The Crucial Thing We Might Completely Overlook

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. 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

This is my final devotion based on Paul’s prayer in Philippians 1:9-11. You may wonder that I have even more to say after several long devotions based on this passage. But I hope you’ll find that my final observations are worthwhile.

When I read Paul’s prayer in Philippians 1:9-11, I am inclined to read it in a personal way, as if it were addressed to me. Now, if I put on my New Testament scholar hat, I realize this can be problematic at times. I might miss many things if I forget that Paul was writing to a church almost 2,000 years ago. (We had an example of this in the last devotion, where I talked about the Roman-influenced culture of Philippi and its concern for public honor.) Yet, as a pastor, devotional writer, and follower of Jesus for 62 years, I also know it’s important for us to read Scripture, not only as a historical document, but more as a personal letter from God to us.

So, I’m not critical of reading Philippians 1:9-11 as a prayer for you and for me. However, there is one major problem with this approach. It’s the problem of number. Greek words could show up in different ways according to gender (male, female, neuter), case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative), and number (in the New Testament, either singular or plural). So, if you wanted to address a single individual, you’d use nouns and verbs that were singular. If you wanted to address a group, you’d use plural words.

That’s what we find in Paul’s prayer for the Philippians. All plural forms, every noun, pronoun, verb, and adjective. Why is this significant? Well, it’s always possible that Paul is using plural forms while seeking to address each person individually. When my mom said to me and my three siblings, “You (plural) need to clean up your rooms,” she meant that each of us had to clean up our individual rooms. She was addressing us a group of individuals. But at other times my mom would say, “You kids need to get along better,” where the plural meant “you folks as a group need to do this.”

When we read Paul’s prayer, given the strong individualism of our culture, we tend to read it as if addressed to us individually. It’s as if Paul were praying, “I pray, Mark, that your love will abound more and more in knowledge, so that you individually will be able to discern what is best, and so forth.” This may have been what he intended. But, given all I know of Paul, his background, his ministry, and his theology, I’m much more inclined to believe that when he prayed for the Philippians, he was praying for them as a group, as a body, as a church of Jesus Christ.

When I lived in Texas, I experienced the benefit of the word “y’all.” “Y’all” meant not just you, singular, but you and others. Yes, even with such a fine word as “y’all,” sometimes Texans knew it was important to emphasize the corporate sense of “y’all.” In this case, they’d use “all y’all.” Then there would be no confusion or misunderstanding. “All y’all” meant everyone, usually everyone as a part of a larger group.

If we were to invent a Texas version of Paul’s prayer, it might go something like this:
And this is my prayer. That all y’all’s love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that all y’all may be able to discern what is best and be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, as all y’all are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.

Now, one thing we need to learn from this rendering of Paul’s prayer is that discerning what is best isn’t necessarily something we do all by ourselves. Yes, to be sure, sometimes we do need to get alone with the Lord and figure out on our own what God is saying to us. A discerning heart, as we’ve seen earlier in this devotional series, is a listening heart, a heart that listens attentively to God and to other people. Surely there are times when we listen to God most perceptively when we are alone with the Lord. But often our best listening happens when we are with our sisters and brothers in Christ. They hear things we have missed. They help us to hear what God is saying to us. Discerning what is best often happens in the context of Christian community. The same could be said for being pure and blameless and filled with the fruit of righteousness. This is something we do together as the body of Christ.

In next week’s Life for Leaders devotions, I want to think more with you about how discernment happens in community with others. For now, let me encourage you to reflect upon the following questions.

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: Discernment in Community.