And does that love of affection and delight well up and overflow into action—into real, concrete deeds of service and self-sacrifice? Are you sacrificially committing yourselves to one another—pouring yourselves out as a drink offering, upon the sacrifice and service of the faith of your dear brothers and sisters? Are you being inconvenienced by meeting the needs of the saints, but counting the loss of that convenience as gain for the sake of the surpassing value of the communion with Christ (cf. Phil 3:8) that comes as a result of serving His people the way He did?

Therefore, my beloved brethren whom I long to see, my joy and crown, in this way stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.
– Philippians 4:1–

As glorious as it is to be brothers and sisters in Christ, that metaphor alone does not exhaust the description of believers’ relationship to one another. It goes even deeper than that. It’s true that the familial bond wrapped up in the term “brethren” is objective; you don’t have a choice who your brothers and sisters are. And sometimes you don’t always like them, do you? And almost as if the Apostle Paul is thinking that very thing, he adds a second term of endearment to describe his relationship with his fellow-believers in Philippi. They are beloved.

Look again at verse 1. Literally, “Therefore, my brethren, whom I love and long for….” And then after he gives them the exhortation to “stand firm in the Lord,” again, at the end of the verse, Paul repeats this designation and calls them “my beloved” again. The relationship he has with the Philippians is not one of feuding brothers and sisters; there’s no thought of, “Well, you’re my brother and so I guess I’m stuck with you.” No. He brackets the verse by expressing his deep and heartfelt love for them.

This word that the NAS translates “beloved” is the adjective form of the Greek word agape, which scholars describe as “the richest, deepest, and strongest Greek word for love.” William Hendriksen writes that this love is “deep-seated, self-sacrificing, thorough, intelligent, and purposeful—a love in which the entire personality takes part.”

The Love of Affection

And there are two components to this biblical love that exists between fellow believers in Jesus. The first component is affection, or you might also say delight. This love looks upon its object and, seeing its loveliness and worthiness, finds great pleasure in it.

Surely this was true of Paul as he treasured his friendship with the Philippians. We learn from this epistle that their hearts had been uniquely knit together in the partnership of Gospel ministry. He speaks of the Philippians’ “participation in the gospel from the first day until now” (Phil 1:5), and says, “It is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me” (Phil 1:7). And then again in chapter 4, he draws attention to the fact that after he left Macedonia, “no church shared with [him] in the matter of giving and receiving but [the Philippians’] alone” (Phil 4:15).

And so Paul can look upon the Philippians, and take pleasure in them with the love of affection, because of their progress in grace. They are not lovely or worthy in and of themselves, but as they become increasingly conformed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul sees Christ in them—and He is the sum and substance of all beauty and delightfulness and loveliness.

The Love of Action

But this love does not stay merely at the level of affection. When the heart is so full of delight in the beloved, that affection expresses itself in action. It is the kind of love that produces a sacrificial commitment to one another, that suffers great cost to oneself, if necessary, in order to benefit the beloved.

Read More