Love

When Paul, who loved and was praising God for the Philippian Christians, was praying with thanksgiving for those believers he said this: “This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight…” (Phil 1:9). In salvation believers are brought into a new intimate loving relationship with God. Its a love relationship so deep that it’s pictured in two ways: adoption into family and as a bride to her bridegroom. And as a relationship, it is only vital and living if it brings about daily greater depths of understanding and knowledge of one another. God’s love towards us is complete (Eph 3:18) and inescapable (Rom 8:38-39). But our love towards Him is intended to grow as we get to know Him more and more each day. A vital church has a vital [living, energetic, growing] love for the Lord. And so Paul’s desire for the Philippian believers he loved so much, and our desire for Cambray is that we would grow daily in love of God, so that we might love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.

Grow

Paul goes on in Phil 1:10 to explain what the result of growing in love of God will do. He says it is “so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ“. Knowing Him better, which produces a deeper love for Him, causes us to desire Him, start to think as He does and impacts our behaviour and choices and, therefore, how we behave and the direction of our life. The gospel of grace isn’t that we are saved to do good, but that we are saved to be in love with Him, get to know Him more and more, and so long to do all He wants and become like Him. The wonderful result? Fruit! The fruit of this work of His Spirit, the character and likeness of Jesus, seen in us!

Go

The context of the whole prayer of Paul is the partnership that these Philippian Christians shared with Paul in the gospel (Phil 1:5). Just as a bride or groom proudly introduce others to their spouse, so we want to tell others of Jesus! For the Philippians, standing boldly for Jesus was starting to come at great cost. It wasn’t easy. But, Paul later says that, for him, “the important thing is that Christ is preached” (Phil 1:18). Knowing the thrill of a vital relationship with Jesus, it’s not a surprise that we should want to share that with others. In fact, we should want to shout it out from the rooftops!

Our vision for the life of the church around these three words isn’t something that’s peripheral to church life, nor aspirational. These are signs of real love for Jesus. They are attributes of a vital relationship, a living church. No wonder Paul says to the Philippians “This is my prayer” for you.