Paul thanks God for the Philippians; but why does Paul give His thanks to God rather than to the Philippians? What does this mean for you?
God Completes His Grace in Me
Philippians 1:3-11
Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible Church
Please turn to Philippians 1:3-11. As you are turning there, I want to say that the biblical teaching of the body of Christ is one of the most beautiful teachings found anywhere. The body of Christ is God's central focus in the Kingdom of His Son. The body of Christ is also called His church in Colossians 1:24. But, the body of Christ teachings can easily become academic if we are not careful. What I mean is that they are interesting, and deep, and spiritual and all of that, but they are real. When I say real, what I mean by that is that these doctrines are meant to be about us in how we exist. They are meant to be about us in how we are meant to treat each other. In other words, salvation is much, much more than a ticket into glory where your eternal destiny is supposed to be your big concern. It is a comprehensive existence with huge social interaction that was designed by our social God. Paul is going to touch on some of these things in His opening comments to the body of Christ in Philippi. Please read verses 3-11 with me now,
"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, 5 in view [because of] of your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. 7 For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me. 8 For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; 11 having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." Philippians 1:3-11
Please prepare your hearts to glean from Philippians in the preaching of God's word this morning, in this sermon titled,
God Completes His Grace in Me
[prayer]
Paul says,
"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, ..." Philippians 1:3
When we see this opening statement at the beginning of Philippians, I think that we should immediately be struck with a few things, but there is one thing in particular that I think is immense. Paul gives thanks, which is good. He's expressing his gratitude. Also, Paul remembers the saints in Philippi, which is personal and is also good. But, I want us to think about the underlying implication of what Paul is saying in respect to how God authors and finishes His grace in his people. In other words I want us to think about Who Paul is thanking while we think about the fact that Paul is actually giving thanks. Paul is thanking God. Keeping this in mind, and let's ask ourselves:
Why is Paul thanking God for the set apart ones (the saints) when all of God's people must respond to the gospel individually in faith?
In other words,
Why isn't Paul thanking the Christians at Philippi for their superior decision of electing Christ to be their Savior?
Paul spent a lot of time in Philippi about ten years earlier evangelizing these ex-pagans. He saw the first converts there at that time. He was imprisoned there, and he saw the jailer get saved. He has nurtured the Philippian church both personally and from a distance for a decade. He has seen untold numbers come to Christ in this growing church. So, in connection to all the work, Paul would think it was great that they responded positively to his message. He would be thankful for their wise decision to elect Christ, and continue in Christianity to grow spiritually--even to the point of helping Paul out financially. There is a lot that Paul could thank the Philippians for, at least if that was the way that Paul was thinking. Let's continue to consider this as we look at how Paul says the same thing at the beginning of Romans,
"First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world." Romans 1:8
Now think about this--we see that Paul is thankful because of the faith of the Christians in Rome. We also see that even though it is their faith, the thanks is given to God through Jesus Christ. What is Paul doing? He is thanking God for their faith in addition to the spread of its fame. But again;
Question: Why thank God?
Answer: Because Paul knows that God is the author and finisher of their faith.
Later, Paul says of these same Christians,
"17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed," Romans 6:17
These are really amazing proclamations folks. Consistently, Paul keeps giving thanks to God, and yet Paul gives this thanks for something that the saints have done, and we notice that in Romans 6:17 they have done this thing while they were still God hating slaves to sin and served sin as their master in complete rejection of God. Listen, in this previous slavery to sin, they somehow acted like they were not really slaves to sin at all. Strange, but in the midst of their slavery to sin they became obedient from their heart to another Master, which is the truth of His gospel. But the question is;
How were they able to do this?
Folks, the answer is the beauty of the thanks. Paul tells them in the next verse,
"18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness." Romans 6:18
The point is that all men who are born in Adam are slaves of sin--you and me and all people. To become slaves of righteousness, we must be freed from the shackles of sin. You and I can not do this on our own, because this is the rescue operation of salvation. We can not free ourselves, which means, we can not save ourselves, which means, we can not rescue ourselves. But we must be freed from obedience to sin as our master first, in order to become slaves of righteousness second. And the only way that this can happen is that we must be miraculously enabled to do so by God. It is in this freedom of enablement, that we become obedient from a freed up heart to obey the gospel through the gift of faith. This is why Paul gives thanks to God and not to people. We did not free ourselves to become slaves of righteousness. God freed us to becomes slaves of righteousness. It is a miracle. Make no mistake about it; God must do the miracle work in us for us to do any work for Him. And so where does this leave us in terms of boasting? There is no room for it; unless, of course, we are boasting in God. Paul explains the work of God that is the reason for his thanks in 1 Corinthians 1,
"2 To the church of God ... to those who have been set apart in Christ Jesus, set apart ones by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, ... 4 I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus," 1 Corinthians 1:2-4
The church is made up of the set apart and called out ones. The only reason why Christians call upon the Lord Jesus Christ is because of the grace of God that was given to them in Christ Jesus. Since the grace is given, Paul is consistent. Paul thanks God for it all. Paul does not thank the Corinthians for setting themselves apart in Christ. Paul does not thank them for calling themselves out of the world. Paul does not thank them for calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by there own personal self generated efforts. Paul thanks God always concerning them because God gave His grace to them by His own sovereign effort.
There are two final passages that really drive home this biblical principle. They leave us in pure humble, worship, praise, awe, wonder, and thanks to Him. Listen as I read,
"9 For you recall, brothers, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaimed to you the good news of God. ... 13 For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe." 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Paul thanks God for the fact that the Thessalonian Christians received the gospel and accepted it as the word of God. Receiving and accepting is a great thing to do, isn't it? It results in life. To reject, results in eternal destruction. To reject Christ is a stupid thing to do. But Paul does not thank the Thessalonians for doing the smart thing of this receiving and accepting. Paul thanks Who should be thanked. He thanks God for the fact that the Thessalonians received the gospel and accepted it as His word. Not only this, but notice that it is the ones believing in which the word of God performs its work. It performs its work in them because that is what God wants it to do, and so God (not the Thessalonians) gets the thanks from Paul that is due. Finally, we glean the precious nutrients from this wonderful spiritual principle in 2 Thessalonians,
"13 But we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers who are those loved by the Lord, because God has elected you from the beginning for salvation through setting apart by the Spirit and faith in the truth." 2 Thessalonians 2:13
In my opinion, I think out of the whole Bible, this verse lays this truth out in one of the most powerful ways. Paul gives thanks to God for the Christians who are loved by the Lord:
Question: Why does Paul say that he thanks God for the Lord's loved ones?
Answer: Because God elected them from the beginning.
Further, God's election was for a reason. The reason God elected them is for salvation. Also notice that there is a way that the salvation they were elected for (the salvation that Paul thanks God for) came about. The salvation came about through a miracle action. The action was in being set apart by God Who is the Spirit. Finally, in being set apart by the Person of the Holy Spirit in God's election, Paul also thanks God that the same salvation that God wrought by His Spirit, comes through faith in the truth. And so it is all God's work. Even the faith in the truth that the Thessalonians have, you have, and I have, all comes from God;
"a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." 1 Corinthians 2:14
The problem is that all of us start out as natural men. Born as slaves of sin, we are not supernatural people. We start out as natural people who do not accept the things of God's Spirit. They are foolishness to us. Try as we might, we can not understand them. There is only one way to understand them. It must be through spiritual appraisal, and that can only happen through a miracle work of the Holy Spirit. And so, God must do a supernatural work in us dead sinners to enable us (beyond our natural minds) to receive Him and the grace of the gospel in faith. This is called the miracle of God's effectual call. This is what all of us should give thanks to God for. This miracle of the effectual call is what happened to Lydia when Paul arrived there in Philippi at the beginning. It was when God began using Paul to gather in His elect in Philippi. We read of Paul's foundational ministry in Philippi in Acts 16. Lydia is there. Her heart is dead in trespasses and sins. She is blinded as a slave of sin. Her heart is shut tighter than a welded vice. Then something miraculous happens that changes it all forever,
"The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul." Acts 16:14
Lydia was a lost woman, like all of us were lost once. She was of the natural, un-spiritual man in her lostness. Lydia was spiritually dead. Dead Lydia did not open her own heart to heed those things that can only be spiritually discerned. Further, Paul did not open her heart. The Lord opened Lydia's heart in His sovereign act of enablement, and He did it without consulting Lydia beforehand. Only the Lord is to be thanked and honored as the One who opened Lydia's heart. If God would have come to lost, sin-bound, Lydia, and asked her,
Do you want me to open your heart?
In her closed dead heart, she would have rejected God. That is how sinful humanity responds to God, to the gospel, and to Gods' people. We read the same description in Acts 18 where we see that there are those who had believed, but we see how they believed. We see
"those who had believed through grace," Acts 18:27
They did not believe through giving grace to their own selves to do so. They believed through the grace of God. God supernaturally enabled them to do so. God, and only God, is to be thanked for it. It is the supernatural action of God that we read of later on in Philippians. It is in about 15 more verses. Paul reflects upon all of these facts when he says,
"29 For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, ... to believe in Him," Philippians 1:29
Paul is speaking to more than just Lydia, (though she was there in the Philippian church). What Paul is saying is that all the Philippian's belief in Christ has been granted to them for His sake. The Philippians did not grant God their own belief for their own sake. God granted the gift of belief to those unregenerate sinful minded Philippians to make sure that they would necessarily believe in Christ. Further, in God's love, he did not grant to the Philippians to believe in Christ for the sake of the Philippians. God granted to the Philippians to believe in Christ, for Christ's own sake. The Philippians are simply blessed to get the overflow. It is the supernatural action of giving and receiving, and it is the same one where Peter says
"... to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:" 2 Peter 1:1
A faith received from our God and Savior is not a natural work of humans whereby God receives their faith, but rather it is a supernatural gift that is received from God. In fact, it is the same gift of faith that the apostle's received. It is the supernatural work of God in accordance with the same kind of miracle action of the great allotment spoken of in Romans, where we read, that "God has allotted to each a measure of faith," Romans 12:3. People do not generate out of their sinful state of being any kind of measure of faith, and then allot that measure of faith out of themselves back to God. Rather, God, as Jesus, authors our faith, which means that He creates our faith. In doing so, God perfects our faith in the great miracle of the effectual call, where we read in Hebrews of,
"Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith," Hebrews 12:2
Since Jesus is both the author and perfecter of faith as His very own work, we recognize that belief is not our work that we work, but it is God's work that He works in us,
"29 Jesus answered and said to them, 'This is the work of God, that you believe in Him ...'" John 6:29
So, why walk through these passages, yet again? I've done it in other sermons. Because, this, folks, is why Paul gives thanks to God! This first Part of Paul's statement is the foundation of what we need to know in respect to the theme of this sermon. The theme is God completes His grace in me, and the reason why God completes His grace in me is because God began the good work in the first place. Because God both begins it and completes it, He is the One we must thank for it all. We receive no thanks for what God has done in us. Rather, we give all thanks to God. We thank Him for electing us, enabling us, saving us, and using us, and we thank Him for making sure that He does not lose any of us who have been truly born again. This leads us to consider what Paul says as he goes on with more thanks to God. There is great assurance for all of us when we give thanks to the God who keeps us. Paul says
"4 always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, 5 in view of your fellowship [koinonia] in the gospel from the first day until now," Philippians 1:4
We notice the joy that Paul has because he is always mindful of the fellowship in the good news that the Philippians have continued in. The word that Paul uses here for fellowship is the Greek word koinonia. Koinonia means sharing in commonality. In the New Testament, this word expresses our relationship that we have in Christ to Christ. It is also the word that expresses our relationship to one another because we are in Christ. The starting point is our fellowship in Christ to Christ. Paul says,
"9 God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." 1 Corinthians 1:9
John says,
"3 ... indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." 1 John 1:3.
In the miracle of our salvation, we are spiritually sharing in common with the Father and with the Son. God does this through His Holy Spirit living in us. This is the safety friendship of the rescue. It is where you and I are taken out of war against God. We are taken out of lostness in the domain of darkness, and we are placed into the peace of entering His rest in the New Covenant. When we partake in the Son who is the living Covenant, we share in commonality with Him where we get our privilege and our life from Him. It is all God's work where He seats us with Christ in the heavenlies in Him. He is seated at the right hand of the Father, and so are we. In our fellowship with the Father and the Son, we do not need to be afraid of our loving Father. Yes, we have awe and reverence for Him because He is our great God, but we are His children who have been adopted in the Son, and so now God has created this beautiful relationship with us in the New Covenant where we don't need to make ourselves acceptable to Him. God has already made us acceptable in the beloved where we have the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus imputed to us as our righteousness. This is your privileged place of peace and rest. In this koinonia--in this fellowship, you and I can learn more about our Father who loves us. You can serve your Father there. We worship our Father there. We can talk to our Father in prayer and He listens to us because He really does care about what we say. We do all these things in true, authentic, fellowship with Him in Christ. This is the starting point. The second thing this word, fellowship, means in the New Testament in respect to our relationships as Christians has to do with our fellowship with one another in Christ, as the body of Christ. John goes on to say in 1 John 1:7,
"7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin." 1 John 1:7
All of us Christians are sharing in commonality with one another in salvation. Our family connection is in the Son. It is where all of us here, (no matter how much we fail, or how insignificant we think we are, or how disgusting we are in our flesh, or how socially awkward we think we are); the point is that we are all living lights. We are beautiful vessels that shine God's glory because we walk in the Lord Who is in the Light. This is our body of Christ connection. You and I and all of us who are saved, are connected to one another spiritually. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin in our fellowship. I think that a lot of times we look at ourselves and we are not thinking that we are bright shining creations of God because we don't see ourselves walking in the Light all the time like we should. We start to look at our faults. We see the dinginess of the old man still tainting us. We look at what we did. We look at what we thought. We look at how silly we think we are compared to other Christians, and so because we are not looking at what Christ did for us and what He thinks about us where He sees that His blood cleanses us from all sin, what can happen is that our fellowship with the other saints around us gets diminished. We feel like dim lights that are inadequate to hang with the rest of the body. But, we may even think like Paul to some degree. We think it is great to thank God for the rest of the body, right? But when we look at ourselves, we become absent minded. What I mean is that we are focused on the wrong things, and so we don't see that there is much about our own self to thank God for. Sadly, a lot of this has to do with the way other Christians around us are trying to manifest fellowship. What I mean is that oftentimes we can get around Christians that try to act like spiritual giants and so they look bigger than life. Paul says to conduct yourselves in godliness, but they go further, and they take this and conduct themselves as if they are the godliest. They want to show off how much brighter they think they are shining than we are. It's like some kind of spiritual competition. What happens is that we are made to feel smaller than the blood that cleanses us all. It's when we fail to see that the sin that made us all equal is replaced by the blood of Christ which makes us all equal. But listen, sometimes such people really are spiritual in certain ways, but what is going on is that they keep all their secrets in their hearts. They don't wear their failures on their sleeves. Rather, they wear their medals of spiritual honor on their chests. So, they aren't being "real" with you with the depths of their struggles. They aren't being authentic. They are not sharing our commonality in our condition, in purposed love, and understanding, and openness of true fellowship. They are not saying that Christ is my all in all, because I am a real loser aside from the facade I am portraying. Further, they always know what everyone else is doing wrong spiritually. They do not have patience with those who are babes in Christ. They can not even recognize that they are judgmental because they call it discernment. This reminds me of a Christian leader I knew once at a church where I taught. It was a very large church. The man was dynamic, and for a lot of folks, he was spiritually intimidating. Much of the intimidation came from a sense where he was thought of as being somehow spiritually superior. The man had many great attributes that God used for His glory. The man also had some horrible attributes that eventually led to a tragic downfall. One problem that he had was that he was very judgmental. He would judge members of the body by appearance, or by something they said, or by their professional status, and what would happen is that he would diminish the true koinonia that God wants all of the body to have in Christ. You see, I am talking about true koinonia. True fellowship. But, there was a fuel that fed the man's deadly fire, and I consider it a root problem. One day the man's wife said to me in a completely unrelated conversation, that her husband is often misunderstood by other Christians. This is what happens with diminished fellowship. There is misunderstanding. But there is more. I want you to hear what she said--She said that what people need to understand is that her husband has the gift of discernment. Folks, I can not begin to tell you how many times I have heard judgmental fellowship crushing people tell me that they have the gift of discernment. They call it discernment but it is really judgmentalism, and they would know that it was judgementalism if they had real discernment according to the real definition of what the word really means, according to the "real knowledge" that Paul is talking about in our passage under study. My point is that all of us are one in the One New Man of the body of the Superspiritual One. Who is Christ. We all have equal fellowship with one another because, in Christ, we are all superspiritiual, no matter how much we feel like spiritual failures. God is patient with all of us at all the various levels of spiritual growth that we are in. He who began the good work that He started in you and me, will complete it until our end on this earth. In the meantime, God wants you and me to think this way too, and then act upon it in authentic fellowship. So then, we have fellowship with God in Christ by the Spirit, and we have fellowship with one another in the body of Christ by the same Spirit. And so Paul goes on in our passage. He is talking about true fellowship when he says of the Philippians,
"4 always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, 5 in view of your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now," Philippians 1:4-5
Fellowship in the gospel is a term that has a broad meaning Biblically. Primarily it is to be sharing in commonality in the good news. Paul knows the Philippian Christians well. He is thankful for God's ingathering of the believers there in Philippi. Paul is assured of their salvation. He knows them. He knows their fruits. So Paul goes on expressing his confidence in his prayer in being mindful of God's preserving and maturing work in His people. saying,
"6 being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6
Paul's confidence that God will complete His work in the Philippian church is not because they have a spotless record. It is not because the Philippians give money in ministry, or anything like that. The same confidence is concerning us too, but it is not because we have a spotless record, or we give something to God, or to the church. It is because God gave His Son, which is God's good work, and then God saves us which is God's good work, and God works in us to will and to work for His good pleasure each and every day, and God continues to do this and will always complete His good work in His people that He began. And so the point is that the Philippians are saved, secure, and serving in unbreakable fellowship with God in the gospel. Whatever the Philippians do in ministry is simply a part of their overall fellowship in the gospel. So, again, Paul thanks God for them in their salvation. Whenever you and I express love, and we minister, teach, evangelize, and give, or are we are hospitable; in any kind of manifestation of the Spirit, we need to be careful not to pat ourselves on the back. What I mean is that we need to be glorifying God and God alone. We must always be recognizing that when we decrease, He increases. I hope everyone here understands what I mean when I say that God increases as we decrease. It is how we are recognizing Him, and acting so that He gets the glory. God is the one motivating us to true koinonia in any and all forms we see it manifested, so He must get all the glory. Paul gives God all the glory in His thanks for the Philippian church, and Paul gives God all the glory in Paul's confidence, because it is not confidence that the Philippian Christians are going to complete any work in themselves until the day of Christ Jesus. This is the way it is with all of God's children. God begins the good work in you and me that comes from the work of His Spirit and the preaching of the good news. Then God is the one that has us fellowshipping in the good news by supernaturally re-creating us to do so. Paul then says to the Philippians in complete assurance,
"7 For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel [the good news], you all are partakers of grace with me. 8 For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus."
Paul is making it clear that the fellowship is known to Paul to be in authentic salvation. Part of Paul's assurance is that in all things that he has gone through, such as imprisonment for the gospel, defending the gospel message, and confirming the gospel, the Philippians have been faithful to stick with Paul in his ministry. So, what does this prove? The fact that the Philippian Christians willingly share in all of these things with Paul in true Christian fellowship that is about God's business is clear proof that they share in the same grace of God in salvation that Paul experienced, preached, and was imprisoned for. We all demonstrate that we are partakers in grace when we bear fruits of that grace. It is not that we work to be saved, or try to prove that we are saved, but we are works of God who are saved to do His work as He works in us to will and work for His own good purpose (as Paul says in 2:29), and in our works, the grace of God in our lives is made manifest. It's called fruits of the Spirit. God completes the grace--we manifest the fruits. It is with all these things in mind, that Paul longs for the Philippian Christians while he is in prison. They are in his heart while persecution is on his soul, and against his body. The same heart that yearns in affection for the Philippians is the same heart that aches. But, notice that Paul says that the affection that he has is of Christ. What this means is that Paul longs for the Philippians the way Christ in His inward parts, longs for them. That is what the Greek phrase literally means. Once again, Paul is pointing us back to God's work in us where God gets all the glory. Without the affection of Christ, the Philippians would simply be numbers. You know, there are churches today that are run like businesses. The people are like numbers, or they are names that are hardly remembered. You look, but you can't see the affection of Christ in His inward parts for all of those people being manifested by all the rest of the people. Rather there is the affection of business. There is fascination with the machine. But this is also seen in average Christians today looking at the body, but they act like outsiders looking in, when they should be looking from the body as the body into themselves as members. What I mean is that local fellowship groups are also seen as numbers. There is church number 1. There is church number 2, and on and on where there are literally thousands of churches in one area in our modern culture, and so the casual attitude is,
I can go there, or can leave there. Who cares? It's just a church, (another number) and after all, there thousands of numbers out there.
It is a sad state of affairs of our day. There is lack of authentic fellowship where the affection is really of Christ--according to His word. It has been replaced with the shaky foundation of personal affections, according to personal preferences, and so now the body of Christ is suffering, and the saddest part about the whole mess, is that the saints sense the suffering, but because they do not have the affection of Christ for the body, they keep the suffering going by their own actions.
But there is more to this. Something that we must understand about this is that there really are fruits that come from people that help us to have confidence in them that they are really saved. You and I are not to judge someone's eternal destiny, but we are supposed to make sure we can have confidence in someone's salvation if we wish to have koinonia with them. Think about the consequences of not being confident in someone's salvation. It can make the difference between being unequally yoked, or equally yoked as you seek to serve the Lord. It can make the difference between whether someone is really praying for you according to God's will, or whether they are just praying. Unsaved people pray all the time--but not to God. It can make the difference between a bizarre view of doctrine and theology that is based upon the thoughts of the unsaved, or from wise righteous counsel based upon the righteousness found in God's word correctly interpreted and applied. When Paul says not to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever, we must have a certain element of confidence in whether they are a believer or not. Yet, we are not legalists who put a standard on salvation that is according to works. Further, when we believe that we do not work for our salvation, but rather, we are saved by Christ's work to do works that accompany salvation, we are not judgmental, where we focus upon one another's mistakes or failure to do our short list of what we think makes someone a Christian. But, we must look at the fruits of the Spirit, and see if those fruits are coming from those we choose to have koinonia with. This is how we are going to manifest the affection of Christ. If we are sharing all things in commonality with an unsaved person that we think is saved, then we are not really sharing all things in common are we? God is not going to complete the good work in them, because He never started it in the first place. Further, God tells us in 1 Corinthians that bad company corrupts good morals. The corruption may be subtle, but it is real. So, the question is;
What do we look for?
The first thing we look for is the word of their testimony. They must have a testimony of being saved from their sins, and recognize that they trust that the blood of Jesus cleanses them from all sin. They have this trust as faith, which is belief according to real grace from God. The next thing we look for is whether the person is fulfilling the Royal Law of loving Christians as Christ loves them, as Christ articulates His New Commandment. This is a huge area of building our confidence in someone's true spiritual state of salvation. Both the things I just mentioned are fruits of righteousness. First the word of their testimony, and then the manifestation of love for other Christians. These are fruits of the Spirit. When we recognize the fruits of the Spirit, then we are recognizing what we share in commonality. This is how Paul ends his introduction as he explains his continued prayer,
"9 And this I pray [because he's still talking about his prayer], that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,"
Love is the pinnacle fruit of the Spirit, as we find in Galatians 5:22. It is the height of the fruit of righteousness. But what Paul means is that we must love because we are Christians--yes--but we must love according to real knowledge. In other words, the fruit of the Spirit is love, but we must also recognize that the canon of Scripture (God's word) is also a fruit of the Spirit, and we find in God's word, the basic principles of how to love. This is the true affection of Christ. You know a lot of people don't recognize that the Bible itself is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and so they do not recognize that to be led by God through His revelation to us in His canon of Scripture is to be led by the Spirit. It is in God's word that we find the precepts of the New Covenant Kingdom that explain to us how to walk in love. Paul goes on,
"10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, ..."
Again, the point is that we need approve the things that are excellent concerning the righteous walk of Christ, but only in real knowledge and all discernment. The only way we can approve the things that are excellent is in accordance with the word of God. This is the real knowledge Paul is talking about. This is why you and I need to walk according to the Bible, and not according to philosophy, or some mystical events where we think God is talking to us, but we aren't really sure. That's not real knowledge. Real knowledge is surety based upon Biblical discipleship. But there is a reason why Paul says this, and Paul goes on,
"... in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; 11 having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."
And so right there is the substance of our confidence in Christ, and the confidence that we are in true fellowship with others who claim to be in Christ. Sincere Christianity, and blamelessness before God has the fruit of righteousness being harvested out of the field of our heart. Being filled with the fruit of righteousness expresses Christ's grace at work in us. We are blameless when we do this. But we must see how Paul sums all of this up. All of our fellowship, and all of our fruits of the Spirit come from our miracle salvation through Jesus Christ, and so as usual, it is all to the glory and praise of God. So, Paul starts out thanking God for His work, and in the final summation, the works we do are fruits of His work in us, and what God works in us, continues to bring glory and praise back to Himself.
Folks, I urge you to recognize that without God's sovereignty and His great plan, none of this would happen because none of us would care. Be mindful that this is how God guarantees that He gets glory forever and ever--through us--the gifts that He purchased for Himself, which reflect the glory of His Son, Who is both Lord and Savior of the elect. I urge you to sense the security in all of this. I urge you to sense the interconnectedness we all have to each other in Christ. We have gleaned some beautiful and vital truths. God will complete His work He began in us. It is all grace. In the meantime, God also wants us to be about the business of completing the work that He is directing us to do from His word. The fruits of the Spirit come from the One Holy seed that God has placed in us, and yet it is you and I that actually bring forth His fruits as the body, from the body. Be mindful that as you bear good fruit, then you can give God all the glory and the thanks for producing it, recognizing that He is the One who began the work in the first place, and finally, He is the one who is faithful to complete it. All glory to God! Amen.
