Philippians 1:8

For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:8)

This simple verse worked me over today. I am going to be teaching my dad's Sunday School class this week, and we will be covering Philippians 1:1-11. Today it was bright outside, and I had about an hour to go before I had to leave for my commute to Kennesaw. I decided to sit outside with the sunshine and with the Scripture, with Philippians.

First, I want to say that there are no such things as super-Christians. There are no classes in Christianity; we all are partakers of the grace of God. As James says, "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit." Elijah was a man like us. And when speaking of the power we would have in the Holy Spirit upon Jesus' ascension, Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father." It is evident that if we are in Christ, there is an awesome power at work within us; we all have access to the Father who is Creator of the universe, who is really there and who answers prayers, unlike Baal and other idols; we all have access to the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, and he lives in us! Oh, how blessed we are in Jesus!

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:1, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." You must admit that it takes both great courage and great humility to say something like that and mean it. I, of course, want to have all my problems straightened out and I want to have reached a peak level of Christian maturity before I come face to face with someone and tell them to follow me. Fear and sin keep me from true discipleship often. My point is that there are no super-Christians and that when Paul asks us to do this - imitate him as he imitates Christ - we should take him more seriously than we probably do.

Each person in the Body of Christ has different gifts, different passions, and different backgrounds. God is sovereign, and he is a beautiful Artist. He knows what he is doing, weaving us together into Gospel community and painting a beautiful picture to glorify Christ, signed by his blood. Our wise Creator knows best. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28) And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6) Our lives will not look identical to Paul's, just as Paul's was not identical to Christ's. We are unique. But if we follow Paul the way he followed Christ, the unmistakable mark of Christ's love will be all over us, just as it was all over Paul. So, the question becomes, what things are distinctively Paul's alone, because of who God had uniquely created him to be, and what things are there in his life and ministry for me to legitimately try to imitate?

This question, asked in light of God's empowering indwelling presence for true discipleship, has brought quite a depth and weight to the opening of Paul's letters for me. Usually he opens letters with a greeting. Then, he moves to prayer and thanksgiving to God for the people he is writing to. Of course, Paul's deep theology of grace and the cross is brilliant - and infallible since God wrote it through him - but it is in these verses of personal address and thanksgiving that I have been challenged recently; it is in these verses that we see the effect of Paul's theology on his heart for people. I want to make just a few comments on Philippians 1:8.

1) For God is my witness...

Paul's appeal is not directly to the witness of any person. Though certainly there were people who could have testified to Paul's heart for the churches and the Church, he appeals to God as witness, instead. Paul could not appeal to God's witness if the rest of the verse were not a true indication of what was in his heart, else he would make his own letter a lie; we know that it is truth because it is God's written Word. We see here the kind of integrity and boldness that is neither downplayed for false humility or exalted to put self on a pedestal. It is the same sort of matter-of-fact holiness that we read of and believe in Jesus in the Gospels. This first part of the verse challenges me to live my life in integrity before God, in order that I might be able to say with Paul that God is witness to my heart for him and for people.

2) ... how I yearn for you all ...

Yearn is such a strong and distinctive word to use here. Can I legitimately say that I yearn for anyone? There is such depth of emotion here in Paul's heart for these Philippian people. And it is not just for one, or for his close friends, but for "you all". If I am to imitate Paul in this, my heart needs to be enlarged to many more people, softened from its sinful hardened state, and given more than mere nice feelings, but instead a yearning to be united to other believers. The scope of this claim is echoed in verse 3: I thank God in all my remembrance of you. This depth of emotion is echoed in Romans 9:2-3, in which Paul says, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. In my imitation of Christ through my imitation of Paul, may I not only learn to think Paul's thoughts after him in his letters, but may I learn to feel about others the way that Paul did, which is really still just a shadow of the reality of Christ's holy compassion.

3) ...with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Paul's yearning for the Philippians was not a thing he simply mustered up, an internally virtuous quality he naturally possessed. It was a thing granted to him, and it was brought about by the Spirit's work in him. To have affection for some people means your heart inclines to them, delights in them, loves them. But this love in Paul for those people is no mere human affection; it is the affection of Christ Jesus. It is here that a careful consideration of the nature of Christ's affection for me must be undertaken. That is a project that would take us far beyond the scope of this entry, and, in fact, it ought to be our heart's delightful duty to know and experience that love for the rest of our lives. I make only this observation - I was an ugly, rebellious, calloused sinner with nothing in me to merit Christ's affections. God freely set his love on me, called me out of darkness, and is conforming me to the likeness of Christ. This is grace through and through, and that is the sort of grace I should extend to all people. Affection means, not mainly that I like a person, but that I have set upon that person my self-sacrificial love as Jesus did on the cross for me. I genuinely long and pray for the best for that person, and the best for that person is God.

It is quite a labor of love to study Paul with the aim of knowing Christ better. Let us learn to think the way Paul thought, and let us learn to minister with hearts like Paul's. And let all glory be to God through any progress we make toward these ends.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Colossians 1:29)