TUESDAY
This week we are considering how the phrase “I love you” should season our vocabulary as Christians. The rest of the week we are going to look at expressions of love in the New Testament epistles.
In his intro to Philippians, it is clear that Paul loves the church he is writing to. I’ve included the broader context of verses 3-11 for us to see how this love is expressed beyond just the phrase “I love you.” There are many ways to say “I love” without saying those exact words.
Philippians 1:3–11 3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 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. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
In Philippians 1:8, Paul directly expresses his deep love for the believers in Philippi. The word affection is the Greek word splanchnon. This is an interesting Greek idiom that literally refers to one’s guts or entrails. Pleasant, huh? The meaning, however, is a love or affection that originates from the deepest recesses of our inner lives. It’s like when we hear a sad story and describe it as “gut wrenching.” The intense compassion or pity that we feel when we hear those stories is the idea. This word is often translated as heart because we, in our culture, today tend to think of the heart as the seat of the affections.
Similarly, the term yearn refers to a strong desire for something, with implications of need. Yearn is a good translation. It’s like yearning for water in a desert or yearning for warmth in the cold. It expresses a deep longing for something needed.
With the meaning of these terms in mind, it’s difficult to imagine a stronger verbal expression of love. Paul longs for the believers in Philippi with a deep affection.
He goes on to say that this affection is of Christ Jesus, i.e., it is Christ’s affection and love that Paul has for them. We see Christ’s affection in multiple locations in the gospels:
Matthew 9:36 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 14:14 14 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
As we saw yesterday, this points us to the wonderful truth that love in the Christian life is defined and sourced in the Godhead. It is a divinely produced love. We cannot just manufacture this kind of love with our own willpower and strength. This love is the first of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). We must not love one another as the world defines love and the love that is sourced in ourselves. No! We are called to love one another with Christ’s love.
John 15:12 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
How did Christ love the disciples? Well Jesus explains it in the next verse:
John 15:13 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
So when we express our love for one another, we are expressing our willingness to lay down our lives for one another like Jesus did for us.