Philippians 1:9-11
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so 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.
Truth: When we have the love of God flowing from our hearts, we have the discernment of God flowing from our minds.
There is no doubt we spend much time in our hearts and minds trying to decide the direction of our lives. We often turn things over and around in our minds like a mixing bowl filled with possibilities. We struggle so much with the questions of lefts and rights that we often miss the right nows, right heres. The "should we" questions often steal and capture our joy. Since Paul wrote the book of Philippians to teach the believers in this church how to allow the Joy of Christ rule in their hearts, the problem of worry in the act of discernment is an important topic for him to write about. In the above set of verses it is important to see how Paul couples our living out God's love in our hearts with the act of knowledge and discernment. Paul wants them to know that "how" they love is directly propitiate to how they move forward in discernment and acting out in righteousness. To understand this concept we have to remember that upon salvation, God placed love in our hearts:
Romans 5:5
... and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Because love is a fruit of the Spirit Paul knows that this love, in turn, is the both the rudder and the sail of our discernment. Note the following comments:
Word Biblical Commentary:
This love, he trusts, will be accompanied by knowledge and depth of insight. Paul was not blind to the dangers of emotion uncontrolled by intelligence. He was resolved, by his own account, to pray and sing “with my spirit, but … also … with my mind” (1 Cor 14:15), and he was equally concerned that he and his converts should love in spirit and mind alike.
It is love that fosters the growth of true knowledge and discernment or spiritual perception. “Knowledge,” divorced from love, “puffs up,” whereas “love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). But if love is indispensable, knowledge and depth of insight are necessary. The truth of the gospel is liable to be subverted where ignorance and faulty judgment provide a foothold for the unsound teaching against which the Philippians are put on their guard in chapter 3.
Paul wants these believers in Phillipi to beware of false teaching, which will eventually collapse their joy. To assure that this does not happen Paul prays for them NOT that they might study harder. But rather that they might love deeper (more and more) AND that this love might abound so that their knowledge and discernment will allow them to "approve" (and my inference "disapprove") anything that is excellent. God's love is the key component in our discernment. We can't expect to know God's will when we are refusing to DO God's love that was placed in our hearts by the Spirit of God.
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