“And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the slogans that came out of the Sexual Revolution was, “Love is love.” That notion is ridiculous on its face and was never about anything more than trying to give moral cover to a variety of sexual practices that had been rightly judged aberrant by pretty much every human culture up to that point in history. A significant part of the problem is the imprecision of the English language itself. We throw the word love around for all kinds of different situations where the emotion or feeling (and we are almost always referring to one or the other) that is actually appropriate to the setting ranges rather widely such that conflating one kind of love for another is foolish at best. The authors of the New Testament took a word in Greek that meant love, agape, and redefined it in a whole new way based on the character of Jesus. The result is that when we are talking about biblical love, if we get love right, we get a whole lot of other things right as well. Let’s take a look at this with Paul in these three verses.

We’ve talked in other places about a biblical definition of love. Love is an intentional decision to see someone else become more fully who God designed them to be. Every single part of that definition matters. It is an intentional decision. Real love is never forced. It is always and only voluntary. This is why God delays setting right all sin in the world, opting merely to restrain some of it instead of removing it all. Removing sin before the end would mean removing the possibility of love because love requires freedom and freedom creates the opportunity for rejection and rebellion.

Love is others-focused. Love is never something that is primarily about us. It is always directional, pointing away from us and toward others. When we focus only on ourselves, we become useless and even a net detriment to the people around us. When we focus on others, pouring out of our cup that has been filled by our loving heavenly Father (assuming we are letting him do that), we gain as much blessing as we give because the more love we pour out, the more of His love He can pour in.

And lastly, love is all about helping people become who God made them to be. We are not forcing our will on them. Rather, we are seeking His will and helping to facilitate or catalyze that. Here’s the thing about helping someone become who God designed them to be: that necessarily means we won’t always be angling them somewhere they naturally want to go. Having someone’s best interests at heart means being ready and willing to tell them no and leading them away from what they want since we do not always want what we should want. This means occasionally taking actions toward a person that feel decidedly unloving to them, but which are nonetheless fully consistent with the biblical picture of love.

So, when Paul prays for the Philippians’ love to keep on growing, this is what he is talking about. He is talking about their commitment to moving the people around them in the direction of Jesus with intentionality and grace. He is talking about their continuing to bring Gospel relief to those who are hurting; divine justice to those who are being oppressed; godly compassion to those who are experiencing grief; kindness and mercy to those who are struggling under the weight of sin. These things and others like them are all at the absolute heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

But look specifically at how Paul wants to see it grow. He wants to see it grow “in knowledge and every kind of discernment.” Love has to be paired with knowledge and discernment. It does so because we do not on our own know and understand the ways of God. We don’t know how to push someone in the direction of God without His Spirit’s revealing to us which direction that is. We need knowledge of His ways and their practical application.

A few years ago, a church in my area started a weekly bread giveaway ministry. That seems like a very loving thing to do in the most biblical of ways. At the same time, though, there were already at least two other food assistance ministries operating in this community. One of these is large and has access to a lot of food at deeply discounted prices. They also have an excellent database of who they have helped along with very good systems in place to make sure the help they give is ultimately helpful and not merely enabling. My own church supports this larger ministry. When the leaders of this other ministry came asking for help procuring the food for them to give away, I encouraged them to go and meet with the leader of the larger ministry who is a committed follower of Jesus and has a great deal of wisdom and knowledge in helping in ways that are helpful so they weren’t merely copying what was already being done but instead strengthening and empowering it further, but they weren’t interested in that. They just wanted to give food away. I appreciated their love and passion, but the lack of knowledge or willingness to grow in discernment resulted in the effort’s not lasting very long.

This knowledge of the ways of God and every kind of discernment in recognizing and following those ways is necessary, Paul says, “so that you may approve the things that are superior.” There are often multiple ways of doing something, and they are not all created equal. Sometimes there really is a better and even a best way to approach demonstrating the love of Christ to another person. Pursuing best practices really does matter. Demonstrating the love of Christ in practical ways but pursuing those practical ways inefficiently will result in efforts that don’t last nearly as long as they could. Doing it unwisely or without discernment can quickly result in someone who is shrewd but unscrupulous taking advantage of the effort and neutering its potential impact on those who need it most.

Let me change things up just a bit. A follower of Jesus who loves her Lord with passion is good. But when that passion is not also paired with knowledge and every kind of discernment, there is a great likelihood she will get drawn away by things that do not comport with that love, but which only approximate it for the purpose of drawing otherwise faithful believers off into sin. That’s how our enemy operates. Our own love for Jesus needs to be paired with this knowledge of the Scriptures and Spirit led discernment in recognizing which things are consistent with His ways and which aren’t so that we approve only of things that are superior, and don’t support those which aren’t. We cannot let what is great be overcome by what is merely good; we cannot love what is good be overcome by merely what is average. God deserves our best.

When the great and the good are diluted down by what is average or less, we are compromising and even corrupting our character. We are allowing spots on garments that have been washed clean in the blood of Christ. This simply won’t do. There is a day coming when Christ will return to claim all those who are His and to reward them with the prize of eternal life for their faithfulness. In that day, those who are all corrupted by sin because they have let their ignorant and unwise love draw them away from the path of righteousness will miss out on all the fun. When our love is properly paired with knowledge and every kind of discernment, though, such that we are approving the things that are superior, we will be pure and blameless before Him when that day comes. We will be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.”

Nothing short of this is our goal. Jesus Himself will help us in this direction by the power of the Holy Spirit sent from the Father and the Son to lead us into all knowledge, to help us remember and understand everything He taught us while He was here. Our job is to be ready and willing to receive this help, to not resist His efforts, to humbly submit to His leading at the expense of our own flesh and desires. This road is not always easy – something Paul absolutely understood given his present circumstances while writing which we will talk about in more detail in coming days – but it will always be good in the end. It will always lead us to the life that is truly life. It will indeed result in our being “pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.” That’s the path that is worth taking. Trust me in this: You’ll be glad that you did.