The Gift of Love

Philippians 1

 “I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.  I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart, for all of you are my partners in God’s grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the tender affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”  (Philippians 1)

I want you to read the paragraph above again, a second time, and maybe even a third. It’s easy to race through these words as the preface of a letter from Paul to my church in Philippi. But please don’t race through them; they do more than simply introduce his message. A lot more. And, please don’t doubt their sincerity, assuming that they are empty words meant to ingratiate Paul to his readers, winning our good will before diving in to the meat of his letter.

Now that you’ve absorbed Paul’s words a bit better, let me ask you: do these words sound like the words of a killer? Of one who hated with a vengeance?

This is how Paul (then Saul) was described in his former life:

“Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” (Acts 9)

“Still breathing threats and murder?” Could this be the same man who wrote the letter to us in Philippi?

Yes, it was the same man. The man who was feared. The man whose hate ran so deep that he made it his life’s work to persecute, oppress and literally murder the followers of Jesus. The man who thought he was serving God by violently destroying this new sect of Jesus followers.

Could this be the same man who could write, “I hold you in my heart?”

I’m sure that you know what happened to Saul on the road to Damascus, how he encountered the Risen Christ. And how from that point, for him, everything changed. So, in the aftermath of that encounter, this man, now Paul, could write these words: “…how I long for all of you with the tender affection of Christ Jesus.”

“….with the tender affection of Christ Jesus.”  Hold onto those words for a moment. How could this man, once filled with hate, now love “with the tender affection of Christ Jesus?”

I will come back to that question in a bit.

But before I do, let me back up a little. First of all, who am I? I am Lydia, a business woman of Philippi. You can read about me in Acts 16.

When Paul arrived in Philippi, which was a Roman colony in our day, he searched for the local Jewish population, as was his custom. Finding no synagogue, Paul went to the river, where a group of us women were meeting to pray. I was among the first whom Paul brought to Christ, and as a result, I invited Paul and Silas to lodge with me. And my home was the first Christian church in Philippi.

You may also remember how the city turned on Paul and Silas, had them arrested, beaten and imprisoned. Once they were freed, I brought them back to my home, where they recovered from their beating. And then, they left, going on to other cities in Macedonia.

But the seed of a church had been planted, and it flourished. We grew, adding more disciples by the day. The work of Paul and Silas had not been in vain!

The letter written by Paul to our church came later. By then, Paul had been imprisoned again, this time, in Rome. His fate hung in the balance, as our new Christian faith was finding opposition throughout the Roman world. Was it a form of the same hate that Saul felt toward that new faith? I will let you decide what you think, but remember that Jesus himself was crucified by such a hatred.

For those of us in Philippi, it was hard to believe Paul’s former life, hard to believe he was the same man who breathed “threats and murder” toward people like us. And you surely know how Paul freely confessed his former life, calling himself the foremost of sinners.

I know you know what happened on the road to Damascus. Even by your day, it must surely remain the most dramatic conversion story of all time.

But you may have missed something that came with Paul’s conversion, something really important. Something that blesses all of us who believe in Jesus Christ.

You see, Paul’s conversion was more than a mere change in beliefs. Yes, of course, he now believed things that formerly, he fought against. And considering his past life as a strict Pharisee, such a change in belief was no small matter. By the time he reached our city, he spoke clearly and eloquently about what it means to follow Jesus Christ, about redemption and salvation. You will surely agree that Paul was a very effective evangelist.

Having demonstrated that a murderer was not beyond redemption by Christ, you may wonder: so, what else can there be? What might you have missed? Well, there is still one more thing in Paul’s story. A gift, really, given by Jesus to Paul. What was it?

It was love. In his transformation from enemy to friend of Christ, something of Christ rubbed off on Paul. Love. He was blessed to love as he had never loved before. In effect, a deep hatred had been turned into a deep love. I am sure that it was a love that Paul had never before experienced.

The Apostle Paul

Rembrandt. 1657

It was a love that could lead him to love us at Philippi. And others at Ephesus, Corinth, Colossae, Thessalonica, and more. It was a love, even of the Jews who ironically, now persecuted Paul.

It was a love that could lead him to write the preface of his letter to us.

Where did that love come from? From none other than Christ Jesus himself: “the tender affection of Christ Jesus” he called it. It was the love that reaches out to all of us from the Light of the World, a love that conquers hate, even the hate of one who breathes “threats and murder.”

Paul didn’t manufacture that love. He didn’t earn it. In fact, he had fought against it. No, it was given to him, given to him personally, by Christ Jesus. It was a love that blesses us all, given freely by Christ Jesus himself.

Before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, when he was filled with hate, could Paul have written these words about love? See what you think:

“If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”

So, let me ask you: what about us? Is such a love available to you and me? Of course it is. Why? Because as Paul wrote, the love of Christ Jesus, a love that overcomes even the fiercest hatred, a love that he gives freely to all who accept him, “never ends.”