How Do Love and Knowledge Help Us in Discernment?

Scripture — Philippians 1:9-11 (NIV)

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.

Devotion

In his prayer for the Christians in Philippi, the Apostle Paul asks that their “love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that [they] may be able to discern what is best” (1:9-10). In last Wednesday’s Life for Leaders devotion, I examined the “love and knowledge” part of this prayer. Then, in yesterday’s devotion, I wrote about discerning what is best. Now it’s time for us to consider how these two parts of Philippians go together. Specifically, how does abounding in love and knowledge lead to discerning what is best?

It’s not hard to see how abounding in knowledge can lead to discerning what is best. If, for example, you’re planning on buying a car, chances are you’ll research your options. My wife, Linda, is a world-class pro when it comes to this sort of investigation. Before we bought a car a couple of years ago, Linda went to work. First, she read dozens of articles and reports via the internet, learning about the sorts of cars we might like. Then, when she had all of the information she needed, she began to look into various car dealers, trying to identify the best place to buy a car. Finally, with an idea about which car to buy and where to buy it, Linda planned to go for a test drive. At this point, she asked for my input. We did the test drive together. That was all we needed to know. We bought the car and have been quite pleased with our purchase. (For the record, we ended up buying a van from a used car dealership, which was not what we had intended at the beginning. But Linda’s research led us to discern what was best, at least for us in this season of life.)

If we can intuitively see how knowledge can lead to wise discernment, we might be less clear about the value of love. Love is important, of course. It may be what we value most in life. But how does love abounding “more and more in knowledge and depth of insight” lead to discerning what is best?

There are many different ways to answer this question. I’ll offer a few suggestions.
First, love for people motivates us to know them and their situations truly. If, for example, you’re a boss and someone you manage isn’t performing well, you might quickly decide that they just aren’t up to the job. But if you love those entrusted to your care, then you will learn more about what’s going on in the life of the person you manage. Perhaps they’re dealing with circumstances negatively affecting their behavior, like health problems or family issues.

Years ago, I was teaching a class in which one of my students was not doing good work. He seemed to me like the kind of person who just didn’t care very much about his schoolwork. I called him in for a meeting, ready to lecture him about his lack of commitment. But thanks be to God, I actually followed James’s advice and was “quick to listen” and “slow to speak” (James 1:19). It turned out that my student was in a crisis because his father was dying of cancer. My student was regularly traveling from school to his parents’ home, where he faced a terribly hard situation. He admitted, with many tears, that he hadn’t been doing good work for this reason. I was shocked and saddened. I was also ashamed about the way I had judged him without reason. All of a sudden, my love for this student was activated. And this love made me want to know him and his situation accurately, which in turn helped me to practice wise discernment in his case.

Second, love leads us to know in a personal way. In college, I read a fascinating book called Personal Knowledge. The author, Michael Polanyi, argued that all human knowledge is personal—even scientific knowledge, because it involves the experiences and commitments of the knower. Love is, indeed, essential to human knowing.

A friend of mine is an expert in neuroscience, especially cancer of the brain. She is a world-class scientist who knows the technical details as well as anyone in the world. But she also loves the work she does. She loves learning and discovering. She loves working on things that could be life-changing for cancer patients. She loves her work because she loves the people entrusted to her care. Her love motivates her to work tirelessly and wisely.

Third, love for God also leads to an abundance of knowledge and insight. The more we love the God of truth, the more we’ll be seekers after truth. The more we love the God who created the world, the more we’ll want to know what this world is really like. The more we love the God of justice, the more we’ll seek to understand what’s happening in our world and how God’s justice might bring reformation. Moreover, the more we love God, the more we will love and value the things God loves and values. Our moral judgments will be shaped by the God whom we love.

I’m quite sure there are other ways that love abounding in knowledge helps us to discern what is best. I’d be glad to hear your thoughts about this. As always, you can communicate with me through the De Pree Center or via my email: [email protected].

If you want to develop a discerning heart, there isn’t one simple way for this to happen. You can’t go to a weekend seminar and have such a heart. But the letter of Paul to the Philippians shows us that if we want a discerning heart, we should begin with prayer. In particular, we can pray for ourselves as Paul prayed for the Philippians, that our love would abound in knowledge.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Would God Really Ask Me to Do That?.