Verses 7-8, Paul (and Timothy) writes:
7 It is right for me
to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether
I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in
God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the
affection of Christ Jesus.
Paul
is speaking about being in chains here and he is. Paul is in jail right now as
he writes this letter. Paul is in jail and jails then, just like jails now,
really are not the best places in the world to be and not only that; Paul is
facing a capital charge. Paul, if convicted, is facing execution. He is going
to die. And in this letter he writes…
Verses
9-11:
9 And this is my
prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and
depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern
what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled
with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to
the glory and praise of God.
This
is a neat prayer - Paul prays that your love may abound more and more in
knowledge... why? so that you can know what is best and so that you can be
pure, blameless and righteous. It is only when we fully love that
we can fully discern God's will and leading. Sometimes we can get so
full of hate or unforgiveness that we can't actually discern what God is saying
and doing - often times this hardness of heart that pushes God away from our
heart is what we call prejudice. We can often hate groups of people, whether we
know them or not: criminals, politicians, a country, a president maybe. We can
hate people we don’t know (and people we do!) so much that we get upset whenever
we think of them. This is an important part of what Paul is saying then: If
hating our enemies is more important than loving our neighbours (who are
exactly the same people) then we are at risk of not knowing what God wants us
to know. And if we don’t know what God wants from us, how can we do it? If we
don’t know Him, how can we be His Holy people?
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