Philippians 1:3-11 Commentary

As was the case last week and is the case throughout Advent, this week’s Revised Common Lectionary Epistolary Lesson seems to pay only minimal attention to that to which many of Jesus’ friends pay so much attention during December. Philippians 1 devotes little attention to Christ’s first and second comings.

I previously suggested that this gives space and perhaps permission to those who preach the Epistolary Lessons to remind our hearers of some of the ways that God graciously comes to God’s people here and now. Preachers might even, under the Spirit’s guidance, choose to make that coming of God the focus of an Advent series of messages or sermons.

However, preachers who focus more closely on Jesus’ first or second comings might also let the Spirit use the Epistolary Lessons as a kind of commentary on how to properly prepare to celebrate Jesus’ first and/or second comings. The apostles’ writings, after all, inform how Jesus’ friends can fruitfully await those comings. The Epistolary readings remind us that waiting for Christ to come is, in fact, not passive, but is, instead, very active.

One of Philippians 1:3-11’s prominent themes is that of Christians’ love, particularly for our neighbors. As we wait for Christ to return, Paul invites Christian to let God come to us to increasingly fill us with love. In verse 9 Paul writes, “This is my prayer [touto proseuchomai*]: that your love may abound more and more [mallon kai mallon perisseuei] in knowledge [epignosei] and depth of insight [pase aisthesei].”

Since Paul’s prayer for the Philippians for deepened love is in some ways the beating heart of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, the Spirit might use it to prompt self-examination of the content of Christians’ prayers for both others and us. We often and properly use our prayers to confess our sins, thank God for things and ask for various blessings. But in the light of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, preachers might ask how often Jesus’ followers pray for love that overflows onto our neighbors, especially those with whom we disagree.

Philippians 1:9 is a prayer for love whose content is both somewhat familiar and mysterious. The deepened love for which Paul prays is not that love about which many North Americans generally think. We, after all, often confuse love with some kind of attraction. But the apostle doesn’t ask God to make the Thessalonians increasingly like each other. Instead he begs God to make the love that is their unconditional, self-giving work and prayers for each other’s wellness flourish. Paul basically pleads with God to come to the Thessalonians to graciously help them to love their neighbor the way God loves them.

It’s less clear to what exactly the apostle refers when he prays that their love will overflow “in knowledge and depth of insight.” The Greek words epignosei (“knowledge”) and aisthesei (“depth of insight”) both hint at discernment. So might Paul be inviting Philippi’s Christians to discern even in their unlikable neighbor the image of the God who created him or her? Might he be summoning them to love each other knowing full well that neither they nor the beloved necessarily deserve God’s gracious love? The Message paraphrases verse 9 as Paul’s call to “not only love much but well” and to “learn to love appropriately.” The Spirit might use this to help preachers ask what it means to love much, well and appropriately.

Such love, the apostle goes on to write in verse 10, will help Jesus’ followers “discern [dikomazein] what is best [ta diapheronta] and … be pure [eilikrineis] and blameless [aroskopoi] for the day [hemeran] of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness [pleperomenio karpon] that comes through Jesus Christ – to the praise and glory of the Father.”

The connection between abounding love and discernment is fuzzy. But perhaps we need to note little more than that Paul at least suggests that people don’t naturally know what is “best.” By translating this phrase as “determining what matters,” the NRSV suggests that knowing what’s best has an element of recognizing what’s important. Jesus’ friends to whom God comes know that more important than skin color, language, political opinions and everything else is the fact that our neighbor is someone whom God both unconditionally loves and calls us to love.

The Message even hints at the need for recognizing such priorities when it paraphrases verse 10b as the apostle’s summons to “use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not a sentimental gush.” The love that God comes to give Jesus’ followers is one shaped neither by the culture nor by our feelings, but by the Holy Spirit. It’s “windblown” by neither others’ opinions nor our own natural inclinations. Christians’ love for our neighbors is, instead, firmly anchored in God’s love not just for Christians, but also the whole world.

However, God doesn’t graciously come here and now only to help God’s adopted children love more deeply and discern more clearly. As the apostle adds in verses 10-11, God also graciously comes to God’s dearly beloved people to make us “pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” God, in other words, comes to Jesus’ friends in our time and space to make us increasingly genuine and holy. God comes, in other words, to make us more and more like Jesus Christ.

Of course, for Jesus’ sake, God already views and treats God’s adopted children as pure and holy. However, on “the day of Christ,” at, in other words, Christ’s second coming, God will make that status public. In the meantime, however, God graciously comes to help us to “live into our status” as pure and holy. God, in other words, comes to us here and now to equip us to increasingly talk, act and even think like God.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

21^st century culture doesn’t seem to have much room for the kind of love that Paul advocates in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. Of course, our contemporaries talk a great deal about love. But relatively few of them talk about it as the self-giving commitment to working for someone’s good.

In his article, “Leith on Language: Green’s Dictionary of the Blue” in the December 2016 issue of Prospect, Sam Leith takes note of Jonathan Green’s compilation of a 3-volume dictionary of slang. In it, Leith writes, “Green’s work on the ruder end of the language spectrum feels especially current now that political debates, both home and abroad, have become so soaked in invective.

In his memoir two years ago, among upward of 100,000 headwords he found a total of 2,531 slang words that refer to male and female sexual organs and “1,740 for heterosexual sex alone—and not a single word for love.”

In this context, Paul reminds Christians that the Spirit has much work to do to make our Christian love “abound’’ so that it splashes onto our neighbor.