(A) Introduction

At first reading this is a surprising prayer because Paul requests that their love may abound more and more. Phil1v9. It is surprising because there is no doubt that the Philippians loved Paul very much and had been extremely good to him. So we will examine how the great apostle wishes their love to abound. He wants it to be:

(B) Wider

Paul uses the little phrase all of you four times in the first chapter of this epistle. For example: v3 In all my prayers for all of you: v7 It is right to feel this way about all of you. Paul is not concerned that the Philippians should love him more. They already desired and worked for his highest good. They sent him gifts when no other church offered any support or encouragement. Rather Paul wanted the Christians at Philippi to love each other as much as they loved him. Sadly there was division and ill feeling within the church. Paul writes in Phil4v2: I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.

I wonder if our love is selective. Are we patient with and kind to those we like but impatient with and unkind to those we dislike. Have we the plank of bias in our eye. I received a visit near the end of term from one of my old pupils who required help with her A level Meteorology course. It was a day that I had lots of free periods. I duplicated all the notes I used when I taught Meteorology and spent four hours giving her a crash course in the subject. It was the hardest day's work I had put in for years. I was very kind to my old pupil - but then she was spectacularly attractive and oozed sex appeal. I would not have invested the same amount of time and energy to help some grubby, boring, charm less, boy! I had the plank of bias in my eye. I have to admit I still regret working so hard with Rachel that I did not even find time to flirt with her! Over and over again in the church I have witnessed Christians being kind to those they like and showing impatience to those they dislike. It extends to how a person is heard in a church meeting. Those who speak with winsomeness, graciousness and humour are heard sypathetically albeit they may be talking arrant nonsense. Someone else who has a belligerent, aggressive and harsh delivery may be listened to with ill concealed disgust and impatience although what they say is the truth.

Paul says that another characteristic of Christian love is that it keeps no record of wrongs. 1Cor13v4. This does not mean that we forget entirely the weaknesses of others. I loved my mother but I can remember a few of her foibles. Whenever she took a call for me on the telephone she never asked who was calling. On my return home she would say, "Two people phoned, John." I never knew who they were. She was also very reluctant to consult the doctor which led to some unnecessary suffering. However I do not hold these little weaknesses against my mother. They are not the first things that spring to mind when I think about her. They never affected the relationship we had. She had nothing to pay for her idiosyncrasies. On the other hand my father bore for many years the consequences of backing the tractor of the farmer for whom he worked on a part time basis into a ditch. Whenever that farmer wanted some tractor work done he would say, "Well I can't ask Mr Reed to take the tractor out - he'll only back it into the ditch." He made a note of my father's mistake, never let him forget it and held it against him until the day his employment ceased.

Now some Christians get a way with many wrongs. I am glad that they do! Others who are less likeable and more difficult to get on with are forgiven very little. We are more tolerant of the mistakes a person with an appealing personality makes than we are of the errors made by an abrupt, awkward, clumsy and boring believer who stumbles along the way that leads to life. I knew a man who left his church. He was very sensitive and not easy to get on with. No one went to see that difficult man who left his church. Now if it had been a good humoured, happy hearted, beautiful, young person with a sunny disposition I think the reaction of the church officers would have been quite different. Why is that? Love does not discriminate - it is patient and kind to all who need patience and kindness.

(C) Deeper

Paul prays that the love of the Philippians might abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. v9. Love is not at its best when it is impulsive. It needs to be informed by knowledge. It is difficult to help others unless you know their need. Sometimes this is easy. The Good Samaritan did not require subtle insights to know how to aid the man who fell foul of the thieves on the Jerusalem to Jericho road. Nor was it difficult for me to know what to do when I saw an elderly gentleman standing by his car on a country lane waving a petrol can in the air. I drove him to a garage and then back to his car. It was a little thing to do - but it made a great difference to his sense of well-being.

Sometimes it is quite easy. I was complaining once about being absolutely useless at poaching an egg. A few days later a lady at my church presented me with a special egg poacher. However Carolyn had to listen. I wonder if we listen or do we think we know what is best without listening. It is sensible to listen first before making up your mind about the best way to help. Whenever I conduct a funeral service I always listen to the mourners. I try to anticipate their wishes. I hope the funeral will be a positive experience and a blessing to those that grieve. It is very distressing to those near and dear to the deceased when the minister displays no knowledge or depth of insight into the needs of the bereaved.

I am afraid there are people, usually men, who take no trouble to know others. I was amused to read Denis Constanduros' recollections of his rich grandfather, Mr Tilling, who loved to discuss the battles in the First World War. As he mispronounced the French place names his wife was pulling faces behind his back! The grandson observed that Mr Tilling had been married for 52 years and was pleasantly and sentimentally ignorant of at least half of his wife's character. I do not find this so easy to forgive. Often we cannot achieve the highest good of another unless we understand them.

It may be hard to know someone, particularly if they are undemonstrative, uncommunicative and buttoned up. A.J. Cronin tells a story about Willie Craig the village baker who was famous for his mutton pies and his coolness. One day he went to Cronin's surgery with a nasty red spot on his tongue. The doctor took a specimen of the growth to send away to the pathology laboratory for examination. It would take a couple of days for the result to be known. Then Cronin made a decision. He knew of Willie Craig's reputation for calmness and lack of imagination and so he told the heavy smoker that it was possible he had cancer of the tongue. Willie Craig appeared to take the news well - coolly and courageously. How did Willie Craig feel? Inside his brain a thousand hammers beat ferociously and in his ears a thousand voices roared and thundered. One word was repeated endlessly - cancer. Willie Craig suffered from nerves. All his life long he had fought like a demon against his nerves, those treacherous nerves which had so often threatened to betray him. He couldn't sleep, he kept looking at his tongue in the mirror and imagining what it was like to have it cut out at the roots. He walked by the river and would have thrown himself into it but for inadvertently meeting with an old friend. Eventually he went back to A.J. Cronin's surgery for the diagnosis and was told that all he had on his tongue was a little cist - nothing malignant - it would be gone in a couple of weeks. The doctor said, "I hope you haven't worried these last few days. Of course I'd never let you know what I was afraid of if I hadn't been dead certain that you weren't the worrying kind." Then Willie Craig told A.J. Cronin what is related above.

We cannot achieve the highest good of another if we do not understand him or her. I wonder how many of us really try to know our fellow Christians. It is important to listen, to watch and to learn by trial and error. I used to teach a boy called Scott. As term progressed he gradually got more and more difficult and disruptive. Eventually I would tear into him like a man possessed. It always worked. It was as if he needed this periodic blood letting to quieten him down. The jolt to his system was cathartic.

Only those whose love is deep will really know us. It is only the deepest love that is protective in the sense that it is never provocative but always aware of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

(D) Wiser

It is one thing to realise that a person has a problem or a need - it is quite another thing to know the best way to deal with it. It is important to know when and how to rebuke or correct a fellow Christian. There are many Scriptures that indicate that love does correct and discipline:Ecc7v5: Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Prov27v5and6: The kisses of an enemy may be profuse but faithful are the wounds of a friend. Throughout my teaching career I was prepared to discipline my pupils and it showed how much I cared about them. I can remember a curly haired virago of a girl complaining bitterly that I habitually picked on her and hated her. Nothing could have been further from the truth. She had a wicked tongue and would lash boys with it to the extent that they could scarcely contain their anger - even in class. I told her about it - constantly - because unless she curbed her tongue it would produce much grief for her and others in the future. I had another girl in my form who used to spend every lunch hour rolling and writhing on the school field with her boy friend. I simply told her that she was losing the respect of her teachers. Her inappropriate behaviour stopped at once.

I have been much more reluctant to exercise discipline in church life. Yet it is so important. I was very fond of a lovely fifteen year-old girl - I will call her Charlie. One day she came up to me and said, "Tim (that was the elder in the church she attended) has told me to stop going out with Lance. Do you think there is anything wrong with seeing Lance." Now I knew that Lance wasn't a Christian. I was glad to support Tim. Charlie eventually married a Christian young man and both attend the church of which Tim is the leader. I see them all once a year when I go there to preach. Charlie would not be attending church now if she had married Lance!

So why is it that we do not exercise discipline in church life. One of the reasons is that it is not expected. Many adult Christians who hold responsible jobs and exercise authority in the world are not prepared to admit that they are spiritually immature and require correction. My pupils at school expected me to correct them but people in the church do not. However the main reason is lack of love. We love ourselves, we love to be popular, we love an easy life but we do not love our brother or sister in Christ enough to reprove them.

We need a wise love to repair broken relationships in the church. Paul expected the leader of the church in Philippi to help Euodia and Syntche to be reconciled. Phil4v3: Yes and I ask you loyal yokefellow help these women. We don't help the situation by taking sides. This often happens and is very pernicious. We don't help, either, by ignoring the situation. Time does not invariably heal broken relationships. It requires wisdom and love to achieve a lasting peace. However, it should be attempted because ill feeling, rifts and animosity ruin the life and witness of a fellowship.

(E) Purer

Paul prays that the Philippians may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ. It is possible to offer help for the wrong motives. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians he says: If I give all I possess to the poor ..... but have not love, I gain nothing. 1Cor13v3.

We must avoid helping to:

(a) Make an impression
It is so easy to do good to gain a reputation. We love the applause of men. One of the hardest of Jesus' teachings to implement is:

"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what it is done in secret, will reward you. Mt6v1to4.

My old grandfather Reed was a market gardener on a small scale. He gave small sums of money to a wide range of charities. I only know because my grandmother looked at the stubs in his chequebook and told my father in a high state of indignation. She didn't approve of all the little, tin pot, charities my grandfather tried to encourage. He certainly did not get any reward here on earth. He was not highly honoured in the church that he attended. I suspect that the Father whose sees what is done in secret will reward him.

(b) Put someone under an obligation
We have one or two sayings in this country that reflect popular opinion: 'one good turn deserves another,' and, 'if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours.' Salesman of all descriptions adopt this approach - they come bearing gifts, so called 'freebies.' When I was a boy our insurance agent left the occasional small present for my brothers and I. Eventually we grew up and went out to work. The insurance agent then successfully sold us policies with his company. Jesus is not supportive of this principle. He says to a prominent Pharisee, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbours; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Lk1412to14. The church should avoid putting people under an obligation in order to win a hearing for the gospel. Through the centuries the church has come bearing gifts in the hope of winning converts in deprived areas or on the mission field. This was not, on the whole, the method that the apostle Paul adopted although some might say he admitted to using all means to win some!

(c) Keep someone dependent
It is possible to help in the hope of making yourself indispensable to a person. This is a way of exercising control and retaining power. It happens in churches. The minister has a right hand man - or women. The leader of the church feels that he cannot do without the help of his lieutenant which gives them great influence.

We should never rebuke to:

(a) Humiliate
Charles Dickens describes in Great Expectations how young Pip suffered from the comments of his sister and her guests, Uncle Pumplechook, Mr Wopsle and Mr and Mrs Hubble at Christmas lunch. Perhaps it is worth quoting young Pip's observations:

Among this company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in at an acute angel of the tablecloth, with the table in my chest, and Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain. No; I should not have minded that if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation - as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third - and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, "Do you hear that? Be grateful."

"Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand."

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that the young are never grateful?" This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, "Naterally wicious." Everybody then murmured "True!" and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

This is a wonderful humorous piece of writing but nevertheless it highlights a tendency for people to exercise their power for self- gratification, self-aggrandisment and self satisfaction. Sadly there will always be some who delight in putting and then keeping others in their place. It happens in offices, schools, hospitals and churches. I expect we have all experienced being touched up by moral goads!

(b)Impress.
It is possible to put some one right because we just wish to draw attention to the fact that we are better than them. This happens all the time in business and education. Consultants and advisors often give the impression that they know so much better than you, that their way of doing things is best and that what you have been doing is substandard and inferior. I have heard ministers of successful churches speak at less prosperous churches and imply that if only the struggling fellowship adopted the same methods as they used all would be well. This doesn't do anything for the morale of the declining church.

(c) Wound
If you are forthright and prepared to oppose those in authority it is advisable to live a faultless life. It is not unknown for head teachers to wait for an opportunity to 'throw the book' at a teacher who has withstood their initiatives. We should never discipline others in the spirit of retaliation. This, too, can happen in churches. It has nothing to do with love but all to do with spite.

(F) Fuller

Paul prays that the Philippian's love will be such that they are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Paul is praying that his friend's lives will be full of love - so full that there is no stopping it. It will be a love that is active and prepared to take risks. The Good Samaritan had that sort of love. He exhibited love to a traditional enemy, a Jew, and he took great risks in order to rescue the man who fell foul among thieves. The father never stopped loving his prodigal son and by his generosity risked spoiling that feckless youth, undermining his authority with the servants and antagonising the older brother.

Paul was full of love for his brothers and sisters in Christ. We only have to read his short letter to Philemon to see the love that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

Corrie ten Boom's father was full of love. When Corrie was a young woman she used to work with her father in his watchmaker's shop. Corrie was at this time involved with the mentally handicapped. It was Christian service of which Mr ten Boom thoroughly approved. This is what Corrie wrote in her book, 'In My Father's House:'

Often in the midst of a very busy workday, with the watch repairs stacked on the counter waiting to be done, Father would say to me, "Why don't you visit Alida today? She's come into my mind..... perhaps she is lonely."
Dear Papa! It meant more work for him, because a visit to this friend of mine took at least four hours of the day.

That is love. It is what makes us rich. It is the only treasure that does not perish.