Thoughts for Your Sabbath: Love Guided

"And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." - Philippians 1:9-11

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". . .that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment. . ."

Paul does not go into detail here about what love is - he skips straight to the practicality of love. However, I think it may be beneficial to quickly talk about love. I have been reading Simone Weil, the Christian Mystic, and while her ideas are hit and miss with orthodoxy, it is nonetheless challenging to our apathy towards orthodoxy (in a good and bad way). Two thoughts of love by her come into mind in this verse.

Firstly, Weil talks of the love of God: "Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude." The radical extremes that this quote gives us reminds me of Job. Job was profound not because God gets away with whatever because He is so big and Job is so small. When Job says, "You give and take away/ Blessed be the name of the Lord," He is saying much more than this simple induction of the trumping nature of God's Sovereignty and power. Job's love for God, in many ways, was intimate. God's love had rubbed off on Job's ideas of love. Job for once was selfless, knowing that God's love was where his justice and comfort was found.

Secondly, Weil talks of our love for others: "Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love." In this perspective, we realize what love for others is about - the esteeming of the other. We love our neighbors as ourselves not only because it redeems and satisfies our human nature itself but also because it redeems and esteems the humanity in every individual. With these two quotes in mind, let us move to the practicality of Paul's teaching on love here.

Knowledge and discernment, in this excerpt above, are the guides and filters of our love in practice. First, knowledge here is concerned with our knowledge of God; specifically an intimate knowledge of God. The second, discernment, is concerned with wisdom in our social situations. Just as Jesus asks us to always keep our souls towards love of God and others (Matt. 22), and John teaches us that loving God and neighbor are not mutually exclusive (1 John 4), and Amos tells us that seeking God calls for righteousness in our dealings with our fellow man (Amos 5), so does Paul ask us to keep God and neighbor in focus with our love.

In specifics, this part is extremely practical for your sabbath. Our love is to be guided and filtered through our intimate knowledge of God (things you know by time spent with the person and not by reading their bio). Knowing God's character, desires, and law intimately makes our daily lives quite sensitive to living righteously. Moreover, our love needs to continually be on discernment. How we act in a certain situation depends greatly on how our selfless love has grown in wisdom. It would be really hard to act inappropriately in public if we realize that the people we are dealing with our human beings as such. Utility has little room in such a circumstance. But also, we realize that the safest action in a situation is usually the selfless act. When we are around others we are dealing with souls that can be injured or uplifted. Our love guided by our discernment, will help us greatly in uplifting souls only.

Today, in our Sabbaths, we need to refocus our love towards God and others by knowing God intimately and using discernment in our dealings with others. Let us find our love abounding today because of our continually desire to know God more and esteem our neighbor with even higher honor.