in the same way: to love God, even when we face suffering that doesn’t make sense to us, and to love one another, even when we’re tempted with internal conflict like the Philippians were.
Love with Discernment
But in addition to praying for a plentiful love, Paul also prays that the Philippians would have a prudent love. That their love would abound with knowledge and all discernment. It’s not an accident that these two things are highlighted here. Because Paul is concerned both about right belief and right practice. He’s concerned about orthodoxy and orthopraxy. He wants the Philippians to grow both in love and in truth.

It’s interesting to note here – there are many ways that Paul doesn’t want the love of the Philippians to be constrained. He wants it to be abounding and overflowing to all kinds of people, in all kinds of times and places, through all different types of life circumstances. Yet Paul specifically prays here that this overflowing love would be marked by knowledge and all discernment. Our love should be guided by a knowledge of what’s objectively true, and a discernment of what’s truly good.

And Paul would have recognized how important knowledge and discernment was for the Philippian church. Because, as I mentioned before, they probably didn’t have a solid starting point in their understanding of God’s Word. Paul prays for their knowledge and discernment to grow along with their love, so that they don’t slide into the ditch of falsehood or the chasm of error. Instead, Paul wants the church to grow together into greater partnership over God’s truth.

And this is different from how post-modern Americans think about love. Because many Americans have been taught to believe that if you’re a loving person, it means you have to accept or affirm whatever desires someone has, or whatever decisions another that person might be making. If someone wants to get a divorce, or have an abortion, or go on a date with someone who has the same types of chromosomes – society says that if you really love this person, you have to give these things a thumbs up.

But if we’re giving approval to anything that is offensive to God or contrary to his Word – we aren’t loving people. If my child was about to eat a poisonous berry, and I said, “Good for you! Do whatever makes you happy, no matter what people say!” Man, if I said that, I’d be a terrible parent. That would probably be the dictionary definition of parental neglect. That isn’t an act of love.

If I take away the poisonous berry from my child – if I say No – if I explain that eating the berry is bad and it will kill them – I am loving my child, even if they cry and scream and make a lot of noise. It might be easier to say nothing. But if I love my child, I need to show my overflowing love along with knowledge and all discernment.

And even here in the church – if we recognize that this is what real love looks like, we should expect for it to be something we see here in the church. We want to have a discerning love, that isn’t just pointing out every little fault we see in someone’s life – that’s not the sort of thing I’m talking about here. But if we see a brother or sister walking in a pattern of sin, who isn’t taking steps against temptation, who seems content with their wayward lifestyle – we need to be willing to speak words of tough love to others. And of course, we need to keep in mind that this really is what real love looks like – and we need to be willing to receive this tough love whenever it comes our way, too.

So all this to say – the prudent love Paul is praying for here – it will sometimes mean we need to confront or correct other people to bring them back in line with God’s truth.

Now some people don’t like the idea of that. Some churchgoers imagine that knowledge and love are enemies – that you can either care about theology or about unity, but you can’t care about both. But the Bible doesn’t place these things into conflict with one another. In fact, in God’s own divine oneness, we see that these belong together. He’s perfectly loving and at the same time, He’s all-knowing and perfectly discerning. God doesn’t take off his discernment hat to put on his love hat, or vice versa. God is simultaneously perfect in knowledge and in love. So knowledge and love aren’t enemies. We’re intended to pursue both, just as Paul suggests here in his prayer.

And if we’re seeking to take hold of the knowledge God has revealed in Scripture – if we’re seeking to humble ourselves before the same God, to confess the same realities, to trust in the same Savior, to cherish the same virtues, and to renounce the same patterns of sin – truth is actually a foundation that unites us. Truth guides our love into what is good and healthy and life-giving.

But love without discernment – love without truth – it isn’t a good thing – kind of like how growth without health isn’t a good thing. Because all types of growth aren’t equally good. As I’m sure you know, it’s a good thing if a child’s body grows the right way – if the bones get longer, and their lungs get bigger, and so on. But if a child develops a cancerous brain tumor, that type of growth is bad news. Because it’s the wrong type of growth. It’s a fatal type of growth, that distorts the right functioning of the body, and it leads to death.

So it’s worth asking – what’s shaping your love? How are you determining what you will love, what you will affirm, what you will value. Will your love grow in a way that’s healthy, in line with God’s truth? Or will you love cancerous things that are in conflict with His Word?

We need our love to grow with knowledge and all discernment. This is a great prayer. And we can of course pray this for ourselves. But it’s implied here that this type of praying is also an important expression of our love for each other. Because Paul’s abounding love in Christ is what prompts him to pray this prayer for the Philippians. And if our love is abounding more and more, for God and for his people, it seems weird that we wouldn’t be concerned to ask God for things like this.

Let’s of course keep praying for each other, that God would keep people safe when they’re traveling, and that he’d bring recovery from bodily ailments, and things like that – those are good things to pray for. But let’s make sure that those aren’t the only things we’re praying for. We should pray, too, for each other’s souls. We should keep praying that the people around you here will live out their faith the right way, in abounding love, and that together we’ll hold firmly to the right faith, with knowledge and all discernment.
The Purposes of Paul’s Prayer
And in our remaining time together, I want to briefly point out a number of purposes that Paul was aiming at when he prayed this prayer. This is my third and final point – the Purposes of Paul’s Prayer.

In some regard, having love and discernment are objectives in and of themselves. But in verses 10 and 11, Paul expresses his expectation that the abounding love and discernment of the Philippians would lead to three other beneficial outcomes.

First, Paul wants the Philippians to be Perceptive of Excellence. Paul says that he’s praying for the abounding love of the Philippians, with knowledge and all discernment – verse 10 – “so that you may approve what is excellent.” Another way to translate this phrase would be, “so that you may determine what things are of greatest value.” Paul wants the Philippians to have a discerning love that allows them to make wise life decisions, and to prioritize the right kinds of pursuits.

There are a lot of good things we can enjoy in the world – a lot of good activities we can do. But we can’t do everything. Not every good thing can be our priority equally. And so Paul prays that the Philippians would think through life and put their priorities to the test. What is supremely valuable? What are the sorts of things that need to be protected on my schedules? What goals are worth my attention, and what goals are simply distractions from something greater?

And Paul identifies that approving what is excellent is an important step toward a second great purpose – so that the Philippian church can be prepared for Christ’s return. Just as he’s telling them in the text: he’s praying so you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.

It can be far too easy to have a one-dimensional Christianity, and to focus our attention only or primarily on what Jesus Christ did in the past. He stooped down from heaven to carry our sins to the cross. He died in our place. He was buried. Jesus rose again from death on the third day. And he then rose from the earth, higher, into the presence of God the Father in heaven. These are all true things that are absolutely foundational to the Christian faith.

But it’s easy to forget what Christ is doing in the world now, by his Spirit – to produce the love and discernment we’ve been talking about. And it’s easy to lose track of the reality that Jesus Christ will come again! The day of Christ spoken of here is speaking about the future day that Christ will return in the fullness of divine glory. Jesus will come to raise the dead, to execute justice, and to establish a new heavens and new earth.

And Paul’s praying that the Philippians would have plentiful, prudent love, that approves what’s excellent so that the Philippians will be prepared, with purity and blamelessness. Now, it might almost sound like being pure and blameless is something we do to qualify ourselves for the kingdom of heaven – kind of like passing a drug test to qualify for the Olympics. But in verse 11, Paul explains where he expects this purity and blamelessness to come from – this readiness for the day of Christ is for those who have been filled with the fruit of righteousness of that comes through Jesus Christ.

It’s important to point out here – only those who are pure and blameless and righteous will be prepared to receive the day of Christ as a happy day. Because if we aren’t righteous in God’s eyes – if in his books, we still show up as guilty and worthy of condemnation, that will be a dark and miserable day for us.

But notice here in verse 11 – the righteousness that undergirds our purity and blamelessness for the day of Christ – it doesn’t come from our accomplishments. It comes from Jesus – through faith in Him. You and I are like dead branches, grafted onto the living Christ – and His Spirit brings his righteousness into us. It causes our buds to pop, and our leaves to grow, and for the flowers and fruits of righteousness to fill us. When the righteousness of Christ is in a person, it’s fruitful. Christ is at work in his people to prepare us for the day of His return.

And Paul wants the church to care about the coming of Christ – to care deeply about it! Paul wants us to approve the excellence of a life lived for Christ, in preparation for a life lived with Christ. Because in a very real regard, your life, right now, is granted to you so you can prepare for the day of Christ. This life is the dress rehearsal for the opening night. This life is the runway, where we prepare for the day that we take off to live with Jesus. The way we live today shouldn’t be markedly different from the way we intend to live with Christ in the new heavens and new earth.

There’s one more purpose Paul has in this prayer for the Philippians, though, there at the end of verse 11. He prays for the Philippians to abound in all these things with the ultimate aim of glorifying God – to the glory and praise of God.

The defining characteristic of true religion is that it gives credit where credit is due – to God. We can’t take credit for the good things that we make, or the smart things we say, or the kind things we do. If there’s any rightness or righteousness in us, it’s not from us. It has come to us from God, through Jesus Christ.

So the right thing for us to do is to honor God, and to thank him for qualifying us for heaven. The right thing for us to do is to love him. The right thing for us to do is to approve of his excellence, and to bear fruits that draw attention to his righteousness. So let’s pray right now, for ourselves and for one another, that God would bring an increase to our love and discernment, not for us to brag and look down on other people – but so we would be a people who never cease to give glory and praise to God. Please pray with me: