to gain knowledge and insight...
To start, april did not see any blogging...for that i'm sorry.
A few of my fellow friends meet on tuesday mornings and we talk about life and the bible. Lately, we've been discussing philippians, which is one of my favorite epistles, money in the bank from start to finish (only four chapters). In chapter one, I continually get hung up on verse nine, which reads, "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowldege and all discernment."(NASB) To begin to try and learn what Paul was saying, I think to myself that we must first love, but that love comes more fully through knowledge and discernment/insight. The ordeal comes on how to go about loving and learning how to by gaining knowledge.
To understand love, one must look to how pauline describes love - which is the fruit of the spirit. By loving others and having a loving nature of God, I will have joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness along with gentleness and self-control - all of which are in essence of love. These are things that christians strive to do but fail daily...as well as succeed in daily (i'm usually optimistic). Knowledge is what abounds from love, which produces a deeper love, and that deeper love conitnues to go deeper in knowledge - the way I just wrote this can be confusing but really depicts how I/we desire to live our lives. We are first changed by God and experience his love and then try to learn who he is, then try to express that love to others all while having more challenges in life that make us want to continue to seek God so that we can ultimately be like his character. True? I think so. However, for further explanation (because I know you are so hooked right now) the word for knowledge is epignosis, which is more intentional than gnosis because it expressesa more thorough participation in the object of knowledge on the part of the knowing subject. (notes from my NASB) It is knowledge that has a powerfully influential tone to it, in which the object of our faith and knowledge is Jesus. Praise be to God.
All that to say that I enjoy studying this book and will continue to comment on it. Peace.
A few of my fellow friends meet on tuesday mornings and we talk about life and the bible. Lately, we've been discussing philippians, which is one of my favorite epistles, money in the bank from start to finish (only four chapters). In chapter one, I continually get hung up on verse nine, which reads, "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowldege and all discernment."(NASB) To begin to try and learn what Paul was saying, I think to myself that we must first love, but that love comes more fully through knowledge and discernment/insight. The ordeal comes on how to go about loving and learning how to by gaining knowledge.
To understand love, one must look to how pauline describes love - which is the fruit of the spirit. By loving others and having a loving nature of God, I will have joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness along with gentleness and self-control - all of which are in essence of love. These are things that christians strive to do but fail daily...as well as succeed in daily (i'm usually optimistic). Knowledge is what abounds from love, which produces a deeper love, and that deeper love conitnues to go deeper in knowledge - the way I just wrote this can be confusing but really depicts how I/we desire to live our lives. We are first changed by God and experience his love and then try to learn who he is, then try to express that love to others all while having more challenges in life that make us want to continue to seek God so that we can ultimately be like his character. True? I think so. However, for further explanation (because I know you are so hooked right now) the word for knowledge is epignosis, which is more intentional than gnosis because it expressesa more thorough participation in the object of knowledge on the part of the knowing subject. (notes from my NASB) It is knowledge that has a powerfully influential tone to it, in which the object of our faith and knowledge is Jesus. Praise be to God.
All that to say that I enjoy studying this book and will continue to comment on it. Peace.
posted by Levi at
3:08 PM
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