Philippians 1: Should I Stay? (part 3: Phil 1:7-11)

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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