Knowledge That Loves: From Feelings to Commitment

Open your Bibles and follow with me in Philippians chapter one, verses nine through eleven: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”

This short letter to the Philippians is close and dear to many of us. Every chapter has a verse or two that lodges in the memory. In chapter one, “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion”—most of us know it by heart. In the same chapter, “for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” In chapter two, the example of Jesus captures our attention. In chapter three, Paul’s great passion: “I want to know Christ—the power of his resurrection and the participation in his sufferings.” And how can we forget chapter four—“Rejoice in the Lord always”—and, if no other verse has reached you yet, surely “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” For most of us, Philippians is a collection of favourite verses we pin to the wall and apply to our own situations. But in verses nine through eleven we come instead to Paul’s prayer for this congregation, and to understand why he prays as he does, we first need to know the church he is praying for.

This church is very different from the congregations at Thessalonica or Corinth. In Acts chapter sixteen, Paul came to Philippi during his second missionary journey. He came under a clear, divine direction. In Acts 16:9 we read, “During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” In the preceding verses the Holy Spirit had kept him from going into Asia and redirected him. So Paul went to this city not with a mere urge but with prayer and submission. Philippi stood at the very centre of God’s plan, and Paul was sent there at the appointed time.

The first convert in all of Macedonia was a woman named Lydia, and the first fruit of her conversion was something more than baptism. In Acts 16:15 we read, “When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. ‘If you consider me a believer in the Lord,’ she said, ‘come and stay at my house.’ And she persuaded us.” Notice—she did not casually say, “Pastor, if you ever have time, drop by.” She persuaded the whole team. And this was no small team; studies of the so-called Pauline circle suggest forty to sixty people travelled with him. Lydia was a businesswoman, and opening her home to such a company would take a toll on every expense she could calculate. Yet her love overflowed into hospitality, and she would not take no for an answer.

The next convert was a slave girl who came to Christ, and the third was the Philippian jailer. In Acts 16:33 we read that “at that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds.” The apostles were beaten and bleeding, and after his own rebirth the jailer could not simply say, “Hallelujah, see you next week.” He knelt down and washed the blood from the very men he had guarded. This became the pattern at Philippi. Lydia said, “Come to my home.” The jailer said, “I cannot bear to see you suffer.”

The same heart appears again in chapter two. When Paul was in prison, the church planned to send gifts to him—not a sightseeing trip or a holiday, but a hard journey to a prison—and Epaphroditus volunteered to go. That is the church: Lydia is there, the jailer is there, Epaphroditus is there, all of them willing to serve. In Philippians 4:14-15 Paul writes, “Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles… Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only.” This is the very church Paul would not treat like Corinth. From the Corinthians he would refuse money and work with his own hands, but from the Philippians he gladly received, because it came from a pure and genuine heart.

In chapter one, verse five, Paul says he remembers their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. Ten years had passed between Acts sixteen and this letter—ten years of consistent, sacrificial partnership. It was not a momentary outburst of emotion; it was steady and enduring. And that is what makes this prayer so striking. On the surface, “that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight” sounds as though they did not know how to love at all—as though their love were worldly, or ignorant of the very ABCs of service. Why would Paul pray this for such a church?

Look first at where the prayer comes from. In verse eight, just before it, Paul writes, “God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Then comes the prayer. When you genuinely love a congregation, the first fruit is not procedure but prayer. Paul opens into prayer out of the deep affection he carries for them. Notice too that Paul is in prison, yet he is not praying for himself. His prayer is generous and selfless, born of love, not self-interest. And in verse nine he plainly recognizes that love is already present—“that your love may abound”—he is addressing good people.

Think of ourselves. Here in Bangalore the weekend is precious, especially after long hours of work. Sunday could be an off day—sleep in, cook what we like, go where we please. Yet we have chosen to be here. We got up, got ready, picked up our Bibles, found our way through traffic, wondered where we would park—and still we came. That means we love him. So this message is not for people who do not love. This prayer is for people who do love, who have loved consistently for ten years, and yet Paul still prays it over them.

Now observe how closely Paul ties love to two words: knowledge and insight. That is what is so distinct about this prayer. In First Thessalonians chapter three he prays for their love to increase; in Colossians chapter one he prays the same. But here, uniquely, love is joined to knowledge and insight.

I grew up as a pastor’s son in Kerala. My father pioneered three churches in particular, and ministered briefly in two others. Whenever my sister and I reflect on those days, we always agree on one congregation whose love was simply unmatched. They were simple people, mostly daily-wage labourers, with little formal education. We often assume that the more educated and knowledgeable a person is, the less love they have, and that simple, unschooled people love more. But here Paul reverses it: more knowledge, more love; more insight, more love. In First Corinthians 8:1 he does say, “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” treating the two as opposites. So what is happening here?

Paul is not encouraging a sloppy agape—a sentimental, undisciplined gush of emotion. In many churches today, you see it mostly on Sundays: the music plays, someone leads a song, the feelings rise, the tears roll, and we say, “Lord, you love me so much.” Paul says, wait—your love must not be a mere empty reaction. It must be informed love, insightful love, disciplined and discerning. It is fine to be moved emotionally, but it is not fine if our whole understanding of love and worship rests on feeling alone. Love must have mind in it, not only heart.

The word translated “knowledge” here is used some twenty times in the New Testament, and it is almost always tied to the knowledge of the things of God. The more we know God—his character, his name, what he has done, that he chose us, adopted us, sent his Son for us—the more it directly shapes our love. Without knowledge, without the steady meditation of Scripture, we can never be true worshipers. We grow in love in proportion to what we know. If from Monday through Saturday we never take time to ask, “Lord, speak to me; show me your heart, your desire, your plan for my life and family,” then our love can decay into mere sentiment, an empty expression of feeling.

And what of insight? Paul deliberately adds this second word, because you can find people who grow in knowledge while that knowledge never touches their daily life. We fill diary after diary and write note after note on Scripture, yet it fails to connect with how we actually live, whether at home or in the church. Knowledge tells us what the Bible teaches; insight tells us how it bears on everyday life. We need both the what and the how. To know what love is, we need knowledge; to know how to love, we need insight and discernment.

We are dealing with the foundational ABCs of the Christian life—that God is love, and that through the new birth we are adopted into his family to share his nature and character. Yet the trouble is that the love we often see inside the church looks exactly like the love outside it. Scroll through Facebook reels or YouTube, come across a baby in pain, and we say, “I feel so sorry.” But the agnostic and the atheist feel that same pang. And our generation is quick to share it on a wall or a WhatsApp status, as if the sharing itself were the act of love—so that the “share” becomes about self, and the real meaning of sharing is lost. Mere feeling is something anyone can do. But love rooted in the knowledge of God and shaped by insight will do far more than what an unbeliever does. We do not see that difference in churches today, because Christianity in so many corners has become a self-centred, self-focused, emotional experience. That is why we must return to God’s word and let it challenge not only our hearts but our minds, so that we rise up as people driven not by sentiment but by the knowledge of God—people who know both what to love and how to love. That is the message to this generation: that these people are different, because their love is different.

Scripture is not commending a love that shrinks from telling the truth. In our day we usually think that if you love someone, you had better not tell them hard things, because they might be hurt. But that kind of love is merely emotional—you hide the truth so the relationship can continue undisturbed. The scriptural definition of love is informed and insightful, and it does not shrink from truth-telling or from tough engagements. Most of us, myself included, would rather avoid the difficult conversation. But verse nine will not let us escape so easily. If you genuinely love a person, you will find the time to sit across from them and say, “Brother, this is wrong,” “Sister, this is wrong.” Tough engagements cannot be avoided when our love is inspired by knowledge and insight.

Why, then, would Paul pray this over so good a church—with Lydia, the jailer, and Epaphroditus all sitting before him? Because over ten years, as chapter two verse fourteen shows, they had not shrunk back from their works. Lydia would still open her home; the jailer would still look for ways to serve. The actions continued. But the command of chapter two verse fourteen is, “Do everything without grumbling or arguing.” The actions may continue while the attitude quietly decays. Emotion can carry us only so far. Out of pure feeling we can hear a mission appeal, rush to a pastor and say, “We want to come; the expenses are all mine,” and then three months later wonder, “Are we the only ones carrying this?” Emotion without knowledge soon turns to arguing and complaining.

I dedicated my own life to full-time service some seventeen or eighteen years ago. Had that been only an emotional outburst after a stirring mission challenge, it might have lasted two years, or a few months. But the Philippians went ten years without their actions ever stopping. Even full-time servants of God can begin to reason, “Well, there are many ways to serve the Lord,” and when the emotion is not informed by knowledge and insight, we grow dry and cold and stumble along the way.

An effective, scriptural love, according to this verse, always abounds. We can never look back and say, “In 2022 I loved the same way I love now.” True love always increases, precisely because it is anchored in knowledge and insight that keep us on track—teaching us what to love and how to love it with ever greater discernment.

This brings us to verse ten and the first fruit of such love: “so that you may be able to discern what is best.” Effective love discerns what is best. The word translated “discern” carries a picture from the first century, where the quality of a metal was tested and approved before it could be sold. So when a believer’s love is no longer mere emotion but is informed and insightful, he can look at any situation—a person, or even a so-called tragedy—and test it and approve what is best. A discerning love has an eye for the things that truly matter, both now and in the life to come. Some translations read “what is excellent,” for this love can distinguish not merely between good and bad but between better and best. The theologian John Stott observed that such a person sees things differently; where worldly people see only with their physical eyes, informed love perceives what is truly valuable. This is the higher calling we share—not only that we will one day go to heaven, but that even now, in this world, we see things differently, because our love for God is not driven by emotion alone and we begin to know how God himself sees a situation.

Paul is his own example. In chapter one, verse twelve, he writes, “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.” Ask him, “Paul, what has happened to you?” He is in a Roman prison, his hand chained to a soldier. For so influential, so educated, so anointed a servant to be bound like this is no small thing, and the watching world would say, “Pastor, this is a curse.” But with informed and insightful love Paul discerns the truth: what looked like a curse has actually advanced the gospel. If our love is not informed in the same way, then some Sunday, while the singing and music fill the room, we will sit in a corner thinking, “It isn’t fair, I don’t feel like worshiping,” because last week we lost our job. We come to treat worship as an expression of what we received during the week. But only if our love is pure, genuine, and informed will we be able to say “Hallelujah” even when the medical reports give no hope, even when the company terminates us—to come that Sunday and still say, “You are a good, good Father.” Worldly happiness depends on happenings, but the peace God promises does not depend on circumstances; it rests on a historical fact—the cross. The cross is the emblem that tells us he loves us unconditionally, no matter where we have been or what we have done: “I love you, I come after you, I pursue you, you are mine.” That is enough for our worship. Our worship must be grounded on the death and resurrection of Jesus. We give thanks for material blessings, yes, but even in the valley our praise is unshaken, because we are able to discern and approve what is best in his sight.

Then the prayer adds two more words: “that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” Why two words again? Pure on the inside, blameless on the outside. Purity is a matter of the heart—no one sees our motives and thoughts, but God asks for purity of motive against the day of Christ. The word for “pure” carries another first-century picture: a garment that looks spotless inside the dim light of a room, but carried out into the sunlight reveals every stain. The day of Christ will be just such a revelation—a revelation of our motives. So let genuine love make you pure in motive. It is not only what we have done but how we have done it; not how much we gave but how we gave it. If we gave expecting something in return, even appreciation, it becomes guile, and our purity is lost.

This is a message for me as much as for anyone, and for all of us. In the course of Christian living we must not simply let the Sundays roll by. We must pause and ask: Is my love an informed, insightful love? Am I able to discern what is best, what is truly valuable in the sight of God? Is my love pure within and blameless without? Sometimes we excuse ourselves by saying, “I don’t care whether you judge me; I know what I have done.” The word “blameless” corrects that attitude. Pure inside and blameless outside—whatever we do, we must guard our testimony before others and never become a stumbling block. We cannot simply say, “I did it with good intention; I don’t care whether you approve.” We must be careful in our actions and our words, so that we do not lay a stone in someone else’s path on which they trip and fall. And all of this flows out of love.

As we come to the end of the service, the choir sang, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus.” That is exactly what must happen, for he is the one who defines what love is. The knowledge Paul speaks of is not merely memorizing Scripture; it is seeing Jesus, the love exemplified in him. Hear his own words in Philippians 3:8: “What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” And the things Paul lost were good things—his ancestral heritage, his place in the tribe of Benjamin, his circumcision on the eighth day—yet in the light of eternity he counts them as nothing. He is driven by a knowledge that inspires love, and that love carried him across the length and breadth of the nations, into prison, and even there says, “Rejoice. This is no failure; this is the will of God.” That is the power of love.

So I pray sincerely for all of us today. Make this your own prayer: “Lord, I do not want a merely emotional, sentimental love. I want a love driven by knowledge and insight, abounding more and more in all wisdom and understanding. Let it invade my life—let it reach my thinking, my heart, and then my hands. Give this love prominence in me, so that I may discern what is best, be pure and blameless, and be filled with the fruit of righteousness.”