Joy in Partnership
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may 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: 3-11
A Vision of Joy in Partnership
I love team sports. I love watching them. I used to love playing them. When I did school gymnastics I remember jumping like the child I was when we built pyramids. I felt my spirit soar when I played ball games and team sports. You know what I am talking about. You played well, you worked together well, you earned respect, and most importantly you gained self-respect.
There are few things that give motivation like being around people who get along and do great things together. There is a joy in fellowship, but especially when we get beyond fellowship to partnership. When we enter a partnership we get beyond chit chat to deep and meaningful sharing and work together. St Paul had this partnership with the Philippians. There are few things that comfort like a community that lives and works in peace and harmony.
Following the lead of our text, I wish to encourage each one of you to be the best person you can be through your partnership with God and others in the body of Christ. We will look at what God brings to this partnership, and what we bring to this partnership. Let's also say a 'war cry!' When I say, 'Thank God you are here,' let's have you respond with, 'I don't know what I would do without you.'
Thank God you are here!
Our Share in Joy with God and Others
Let's have a look at our Christ inspired partnership and how God intermingles his part in it with our part in it. Listen to St Paul's words:
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
From these verses the first thing we learn is that St Paul had Joy. You have to know where to get joy and how to hang on to it. St Paul did! Joy is the key word in 'The Letter to the Philippians.' There are things that rob us of joy, but we can take the joy back. St Paul wrote this letter from prison. He did not let prison rob him of joy. He never lost his joy. It came from knowing his sins and having them forgiven. That is the 'gospel.' We cannot skip over our need for forgiveness. That means we have to 'fees' up, confess our sins to God and to each other as is appropriate. If we do not 'fees' up and let him clean us up, then we will mess up more. There is a shortage of joy because there is a shortage of confession and forgiveness. St Paul knew what God forgave him of. This made him joyful.
(There is nothing to be gained by living in denial about sin and how we mess up. Aside from false or wrongly imagined guilt, guilt is not a bad feeling. False or wrongly imagined guilt is when we blame ourselves for things we did not cause. Real guilt is the guilt we feel when we have done something wrong. It is a warning signal that we better own up to what we have done wrong and make things right, or we will have to live with the consequences.) The main person you hurt when you do not 'fees' up is yourself. Knowing that you are forgiven gives you the confidence that you are loved and accepted. Christ sent St Paul on a life-long joy ride. He was signed him up for an eternal partnership to tell people about the source of joy: the forgiveness that only Christ can give.
Thank God you are here!
Confident Joy-filled Prayer
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,...9 And this is my prayer:
Our part in the partnership with God is not to complete a legalistic set of do’s and don'ts: things we must do, and things we must not do. Nor are we marketing secrets to joy and competing for a place on 'The New York Best Seller List.' There is no other secret to joy than confession and forgiveness. Our part in this partnership with God is to pray joyfully.
St Paul got on the joy team with a passion for joyful prayer. Here is a clue to prayer. If you want to learn to pray begin all your prayers with thanksgiving, gratitude, joy. One thing we learn repeatedly from St Paul is to make all of our prayers with thanks to God, even for people we are in conflict with. St Paul addresses suffering and conflict in Philippians 2 and elsewhere. So even in the letter of joy, Philippians, St Paul does not live in denial about suffering, hardship and conflict. Whatever hardship you face praise God for it, expecting that he will use it for his glory. In the same way, thank God for the people around you. You know, if you weren't here I wouldn't be here. (That's a scary thought.)
Joy is a gift of God's grace to us in Christ. In fact, joy, gift and grace come from the same root greek work. They are something God puts in our hearts through the forgiveness of our sin. Paul recognised his sin. The joy he found in being a forgiven persecutor of Christ and his body gave him something to be joyful about no matter what he went through. It was this that shaped his prayers and it will shape ours as well if we desire to pray correctly.
When we know the grace of God that he forgives us our sin, then we want the best for other people. You cannot hate someone or wish evil on someone while you are joyful. You must give up your joy first. However, when you celebrate Christ's forgiveness of your sin, then your prayers will overflow with joy and goodwill toward others.
(St Paul's sin was out in the open. So was his forgiveness. Your sin may be private. Private sin requires private confession and forgiveness. Public sin requires public confession and forgiveness. I was invited to the bedside of a dying 80 year old by his family. I wondered why I was there when the man said that he had not sinned. He explained that he had not robbed a bank or killed anyone. Reflecting on this after his burial, he may have only thought of those things as sin since a number of his family were escorted to his graveside in identifiable prison clothes by police. Standing at his bedside I gazed upon a pile of pornography. I asked him whether he thought there was a connection between the sin of lust and looking at pornography. I led him in a prayer and could only pray any confession he made was genuine.)
From forgiveness flows an abundance of prayer that we grow in the knowledge of Christ and what is best for us. Oh, to be pure and blameless when Jesus comes back publicly. However, we do have a share in the purity of Christ now. It is a gift of his grace to us that he deems us pure and blameless in the here and now. It is granted us through our confession and forgiveness of sin. This is 'the righteousness that comes to us through Christ.' Note where that fruit of righteousness comes from. It is given to us through Christ (verse 11). Joy-filled prayer always leads us to do the right/righteous thing toward others.
Thank God you are here!
The Mathematics of Joy
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
I think that there is a mathematics of joy. They say a smile is infectious, pass it on. It is hard not to smile at a person who smiles at you. There is a saying that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved, and a joy shared is a joy doubled. If you grasp the significance of Christ's forgiveness of your sins you cannot help but tell others about the joy of that forgiveness. Forgiveness multiplies joy. When we deny others forgiveness and grace we crush their spirit, and we rob them and ourselves of joy. On the other hand, when we give people grace and forgiveness then joy gets multiplied.
St Paul had Christ in his heart. Christ governed his attitude toward others. He celebrated his partnership in the gospel of forgiveness with all who received it. When we do not confess our sins against each other in marriage, family, community, and so on, we do not experience the joy of forgiveness. There are sins of commission which we do, and there are sins of omission which we omit to do. Confession and forgiveness releases us in a partnership that reflects Christ and multiplies joy.
The forgiveness and grace that Christ gives you is not a fictional forgiveness. It is sealed with his body and blood given into death for the forgiveness of your sins. Joy flows from the heart of Christ into our heart, then the affection of Christ flows out from our heart toward others, as did St Paul's. It overflowed into how he felt about others.
Thank God you are here!
A Day of Endless Joy in Eternal Partnership with God
'he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.' If we cannot change something in our own strength, we may as well hand it over to God with a sense of expectancy, joy, and gratitude for what he has in mind to do with it. God did a good job in making you. That can be hard to believe, but things go best when we trust what he is doing. One way or the other God will achieve his purposes. So we may as well get some satisfaction by giving him an expression of joyful confidence that he will compete his work in us.
St Paul prays that our 'love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that (we) may be able to discern what is best and may 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.' You will notice that St Paul does not complete his thought in this sentence. It is rather like verses in Ephesians and Romans 8 that speak of height and depth, length and breadth. They imply that God is able to keep us in his love. (They are intended to ring a bell that counters superstition and magic incantations to invoke the powers of false gods. See the commentary on Ephesians 'Power and Magic'.) St Paul wants us to have no doubt about God's love of us so that our capacity to share the love of God gets bigger and bigger. He also wants us to discern that we cannot better the gift of righteousness that Christ gives us. Since Christ takes away our sin to make us pure and blameless, we can figure out what things are best for us, so that we stay pure and blameless, ready for the day of Jesus' return .
(I encourage you to grow in the knowledge of Christ and his word. I encourage you to a life of joyful prayer. I encourage you to such prayers for yourself, your children, and for others. I encourage you to live in such a way that you grow in the knowledge of Christ and discern what is good and best for you, so that you bear the fruit of righteousness to the glory and praise of God. I encourage each one of you to be the best person you can be through a partnership with God and others in the family of Christ.)
There is a day of endless joy coming when Jesus returns. Be ready for it. God has begun a good work in you. He will finish what he started when he made you. He has so much confidence in you that he wants you to partner with him in his work. Have no doubt about the love of God for you. Others need you to show them the love of God by your extending to them the joy of forgiveness that you have received from Christ. Others learn about God from how you live. Others cannot figure God out, so they need to see the difference Christ makes to your life for them to get a clearer picture of God. Others need to see how we cling to Christ and his righteousness, and not our own good works. Others will not hear about God unless we work in partnership with him to tell them about him. When Jesus comes back, the joy we have will be of endless partnership with God.
What does the joy of forgiveness and the joy of partnership of God mean to you? Can others tell that you have joy?
Turn to the people around you and say to them, 'Thank God you are here!' When you have done that, say to yourself, 'Thank you God that you are here, and thank you for the joy of making me your partner in the gospel with these others.'
