For God is my witness how I long after you all in the inward parts of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:8).
The church life requires a core sense — a fellowship, or a way of understanding among the saints and across generations that is linked by this pure, innermost sense of life. When Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, he was in prison, and he says in 1:8 that he longed after them all. In the original Greek, this “long for” means “to desire,” or “to pursue with love.” It’s more than just thinking about someone; it has a connotation of missing, remembering — even yearning or hungering. And he writes that he longed for them all in the inward parts of Christ Jesus; that is, Paul wasn’t longing for them in himself, but in the inward parts of Christ Jesus. This kind of fellowship is nothing official or businesslike; this core sense connects us in an intimate, powerful way in life. When we open the Bible, the Bible removes all distractions to bring us to that pure, straightforward sense, which is the spiritual sense. That sense makes us spiritual beings.
Throughout all of Paul’s epistles, this sense brought Paul’s presence and powerful serving to the saints as the recipients of his writing. Today, Paul’s letters continue to serve us. His writing has power more than 2,000 years later not just because his letters are beautifully written or theologically rigorous, but because human beings were created in this way — to receive life and dispense life; in other words, we were created not only as physical beings, but also as spiritual beings. To believers awakened to this core sense of life, Paul’s experiences are intimate, open and accessible, reaching us in a powerful way through Christ. This mysterious life surpasses time and space. Just as Paul longed for the saints in the inward parts of Christ Jesus and was one with the Lord in his longing, today we find ourselves one with the Lord and one with His body, longing for one another in Christ Jesus (1:8). The church life is so mysterious because while it indeed is very practical, just like Paul’s serving to the saints, it functions not according to the physical realm, but rather by life in the spiritual domain.
Even when Paul was physically far from the saints, as he was when he wrote his epistle to the Philippians, he sensed their condition with a clear spirit. Paul wrote in this way having suffered from such divisions that even preaching the gospel was a point of striving (1:15-17). Throughout his letter, Paul addresses the Philippians regarding their mind, their thinking, their soul, and even their lack of service towards him (1:27; 2:2-5, 20-21, 2:30; 3:15). In the beginning of chapter four, Paul specifically exhorts two sisters, Euodias and Syntyche, “to think the same thing in the Lord” (4:2). This thinking is not just any thinking — but to “seek for” or to “direct the mind to.” The world is full of opinions and individualism — of divisions. And when we aren’t in the mind of Christ, which grants us the deep core sense in spirit, we too bring divisions into the church life. Division — anything besides this oneness — is the greatest damage to the church life. Paul knows the fallen human tendency to murmur, to reason, and to seek after our own things all stem from the mind (2:14, 21). This is why Paul exhorts the saints to think the same thing. Our mind must be renewed and tuned to this life sense — to be one in the inward parts of Christ Jesus.
Paul desired the saints to be one in this core sense — in longing, in thinking — in the inward parts of Christ Jesus so that they could function unto the building up of the church. In the church life, saints start to grow and mature because they start to put their hands on serving other saints. Without putting our hands into serving, longing for one another is just an empty saying. Only when we come to this longing in the core part of our being — in the inward parts of Christ Jesus — can we begin a true serving life. In the church life, there is no living for ourselves. There is no living two lives — a “meeting life” and a “home life.” There is no public life and private life, no “your things” and “my things.” There is just one, authentic life of living for the church and living for one another, joined together, like-souled and caring for “the things of Christ Jesus” to bring each member of the Body to be “full-grown” in Christ (2:21; 3:15). Indeed, the closing of the book of Philippians shows us the way that qualifies us to become New Testament ministers: these saints were laboring with Paul (4:3, 14, 17-18). We need to have these hands-on experiences, to labor and to long for the apostles; then we will have that oneness, growth, and maturity in life.
In our experiences of the church life, how often do we long for one another? Do we truly think of one another, not in an emotional or religious way, but with a genuine pursuit after each other with love? When we do think of the saints, is it pure? Is it true? Is it one with the inward parts of Christ Jesus? Many times it may be the case that we are selfish, just as it was in the church in Philippi, and that we carry our opinions about the church life or the saints. There may be a mixture in our service because we are lacking the sense of life or fail to exercise this sense of life that has been deposited into us. This longing for the saints that Paul had was a mature and deep sense from his inner being — the inward parts, or bowels, of Christ Jesus. To truly “think” of one another — to serve with this incredibly fine, intimate life sense — is only possible in the inward parts of Christ Jesus.
Sometimes, the apostle thinks of us or longs for us, but we don’t long for him. We often speak of great saints who went before us, paving the way for our churching today. And yet do we really know these saints? How can we truly receive their serving today, across generations, and intimately know them as our dear brothers and sisters? We need to long, just as Paul longed for the church. Paul later says in 4:10, “But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly because now at length you have caused your thinking for me to blossom anew; for which matter you had indeed taken thought, but lacked opportunity.” If we have that longing, there will be a blossoming and an understanding. Paul’s writing and his serving will be intimate to us — not abstract. Paul was rejoicing because the Philippians’ thinking towards him had “blossomed anew.” This blossoming anew or “flourishing again” in Greek is anathallō — to shoot up, to sprout, to grow green again. This “thinking” is a seeking — a caring for, a longing for — that perhaps the saints in Philippi had not enjoyed for a long time. What had died, what had hibernated, what had become stagnant, now revived — this life relationship blossomed anew! When that pure fellowship in life was restored — something new and of life quickened inside of these saints. If we have that blossoming, we will love those raising and serving us, just as we will love the saints in Colossae, Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, Thessalonica alongside the saints around us today. We will be joined in soul to the apostle, thinking the same thing.
The “thinking the same thing” and “longing for each other” that Paul wrote of in his epistle to the Philippians is powerful not just for those being served, but also for the serving one. When Paul was in prison, this longing for the saints was a power keeping him alive. If we’ve ever loved and cherished someone, that longing for the loved one will produce something tangible and transformative in us. It is not just thinking of them and missing them; the longing transports and transforms us to be one — to be in pure fellowship with them. There is a life sense that is beyond the physical realm, which is accessed by a true longing in the spirit and in soul. In the church life, we should have this same life sense as Paul did. Not only do we truly know the saints by this life sense, but our being is transformed by it. May we be quickened by our being one with Christ Jesus, and truly experience this blossoming anew among us. When we cultivate this core sense of life, we know why we are here. This core value — that overcoming life sense — gives us a privilege and a way to function. Our serving is spontaneously possible in our daily living; a sobriety — a fine, genuine, and disciplined sensitivity, an intuition by the spirit — comes from that life fellowship beyond time and space.
If today we go through the church life, we need to be equipped, constituted, recovered, and rejuvenated; most of all, we need to be functioning. The Bible will be opened to us, as will Paul’s experiences in life be unlocked, and the New Testament ministry will also be ours. Once we put our hands on to serve with reality — with this core sense — then, spontaneously, growth will happen! Many years are redeemed in an instant. It’s a subjective experience, as John mentions in his first epistle: “…which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld and our hands handled…we report also to you that you also may have fellowship with us” (1 John 1:1a, 3a). There is Someone — the One — we behold whenever we engage in this longing, thinking, and serving. This One transforms us and causes us to grow. When we long for someone, aren’t we immediately transported? Aren’t we transformed into someone new in this very life sense? Don’t we behold something that isn’t physical yet is becoming very tangible to us, to the point that we can handle Him? There is something so real and substantial that all of us are growing into through the inward parts of Christ Jesus, which quickens us to grow, see, and handle the things of life as Paul did. The more we long for, think the same thing, and put our hands in to serve the saints, the more we become one with those serving us. This is the way we are served by the New Testament ministry and how we can continue to dispense and serve its riches and perfecting power to others.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 12/12/2021, not reviewed by the speaker.)