The Nature and Purpose of Christian Love

THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF CHRISTIAN LOVE

An Exposition of Philippians 1:9-11

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date:   February 25, 2018

Series: Philippians: Gospel Partnership on Mission in the World

Note:   Unless otherwise noted: Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

Since we are gospel partners on mission in the world, it should come as no surprise to learn that one of the key ingredients in fruitful partnership is that we love one another. For if we fail to love each other, then our partnership will break down and the mission will not succeed. And even if we did manage to crank out some halfway decent activities, who really wants to be part of a community that is characterized by envy and strife?

Most would agree that the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ should be a fellowship of love and kindness. But what is love? And what is it for?

We experience love in many different relationships and situations. There is parental affection, spousal devotion, romantic passion, friendly camaraderie, and even the love of places and things? When is love truly ‘love’ and when is love only a way of saying what we ‘like’ or ‘prefer’ or ‘enjoy’ something?

Who has the right to define ‘love’ anyway? The dictionary? Common usage? Practical experience? As Christians, we know that the Lord God is the Creator of all things, and this means that He has the sovereign right to also be the Definer of all things. However, we humans like to define our own terms. The history of humanity is a history of sin – and we have all partaken of this sad and tragic history – so we should not trust our own instincts and judgments. But as sinners, we have a natural sinful desire to put ourselves at the center and define things in a way that we find comfortable or sensible.

As Christians, however, we should know better. If we have savingly believed in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, then what have we become? We have become saints, God’s holy people – not because of anything that we have done, but because God has cleansed us and claimed us as His own. As people who have been set apart by God and for God, we should go to God and to His Word to understand what love is and what it is for. And lo and behold, the Lord God has much to say about the thing which, according to many song artists, ‘makes the world go round.’  

My aim in this sermon is to help us catch a vision for full-orbed Christian love. You could also call it biblical love, divine love, or holy love. Many are asleep to the proper depths and dimensions of biblical love. It is as if we have cut off the fruit of love from the orchard that held the fruit, and we’ve left the trees of the orchard behind and now we’re a hundred miles down the road juggling the fruit in our hands and calling it good enough. Look at the world and you can see what ‘love’ looks like when it is juggled about in the hands of men. Or we can even take an honest look in the mirror, if we’re willing to be pruned by our heavenly Father.

And even if someone is well-practiced in the school of divine love, it is good – as the apostle Peter taught us – to be stirred up by way of reminder (see 2 Peter 1:13, 3:1). Let us all be stirred up to holy love through the proclamation of God’s Word!

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

You may recall that in Philippians 1:4 Paul told the Philippians that he prayed for them with joy. Now in Philippians 1:9-11 he summarizes the content and substance of his prayer for his fellow Christians. Holy Scripture says:

⁹ And it is my prayer that your love many 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. (Philippians 1:9-11)

PAUL’S PRAYER HANGS TOGETHER AS ONE THING

What I want to do at the outset is call our attention to the logic of the prayer. And here’s the big important observation: the whole prayer hangs together as one thing. Paul isn’t praying for several disconnected things. Paul doesn’t say:

I pray

that you would be loving,

that you would be discerning,

that you would be virtuous,

that you would be pure,

that you would ready for the Lord’s return,

that you would be righteous,

and that you would glorify God.

Presumably there would be nothing wrong with such a prayer, but what we need to understand is that Paul’s prayer in verses 9-11 isn’t like this. Paul isn’t praying for several things that may or may not be related to each other. Instead Paul is praying for several things that are related to each other, and they are not just related to each other but they are related to each other in a particular way – and Paul himself tells us what this particular way is. This is why we can speak of the logic of the prayer. Careful logic and earnest prayer don’t seem like they belong together, do they? But they do. Our prayers ought to be shaped by God’s Word, by sound doctrine and good theology. The Bible doesn’t teach that sloppy prayers are the more spiritual ones, but rather that faithful understanding and fervent affection belong together in a heart rightly attuned to God.

One of our problems, however, is that we tend to be sloppy in our walk with God. All of us are acquainted with this tendency – this temptation – to be hit-or-miss in our daily spiritual life, to retreat to our own imbalances and neglect some really important things. 

What Imbalance and Neglect Look Like

Imagine that there is a church community somewhere that decides to divide up the congregation into four sub-groups.

They decide to name the first sub-group ‘Love.’ Their motto is “that your love may abound more and more” from Philippians 1:9. The people in this sub-group are the ones who value fellowship with one another, have outgoing personalities and want to roll up their sleeves and serve other people.   

They decide to name the second sub-group ‘Doctrine.’ Their motto is “with knowledge and all discernment” also from Philippians 1:9. The people in this sub-group are the ones who value truth and want to make sure that everyone’s theology is correct. They can smell heresy brewing a mile away, or before you’ve finished your sentence.

They decide to name the third sub-group ‘Purity.’ Their motto is “be pure and blameless” from Philippians 1:10. The people in this sub-group are the ones who value righteous conduct and do not want to be contaminated by the ungodly world around them. They keep their distance from bad influences, walk the straight and narrow, and are disturbed by the compromises that others are making. But though others play the fool, they will be ready for the Lord’s return.

They decide to name the fourth sub-group ‘Praise.’ Their motto is “to the glory and praise of God” from Philippians 1:11. The people in this sub-group are the ones who don’t want to be troubled by the lesser concerns for love, doctrine, and purity; they just want to lift up their hearts to the Lord. When the church comes together, the praise songs are what really get them excited. They want to be lost in the wonder of worship, according to their definition of worship.

There you go: we will give the fellowship wing to the ‘Love’ group, the classroom space to the ‘Doctrine’ group, a holy huddle area to the ‘Purity’ group, and the worship sanctuary to the ‘Praise’ group. So much for a unified congregation!

Now we would hope that no church would be so unruly as to formally designate four such sub-groups, but in our own little ways we retreat into our area of comfort. For some reason – maybe it is our personality, or our background, or our gifting – for some reason we gravitate to one part and neglect the other parts. When we do this, we take what God intended us to experience together as one thing, and we break it apart. Then we end up with ‘love without knowledge’ or ‘knowledge without love’ or ‘information without transformation’ or ‘praise and worship without purity and love’ or ‘dutiful obedience without a heart of worship,’ and so on.

What about you? How are you tempted to retreat from the fullness of God’s instruction and replace it with a disjointed spiritual life? What little sub-group are you tempted to jump into? ‘Love’? ‘Doctrine’? ‘Purity’? ‘Praise’? Something else? All of these are good when held together, but when they are broken apart, the end result is not so good at all. Take away ‘love’ and people get clubbed, take away ‘doctrine’ and people are clueless, take away ‘purity’ and the whole thing gets contaminated, take away ‘praise’ and everything else is corrupted.

UNDERSTANDING PAUL’S PRAYER (PART 1): WHAT CHRISTIAN LOVE IS

Our aim, therefore, is to receive what God has given to us in His Word, and let it renew our minds and transform our whole experience as Christians who have called together as fellowship partners in the gospel. Let’s start at the beginning of Paul’s prayer and walk our way through it one phrase at a time. 

That Your Love May Abound More and More

Paul begins his prayer by praying “that your love may abound more and more.” We will get to the phrase “abound more and more” in a moment, but first we must recognize that Paul is praying for something that the Philippians already have. He is not praying for them to start loving each other, as if they are unacquainted with it. Paul knows that they have already demonstrated love to one another as well as to him. In fact, the Bible teaches us that loving our fellow Christians is an immediate fruit of conversion. As the apostle Peter writes:

“Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again… through the living and abiding word of God.” (1 Peter 1:22-23)

Once we are born again into God’s family, we immediately discover a love for our brothers and sisters. This love is essentially a delight in their well-being that leads us to give of ourselves for their good. “By this we know love,” writes the apostle John, “that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16) This is the love that weeps with those who weep, speaks words of comfort to the downcast, shares resources with those who have need, and rejoices with those who rejoice. As Paul writes in Philippians 2, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4) That is the fundamental posture of love: caring deeply about other people, entering into their lives, and offering helpful service.

That said, we need to notice that this basic attitude of love is capable of growth. This is the first distinctive insight from Paul’s prayer: the practice of Christian love within the church community is capable of significant growth. Paul prays that their love would “abound more and more.” No person and no congregation should claim to have a doctoral degree in the school of love. And lest you are tempted to think that you are the exception, listen to what Paul told the Thessalonians:

“Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more…” (1 Thessalonians 4:9-10)

Both the Philippians and the Thessalonians had demonstrated brotherly love, but the biblical vision is “more and more.” How could it be otherwise? Think about the 150 or so people who call South Paris Baptist Church their church family. That’s a lot of people, a lot of families, a lot of needs, a lot of heartaches, a lot of joys. Think of all the relational dynamics, the many conversations that occur or should occur, the many ministries that involve or touch these folks in some way, the many opportunities to show love. How long could or should your prayer list be? What about your hospitality guest list, or following up with that need you just learned about, or taking the first step toward the stranger who sits on the other half of the sanctuary, or building a relational bridge to a brother or sister whom you are supposed to love but don’t really like? Do you think we could grow in the grace of love?

I am not saying all this to give anyone a guilt complex. The weight of the whole fellowship doesn’t rest on any one person. This is something that we share together. But I am saying that the real Christian love that many of us do have for one another can go deeper, reach further, and carry more weight. Let our love abound in size and scope, in open hearts and open homes, in hands joined and heartaches shared, in prayers offered to God and gifts offered to others, and all this in increasing quantity and quality.

With Knowledge and All Discernment

Paul prays “that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.” This brings us to the second distinctive insight of Paul’s prayer: Our love must be guided by God’s wisdom. Or to put it another way: healthy love is a discerning love.

It is at this point that the biblical view of love and the world’s view of love begin to part ways in dramatic fashion. The world is happy to agree that love involves the giving of yourself for the good of others; the world is happy to celebrate unselfish acts of heroism; the world is happy to uphold the vaguely defined virtues of compassion, mercy, and peace. But as soon as you insist that love must agree with divinely revealed truth, that love must be practiced according to the knowledge and wisdom of God’s holy Word, that love must be applied with “all discernment,” it is then that world runs afar off on its merry way, while Christ’s church holds fast to all that He has given.

In the physical realm, no one disputes that love should be guided by “knowledge and all discernment.” The parent who watches over the playing child doesn’t stand idly by while the child is about to race headlong into a street of oncoming traffic, but he anticipates and discerns the danger, and then rescues the child. The doctor who performs surgery is engaged in a loving deed to the patient, but would you like your doctor to possess wisdom and skill? People don’t recommend surgeons who ‘have a good heart’ but don’t have a clue what to do in the operating room. When it comes to physical health and safety, we all want love accompanied by skill.

However, when we move into the spiritual and moral realm, we find that our society doesn’t want love “with knowledge and all discernment.” Our society wants love that is winsome, but not love that is wise; love that is tolerant, not love that is truthful; love that is soft, not love that is serious – serious, that is, about doctrinal knowledge and moral standards. Our society wants love that is affirming, not love that is discerning. And sometimes these societal trends seep into the culture of the church, and we end up with a sloppy form of love that is well-intended but not actually helpful. So it needs to be clearly understood from Philippians 1:9 that knowing divine truth is an essential ingredient in the practice of love. Which means that you should care deeply about learning, studying, and understanding God’s Word – not so that you can impress others with your smarts, but so that you can excel in love. Learn for the sake of loving others. Study for the sake of serving others.

Let’s consider some examples of how knowledge should inform our love:

We should know that we Christians are all fellow partners in the gospel and co-participants in the Spirit (Philippians 1:6, 2:1), and this should motivate us to be unified in the same mind and the same love (Philippians 2:2). If we don’t know this, then we may settle for isolated individualistic Christianity. I can’t settle for that, because I know what God has so clearly revealed in His Word: we are a body, and therefore we ought to live accordingly.

We should also know that our Lord Jesus Christ left the glory of heaven in order to become a humble servant on earth and lay down His life for us (Philippians 2:5-11). True greatness is bound up with humble service, and the Lord’s will is that this mindset of humble service be reproduced in His people (Philippians 2:3-5). All this should make us eager to serve our brothers and sisters with glad hearts. If we don’t know these things, then we may put ourselves first far too often. In other words, the knowledge of the gospel undermines our ego and enlarges our heart for others.

Another thing we should know is that God works in us, “both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13) This awareness should motivate me to clothe myself with love and put it into practice, since God doesn’t intend for His work in the heart to stay in the heart. He intends rather that the work in here should become works of love out there. Further, this awareness that God is at work in His people should also motivate me to strengthen others in their walk with God. If God wasn’t at work, and it just depended on our work, then why bother with teaching, reproving, exhorting, and counseling others? But it doesn’t depend on us, it depends on God! Therefore we can minister to other believers with confidence that God is at work. If we don’t know these things, then we will be attempting to do all this in our own strength, and at some point we will probably give up altogether.

In 1 Thessalonians 5 Paul tells Christians to “admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, [and] help the weak.” (1 Thessalonians 5:14) And Jude tells us to “have mercy on this who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; [and] to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” (Jude 22-23) The idle, the fainthearted, the weak, the doubting, the ones caught in the fire, the ones with stained garments – it will take discernment to know who is who, and it will take wisdom to know how to best help each person. Without such discernment, we might call in the heavy artillery on the fainthearted and completely overwhelm them, or we might stroll casually into an especially difficult situation and end up in the fire ourselves.

The Scriptural ideal is not big hearts and small heads, nor big heads with small hearts, but rather big hearts filled with knowledge and insight, which are then utilized in wise and judicious care for other people. We need to discern all the knowledge that God gives to us in His Word, and then we must be able to apply that knowledge in wise ministry – in love – to a wide variety of people in a wide variety of situations. When you read the Word, study the Word, discuss the Word, or hear the Word taught by others, you should know that God’s intent is not only to nourish you for your own joy, but also to equip you to be effective in serving others. 

So That You May Approve What Is Excellent

Now let’s proceed to the third phrase. Paul prays that the Philippians would abound in love “with knowledge and all discernment” so that something else will happen, namely, “so that you may approve what is excellent.” Now we see that a fuller picture is emerging. Putting the phrases together, now we can add the third distinctive from Paul’s prayer: wisdom-filled love gives hearty approval to what is excellent. Do you see this? Love is our theme, and Paul has just told us that this love must be with “knowledge and all discernment.” I am summarizing “knowledge and all discernment” as wisdom. Love is supposed to be full of the wisdom of God. If we have this wisdom-filled love, then we will necessarily do something: we will “approve what is excellent.” In other words, the acquisition of sound biblical knowledge within the context of abundant love within the church community results in Christian people with good spiritual taste.

If you take away either the love or the wisdom, you get distorted taste buds. But when you put love and wisdom together, then your perspective will be attuned to the God who is altogether excellent, and you will “approve what is excellent.”

This phrase “what is excellent” may also be rendered “what is best” (NIV) or “the things that really matter”[1]. A couple of authors helpfully point out that the idea here is not to approve what is good over against what is bad, but to approve what is best over against what is merely good or okay.[2] Are you in tune with the best things, with excellent things?

Excellent things include speaking the truth in love, sacrificing one’s own comfort to help someone in need, laboring diligently for the cause of the gospel, saying ‘No’ to worldly distractions and seeking diligently after God’s kingdom, caring for one’s church family, opening up one’s home for hospitality and ministry, being faithful in one’s marriage, working hard to take care of one’s children and nurture them in the faith, resisting the perpetual entertainment trap and choosing things that nourish your soul, being faithful in prayer and acts of service, going on a mission trip to Arrowhead Native Bible Center (as our team of youth and adults are doing in May). Wisdom-filled love says ‘Yes, these things are excellent.’

The hearty approval of what is excellent is wisdom-filled love in action – and we are to do this together, so that as a whole congregation we are abounding in the same love, being guided by the same knowledge and wisdom, and agreeing on what is excellent and celebrating what is excellent and working toward what is excellent. In this way we are to be a wisdom-filled community of love with good spiritual taste. As discernment grows in a heart of love, so grows our spiritual taste for what is excellent. And the better our spiritual taste, the more our love will abound, because we will help each other grow in that which is truly best. 

UNDERSTANDING PAUL’S PRAYER (PART 2): WHAT CHRISTIAN LOVE IS FOR

Thus far we have been reflecting on the first half of Paul’s prayer. We have considered what love is and what it does and how it works. As we now move into the second half of Paul’s prayer, we will reflect on what love is for in terms of its highest purposes.

And So Be Pure and Blameless for the Day of Christ

The first high purpose has to do with “the day of Christ.”

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ…”

Here we see the fourth distinctive insight of Paul’s prayer: walking in holy love is how you make yourself ready to enter the Lord’s presence on the last day. “The day of Christ” refers to the last day when the Lord Jesus Christ will bring judgment upon the world and, at the same time, bring His own people to everlasting glory. On that day we will stand in awe of our glorious Savior, we will be glorified with Him, and we will begin to reign with Him forever and ever in the new creation. On that day He will evaluate each of our lives and assess their quality. As Scripture makes clear, all believers will appear “before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10). The overwhelming testimony of the New Testament is that we should have a great ambition for that great day: that we would appear before him “pure and blameless.” This same idea occurs in several other New Testament passages (for example, see 1 Corinthians 1:8, Colossians 1:28, 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13, 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, 2 Peter 3:14, Jude 24).

Sadly, making ourselves ready for “the day of Christ” is a neglected priority throughout much of the church. Someday I may have the opportunity to unpack the reasons for this neglect, but for now I will only say that it is a distortion of what it means to be saved. Some people believe that as long as you have gotten saved, then you are necessarily ready for “the day of Christ” – as if the only thing that matters is showing up. But Jesus (e.g., Matthew 25:1-46) and Peter (e.g., 2 Peter 1:5-11) and John (e.g., 1 John 2:28) and Paul don’t want us to just show up, but rather to show up in a certain manner. It is clear from our passage that Paul doesn’t think the Philippians will be ready for that day simply because they had believed in the Lord five or ten years earlier. What does he say? He says – well actually he prays – that their continual growth in love – love that accords with knowledge and approves what is excellent – that this is the way to be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ,” this is the way to appear before the Lord with cartloads of good fruit – “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.”

G. Walter Hansen reminds us that this progress and perfecting in love is something that we experience together as a community of believers. It’s not just about you being ready or me being ready; it’s about us being ready. It’s about the church – Christ’s bride – being beautiful and lovely and pure for our divine Husband. It’s about our relationships with each other being healthy and intact. Hansen writes, “… Paul is praying for progress toward the goal of a community that is perfected in love for the day of Christ.”[3]

So, let me ask a question to you, the South Paris Baptist Church family: Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you love the One who came from heaven to earth in order to rescue us from darkness and death? Do you love the Lord of glory who became a humble servant for our sake? Do you love the One who purchased our forgiveness by shedding His blood upon the cross? Do you love the tenderhearted Shepherd who called out to us ‘Follow Me’ and made room for us in His family? Do you love the One who holds us in His hand and guards us from the evil one and leads us on the path to glory? Do you love the risen Savior who intercedes for us in heaven and sent the Spirit to strengthen us on your earthly pilgrimage? Do you love the One who is the very embodiment of excellence, the One in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the One who has boundless love for His people? Do you love Him?

If you do love Him, then how do you want to appear before Him? Do you want to appear before Him compromised, impure, sloppy, and stained? Do you want to appear before Him empty-handed, without good fruit, filled instead with only faults, follies, and fragments of half-baked love? Or do you want to be appear before Him with a transformed life – a life that He Himself transformed by His Spirit – a transformed life that walked in purity and righteousness, and produced an abundance of love and good works? Our love and good works do not save us, but they are evidence that He has saved us and evidence that we love our Lord Jesus.

On that day, when we are filled with this good fruit, we will not expect a round of applause. We will know and understand that it was all gift, and that even this good fruit of righteousness came “through Jesus Christ,” and was not a heroic achievement on our part. And when our Lord Jesus Christ commends us with the words “Well done, my good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21, 23), we will not be proud of what we have done, but we will be humbled by what the Potter’s hands have done with such ordinary clay, and we will be grateful that He made us partakers of grace. 

To the Glory and Praise of God

Finally, we come to the final phrase of Paul’s prayer: everything else, the love, the knowledge and discernment, the mature spiritual taste buds, the readiness to appear before the Lord with purity and righteous fruit, everything else is directed toward the highest purpose of all, “to the glory and praise of God.” This is the fifth distinctive insight of Paul’s prayer: all that we do should be done in an attitude of worship to our God.

God is our Creator, and we are His creatures. God is our Father, and we are His sons and daughters. God is the Director of history, and we each play a small part. God is the source of all light, and we are little reflectors. God is the source of all goodness and excellence, and we are quite a distance downstream, catching tiny glimmers in our finite hearts. Elsewhere Paul writes that all things are “from him and through him and to him” (Romans 11:36). God our Father is the source of all things, the sustainer of all things, and the goal of all things. If we have been born again into His family, then it is our privilege and joy just to be caught up in what He is doing – to call Him Father, trust His sovereign care, and admire His excellent work. All the glory goes to God!

We must always remember that our love for another must have as its deepest motivation “the glory and praise of God.” Not the glory and praise of myself, not the glory and praise of my family, not the glory and praise of my favorite ministry or program, not the glory and praise of our congregation, but the glory and praise of God. Glorifying God should energize the whole course of our life. When you are learning for the sake of loving, when you are applying that knowledge in loving deeds, when you are sizing things up and choosing what is excellent, when you are speaking or sharing or serving, “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). 

Let us pray.

ENDNOTES

[1] For the translation “the things that really matter” see Silva, Moisés. Philippians: Second Edition (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005: p. 38.

[2] See Hansen, G. Walter. The Letter to the Philippians (Pillar New Testament Commentary). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009: p. 59-60. Also see John MacArthur, “Essentials for Growth in Godliness, Part 2.” May 22, 1988 sermon. Available online at Grace to You: https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/50-6/essentials-for-growth-in-godliness-part-2.

[3] See Hansen, G. Walter. The Letter to the Philippians (Pillar New Testament Commentary). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009: p. 60-62. The quotation is found on p. 62.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTE: My inclusion of a bibliography reflects my interaction with other teachers in the preparation of my sermon. While the main part of my preparation involves my direct interaction with the biblical text, I find it helpful to invite other “discussion partners” into my preparation process. My mention of these teachers (writers, speakers, etc.) does not imply any particular level of agreement with them, nor does it constitute an endorsement of their work. That said, I am appreciative of those – past and present – who are seeking to faithfully teach God’s Word, and I am happy to benefit from their labor.

Boice, James Montgomery. Philippians: An Expositional Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.

Hansen, G. Walter. The Letter to the Philippians (Pillar New Testament Commentary). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

Carson, D. A. Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996.

Hansen, G. Walter. The Letter to the Philippians (Pillar New Testament Commentary). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

Hellerman, Joseph H. Embracing Shared Ministry: Power and Status in the Early Church and Why It Matters Today. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2013.

MacArthur, John. “Essentials for Growth in Godliness, Part 2.” May 22, 1988 sermon. Available online at Grace to You: https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/50-6/essentials-for-growth-in-godliness-part-2.

Silva, Moisés. Philippians: Second Edition (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.