Love Abounding

9And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Philippians 1:9-11

Paul says that he prays for the Philippians' love to abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. In this case, he's not praying that their love will abound more and more in affection, though his love definitely is filled with affection since in the verse immediately preceding these ones he says that "God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus." Though we'd naturally think of increasing of love in terms of increasing in affection, his primary concern expressed here is that their love grows in knowledge and depth of insight. Why?

He prays that their love will grow in knowledge and depth of insight "so that they may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ." That means love without knowledge or insight may cause someone to be blameworthy. How so? I think one thing that's assumed here is that the Philippians do love, they do have concern for others and good intent. But I think it is possible to care about someone, have good intention, but act in a blameworthy way.

To start with an easy illustration, let's say there's a baby who is sick. The mother says, "I dun wanna mah baby b sick." She cares about her baby, and out of a desire to help her baby she acts by giving the baby medicine. However, it is the wrong medicine. The baby gets more sick but thankfully in our imaginary scenario it's not too bad, so the baby gets to hospital (on its own!) and the doctors save baby using a hypospray filled with magic cure.

Is the mother to blame? Yes. She cared, acted with good intention, but she should have known better. She is guilty of her ignorance. She loved, but her love did not abound in knowledge and depth of insight.

In the same way, we can love others, and have genuine care and concern for them, but lack in knowledge and depth of insight. We don't really understand the problems of others, and when we realize that some sort problem exists, we don't really know how to deal with it. Sometimes, even, when trying to help with some kind of issue, we actually make it worse because our actions and words are done incorrectly in some kind of tactless manner. Well-meaning, but foolish and naive.

That's why it's important that our love abounds more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that in loving others and living life we may be blameless and pure. However, loving people is quite unnatural, and it's also unnatural for love to grow in this kind of way. Why? At least for me, because of selfishness and pride. I like the way I see things, I like the way I understand things. Others see and react differently some times, and on the face of it, that difference may seem to be irrational or foolish rather than just different. My natural inclination, then, is to just view those kind of differences as irrational, rather than trying to understand those differences.

Also, it's just hard to love and understand others, and sometimes I just don't want to. I might not want to love people less, but that also doesn't really mean that I want to love people more. So if my love abounds more and more, in knowledge and depth of insight, what's going on? I'm being "filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus - to the glory of God." Love abounding in me is not to my credit, but is the result of Christ working in me, which is why all the glory goes to God.

Sometimes we ask, glorify God, what does that even mean? Well, for sure, one way that God is glorified is when our love abounds more and more in knowledge and depth in insight, because that bears testament to the work of God in our lives. What do we say, when we see the work that God has done in our lives, and what he has done in the lives of those around us? Glory be to God!