Affectionate Fellowship
“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. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.”
Paul provides us in these verses with a challenging example for the church. This Apostle was an incredible example of what a Christian should be.
In the previous verse, he wrote of his confidence that God will continue to work in them and will complete that work. And in verse 7 he wrote that it was right for him to feel this way for them, because he held them in his heart”.
He then grounds this statement with, “for you are all partakers with me of grace.” So that’s the reason he held them in his heart. The term heart refers to a deep seated affection for them, he held them in the very core of his being. His reason for doing this was because of their partaking of grace with him. This reminds me of coming to the communion table, it’s a reminder of our unity, where we all partake of and fellowship in the sacrament, we all fellowship in giving thanks to our Saviour, Jesus Christ, we all partake in the grace of Jesus Christ.
Paul then wrote of a particular grace they fellowship in? Imprisonment, Paul counted his imprisonment as grace from God, which is radical, Paul counted it as an honour to suffer for the sake of Christ, and the Philippians fellowshipped with him in this by praying for him (Phil. 1:19) and sending him financial gifts. They also fellowshipped with him in the gospel, as their testimonies confirmed and defended it.
Paul writes of yearning for the Philippians. I work in a nursing home, and when the first lockdown was lifted, the residents had one visit a week with restrictions in place. I sometimes had the pleasure of overseeing these visitations and was sometimes touched as I saw family members and friends finally - after over 3 months – getting to see their loved ones. Many of them were moved to tears, by simply seeing them. Their affection for their loved ones was so deep that they wept and trembled. Oh, how they must have yearned for their loved one in the nursing home.
I think when Paul writes he ‘yearns’ for the Philippians, it’s the same thing as holding them in his heart, but he adds a little more, he yearned for them with the affection of Christ Jesus. Think about that, he was yearning for the Philippians with the affection that Jesus has for them. This was Jesus loving them through Paul.
When two people who love each other touch their heart beat and breathing synchronises. It’s almost like their bodies are united to each other. This analogy is very flawed, but, in the same way, to some extent, when we become Christians, we are spiritually united to Christ, and over time our affections synchronise, his yearning is our yearning, and our yearning is him yearning in and through us. That means this affection that believers have for each other is supernatural. When Paul writes of yearning with the affection of Jesus, he is saying, Jesus is yearning for you, and this yearning is being expressed through me and my yearning.
This is what Christian love truly is, it’s Jesus expressing his love in and through us, it is a deep spiritual reality because it comes from our union with Christ in the Spirit.
And this creates a great challenge for us in this time of lockdown; you know I haven’t felt this yearning after you all in 2nd and 3rd but I so pray that God would work in my heart, and in yours, so that we could experience Christ’s affection in our hearts for each other, so that we could know experientially what Paul experienced for the Philippians. So that we could experience on a greater level our union with Christ.
