If you would, grab your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Philippians. Philippians chapter 1, and I'll read verses 3 to 11 again. Philippians chapter 1, verses 3 to 11. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ. 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. Let's pray. Father, what a joy and a privilege it is to be in your house, to be among your people, to be among our family. We pray that in this moment, as we approach your Word together, that you would provide spiritual eyes and spiritual ears and spiritual hearts that we might see, that we might hear, that we might understand what it is that you would say to us this morning, what it is to love, in the family of God, what it is to love as an adopted child of God. We pray that you would show us the love of God, the love of Christ. All this we ask in his name, amen. So as you know, we are sort of working our way through these opening verses in Paul's letter to the Philippians. He doesn't waste any time, as you know, in getting to the theme of the letter. The whole intent of the letter is to express joy. It's nicknamed, as we've said before, the epistle of joy. The word joy or some derivative of it permeates the entire letter. He talks about joy. He talks about rejoicing all throughout the letter. What we are seeing is the way that Paul rejoices over this Philippian congregation. And as we see that, what we are seeing is the way that a man who has been captivated by the glory of God in the face of Christ, the way that this man rejoices, what does rejoicing in the Lord look like? He tells them to rejoice in the Lord later in this letter, and we hear about rejoicing in the Lord and having joy in the Lord and being happy in the Lord and being satisfied with Christ all over the New Testament, but what does it look like to truly rejoice in the Lord. And so we're really having a series of messages in these opening verses on reasons for joy. Why do we have reasons for joy? What reasons do we have to have joy? We've already looked at the first few verses, verses 3 through 7. We've looked at how he has joy in their common partnership and joy in their common salvation. Joy in their common partnership with him in his gospel ministry and joy in their common salvation as he thinks about the work of God in the beginning of this church. You began a good work and you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ, he says. in verse 6. So He thinks about these believers. He thinks about their partnering with Him as He is attempting to bring the Gospel where the Gospel has not been preached. And He rejoices in their partnership with Him. And He also rejoices in their common salvation that is found through the blood of Christ. This morning we consider His next mark of joy, His next reason for joy in this Philippian church. And He has joy in their common affection. joy in their common affection. You know, even a superficial reading of the New Testament will reveal that love is the foundational affection of the Christian life. Love permeates the New Testament. Even God Himself in 1 John chapter 4 is described as love. God is love. So much so does it permeate the New Testament, this concept of loving each other and loving our neighbor and loving our brother and loving our sister, that in the world, it's one of the first daggers of hypocrisy that is thrown at us, isn't it? Oh, you're one of those Christians who's supposed to love everybody. Yeah, look how you act. That's how many, even the unbeliever knows that one of the primary themes of the New Testament that is given to the church is that we are to love one another. And the question is, what kind of love are we talking about? What does this love, this affection of Christ as He describes it in verse 8, what does this affection look like? What does love look like? Does it look like what the world seems to think that love should be? Or is it something more? Is it something better? Is it something deeper? Is it something more lasting than anything that this world has to offer? And anything that this world can describe with its worldly heart? That is the question that we consider this morning. What does biblical love look like? So hopefully when we leave here, you will know what biblical love truly looks like as we look at Paul's joy in his common affection with this Philippian church. Verse seven begins, it is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart. It's a very personal verse, isn't it? It's a very personal statement. What we see first is that Paul loves them in his mind. He loves them in an intellectual way. He thinks about them. What he knows about them causes him to love them. call this, if you're taking notes, the mind of love. That's what we see first out of the Apostle Paul, the mind of love. It is right for me to feel this way about you. It's almost as if he thinks that in order to Justify His affection in order to explain His affection. So strong is His affection for them, it's almost like He needs to justify it. It is right. It is just. It is righteous that I feel this way about you. So deep and so strong is it He has to explain it. It is right for me to what? To feel. That word for feel doesn't denote an emotional attachment. Not yet anyway, we'll get there. Instead, this word is an intellectual word. Some translations use the word think. It is right for me to think this way about you. And that's the right connotation. I think about you. It is right for me to think this way about you. I feel this way about you. I regard you in my thoughts. And when I think about you, I have the same mind as you do in our common salvation that he just talked about. I think about you. That's what Paul's going for here. To the Romans, he said in Romans chapter 12 verse 3, For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself, it's the same word, more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. It's used again in 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 11. Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration. Comfort one another. Here it is again. Agree with one another. Be of the same mind with one another. Live in peace for the God of love and peace will be with you. when he's talking to the Galatians and he's worried about this heresy that has crept into the Galatian church. You remember the Judaizing heresy? You need to be circumcised before you can be considered a Christian and so forth and so on. He tells them in chapter 5 verse 10, I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view. It's the same word, same connotation. You will take no other view, but instead you will be of the same mind as me. And the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. To the Colossians, he said, set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. Set your minds. And even in Philippians, he'll say this over and over again in chapter 2, verse 2. Complete my joy by being of the same mind. Having the same love. Being in full accord and of one mind. Unity. And then he goes on. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who humbled himself by becoming a servant. Chapter 3, verse 15, he says, let those of us who are mature think this way, and if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Chapter 3, verse 19, he says of false teachers, their end is their destruction, their God is their belly, their glory and their shame with minds set on earthly things. And in chapter 4, verse 2, he entreats Udiah and Seneca to agree in the Lord. The kind of love that is being exemplified for us here, in the apostles' words, is a love that means we are of one mind. We think the same, we agree together, but what do we agree upon? What is this point of unity? What is the point at which we have the same mind? And that point is in the Word of God. We are unified, we agree upon, and we come together under the authority of the Word of God. The truth of God's Word. That is the basis for unifying love in Scripture. The mind of love is guided by the Word of God. Guided into all truth. This isn't a love that simply lets, you know, bygones be bygones and lets a brother continue in sin because, well, you know, I'm supposed to love and that means that we just, you know, accept people for who they are, period. That's not love. It's not love to sit back and watch a brother struggle with sin. It's not love to sit back and watch another believer struggle in sin. It is love to come alongside them, to desire for them the pursuit of holiness, even as you desire for yourself the pursuit of holiness. To do unto others as you would have them do unto you within the community of faith is to hold them accountable in the same way that you wish others would hold you accountable. It is to pursue holiness together, to pursue righteousness together, to pursue the commands and the demands of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ together. We are not in this journey alone. We are in this journey in a community of faith. And true love, biblically, seeks to walk alongside each other, sharpen each other, teach each other, as we find our common ground in the very truth of God's Word. So this is a love that is very counter to the way that the world would define love. But that's the scriptural intent of the love of Christ. You know, we see that in the arguments of our prevailing culture. True love is blanket tolerance. of anyone and everyone and anything and everything. That is true love. That is not love. In many ways it is hatred. Especially when that means accepting and celebrating sin in a person's life. True love is to call a person to repentance, to call a person to faith. If the gospel is true, And then that is all that we can do, that is all that we must do if we are to love our neighbor. Warn them of the wrath to come, and plead them to come to Christ. So he says in verse 7, it is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart. I hold you in my heart. Here we see the second aspect of His love for them. The first was the mind of love. Secondly, call it the heart of love. The heart of love. I hold you in my heart. I have you in my heart. I possess you in my heart. You are always in my heart. Kardia. The feelings. It's the seat of feelings. The seat of emotions. I hold you in my deepest affections. That's what He's saying. As deep as my affections can be, that is where you sit in my heart. So many times in Scripture, the heart and the mind are used interchangeably or synonymously. Because for the Christian, the heart and the mind are connected. We know what we know. And we love the truth that we know. We know God by studying His Word. And we know Christ by studying His Word. And as we know Him more, we love Him more. It's even true, sometimes maybe, in our human relationships. The more that we know someone, the more that we love them. Perhaps, unfortunately, the more that we know someone, the less that we love them. Our emotions are connected to our mind and our thoughts. Our heart and our minds are connected together. He both intellectually loves this church and emotionally loves this church. For Paul, it's a both-and, and it really drives us to consider the spirit and truth connection that we have in the church as he thinks about them intellectually and emotionally. Later on in Philippians, he calls to mind the combined heart and mind aspect of the Christian's pursuit of love. He says in chapter 4, verse 7, And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4, you have the dichotomy, if you want to call it that, between the heart and the mind joined together. He will guard both your hearts and your minds. We even see it in the words of Christ as he quotes the Old Testament. He's asked, what is the greatest commandment? And what is the greatest commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. Totality of love for God. And then he says in the second is like it, you will love your neighbor as yourself. Totality of love for God and for neighbor, he says, is all the law and the prophets. If you can, by the way, do both of those perfectly, you will perfectly fulfill the law. He has an emotional love and He has an intellectual love, the mind of love and the heart of love. But how much does He love them? To what degree does He love them? To what extent does He love them? Verse 8 shows us the quality of His love. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ, the quality of love, the mind, the heart, and the quality of love. So deep is the love of Paul. So strong is His desire to make sure that they understand how much He loves them, that He invokes the name of God Himself as His witness to the depth of Paul's love for them. He wants them to know this for sure. God is my witness how much I love you all. Know this with certainty. Know this without any amount of hesitation. No one reading this letter can finish it and say, I'm still not sure how much Paul really loves us. He says he does, but I'm just not totally convinced. God is my witness, how I yearn for you all, yearn to crave, to desire, to long for. It's an intense word that is not used lightly by Paul here. It's the same word he uses later in Philippians when he talks about Epaphroditus. He says in chapter 2, verse 26, he's been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. You remember Epaphroditus was sent by the Philippian church to Paul in Rome with a gift to help him in his ministry. And then Epaphroditus was on his journey, got ill and went to the point of death. Paul tells him Epaphroditus yearns to return to you, yearns to return home and be with you. And so much does Epaphroditus long for them and love them that when he simply heard that they had heard that he was sick, he was distressed at their distress. He also told the Romans in chapter 1, I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift. to strengthen you. To Timothy, he says in 2 Timothy chapter 1, as I remember your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. This is the heart of Paul and the quality of Paul's love as he writes to his fellow brothers and sisters, to his fellow partakers of grace, to his fellow partners with the gospel, to those whom he has touched with the gospel, who have been converted under his preaching, who are a point of his ministry. He speaks the same way to the Thessalonians. I long to go and to see you. You are my crown of joy and boasting at the day of the Lord. This is how Paul feels about the church. You remember in the Corinthian letter, when he's listing off all of his sufferings, for the sake of the ministry of the Gospel. And at the very end of everything that he lists off, all of the physical sufferings that he has had to endure, at the end of all of that he says, and on top of that, there is my daily concern for the church. This is the affection of the Apostle Paul for the church, for the Bride of Christ. God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ. This word that is translated affection is a little bit different. Literally, it's a term that means the bowels or the intestines. And it is only used literally one time in scripture in Acts 118, when Judas hanged himself and he burst open in the middle and his bowels gushed out. Other than that, it is used figuratively in the New Testament. And when it is used figuratively, it is used to denote the deep seated center of emotional connection and affection. That's the term that he uses here. He uses it later in Philippians also. if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection, any deep-seated, the center of affection, the center and the ground of affection in His heart. In Luke 1, verse 78, it's called the tender mercy of our God. Colossians 3, verse 12, it's called compassionate hearts. Put on, then, compassionate hearts. The point is the depth of His love that He is trying to express. It's the affection of Christ. This is no mere worldly or selfish affection. This is a selfless love that yearns after His brothers and sisters in Christ. That's the depth of love that Paul has for them. And it's the quality of love that he has for them that he connects it and expresses it in terms of the love of Christ Himself for the church. That is the connection. You remember the words of Christ as disciples, a new commandment I give to you, what? That you love one another. By this, all people will know you're my disciples and that you love one another. And then later on, John records that for us in John 13, and then later on when he writes his first epistle, he goes into this love. What kind of love? What is the affection? What does the love of Christ look like? How is it made manifest among us? Here's how John describes it. 1 John 3, verse 16, By this we know love, that he laid his life down for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. That's the love of Christ. If anyone has this world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? You see a brother or a sister in need and you close your heart against that person, how does God's love abide in you? James makes the exact same observation, doesn't he, in his letter. Go, be filled, be warmed. And yet, it doesn't give him food and clothes. His words are nothing. Talk is cheap, is James' point. Later on in 1 John 4, verse 9, he says, In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. That's 1 John's version of John 3.16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes should not perish but have everlasting life. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. And then down in verse 20 of chapter 4, First John, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. In this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. What's John's point? John's point is the love for God, for the Christian, naturally, supernaturally really, through the power of the Spirit, love for God naturally springs forth in love for the brother. So interconnected are they that John says, if you don't love your brother, you don't love God. Because the natural consequence of love for God is love for the brother. This is the quality of our Christian love. That's the kind of affection that Paul has for his brothers in Philippi. And you know that even if you think about the history of the beginning of the church that we've looked at before. Just the way Paul came into town, the way he suffered, the way he was thrown in jail for his witness. Self-sacrificing, committed love to the church. That's what we are being called to, the affection of Christ. So the mind of love, the heart of love, the quality of love, and finally the desire of love. What's his desire? Verse 9, it's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment. What is his love desire? His love for them desires their abounding love for one another. That's His prayer. Not only that they know how much He loves them, but that their own love would continue and grow and strengthen for each other. that your love may abound more and more, that your love may increase, that your love may continue to exceed, that your love may be lacking in no way as you love one another, that it may be complete. That's what He wants. He wants their love for each other to be at the height that it could possibly be. At the highest level that it could possibly be. Lacking in nothing. 99%. He wants it all the way. And so what does He do about it? What does He do about it? He wants them to love. So does He just tell them to love? No, He prays for them. He says, this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. Why? Because this kind of love doesn't come naturally. The Christian brother-sister-in-Christ type of love that we are called to in Scripture is not a natural love that is just naturally come by, by man. It's a divine love. It is divinely given. It is given by the Spirit. The source of this love is the Spirit of God working in the hearts of believers. What's the first fruit of the Spirit that He lists off to the Galatians? The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. This agape love, This unconditional love for one another, this self-sacrificing love for one another, this committed love for one another, is not something you can just drum up in the flesh. Oh, you can drum up all kinds of affections for people in the flesh, but not this. Not the kind of love that looks at the imperfections of the person to your right or to your left and says, I will bear with one another, and I will forgive each other, even as the Lord has forgiven me, so will I forgive. That's not the natural man talking. Love from above. That is what he prays for. And that's why he prays. Because it has a divine source, a divine origin. What does this love do? What does this love do? It binds us together. He calls it in Colossians, above all these, put on what? Love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. That's what love does. It unifies, it binds. But what does it bind us in? We go back. The Word of God. The truth. the truth, your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment." Knowledge. True knowledge in the Bible results in godliness. This isn't simply knowledge as in assimilating and accumulating facts and information. True knowledge and true wisdom in Scripture results in godliness. Romans chapter 15 verse 14, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. Herzbieter said in chapter 1 verse 22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. And we see the same thing here in Philippians, your love abounding more and more with knowledge, with truth, with realization, with understanding, with wisdom that results in godliness as we pursue righteousness together under the Lordship of Christ. Not only does He say knowledge, but He also says all discernment. Discernment has to do with the application of knowledge. It has to do with the application of wisdom. It's not merely an intellectual knowledge of God's Word, but it is also an understanding of God's Word in order that a person can hear error and distinguish it from the truth. It is an understanding of God's Word that allows someone to distinguish error from lies, truth from unrighteousness. That's what discernment is. And that's a characteristic of love. Biblical love is not a blind love. It's not a blind love with no moral compass, with no objective boundaries. That's what the world wants us to think. But that is not what God thinks. Biblical love is based on knowledge and discernment. True love is wise. True love is just. True love is judicious. True love assesses life and makes judgments between right and wrong. It makes judgments between moral and immoral. It makes judgments between righteousness and unrighteousness, just and unjust, wise and unwise. That's what true love does. That's why He says, with knowledge and all discernment. So it's not this simplified, leave me alone, my truth is your truth, as long as I'm not hurting anybody, you do what you want to do, I want to do, and we'll just kind of tolerate each other feeling. Biblical love, true love, Christian love is deep. Mind of love, the heart of love, the quality, of our love and the desire of our love. This is the common affection that Paul calls our attention to here in these verses. So what will our love look like? Does it look like this? Does it look like Paul's love for them as he thinks about them, as he yearns for them, and as he prays for them? May our love may abound more and more with knowledge and discernment. Let's pray. Father, once again, how grateful we are that You have saved us. How grateful we are that You have loved us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And this, the love of God, was made manifest that He has sent His Son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins. And how thankful we are that you have given us your Spirit to give us the fruits of the Spirit that we might love, make us people who love selflessly, sacrificially, not counting others, It's less important than ourselves, not counting ourselves as more important than others, but being of humble hearts and humble minds, like our Lord and Master, who is obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. We pray for this in His name. Amen.