"For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God." Philippians 1:8-10 NRSV
Below is a quote from Stephen Fowl about the passage above. It is from his excellent commentary on Philippians in the New Horizons series.
"This verse expands the notion of having the Philippians in his heart. Paul "longs" for the Philippians. Paul uses the same expression to express his longing for the other churches as well (see 1 Thess 3:6; Rom 1:11; 2 Timothy 1:4). It is also the term used in 2:26 of Epaphroditus's longing for the Philippians. In addition to deepening the notion of Paul having the Philippians in his heart, the longing here is given christological focus by the phrase, "with the affection of Jesus Christ". Thus, Paul's longing is not simply a personal yearning. Rather, it reflects the love Christ has for the Philippians (Fowl, p.31).
I suggested that when Paul tells the Philippians that he is longing for them with the compassion of Christ Jesus that, among other things, he is modeling how they ought to long for one another in and with the same love. In general I think we sell short the importance of church-life and Christian community when it comes to how we think about our individual lives. I think part of the reason for this is a consumerist mentality which shapes even our approach to church. And, one of the unhappy inheritances from the Reformation is an emphasis on an individual relationship at the expense of a high regard for the place of Christian community in spiritual formation. As Alister McGrath puts it: the priesthood of all believers became for many of us the priesthood of each believer.
Rowan Williams, in his book, Tokens of Trust, offers a refreshing vision of Christian community that complements Paul's vision of Christians longing for one another with the compassion of Jesus Christ:
"If you have a gift, it's there so that you can help another to become a giver in turn. God's gift makes givers. But notice too hwo the converse works: .... Paul speaks about his own experience of being made to suffer when other Christians are made to suffer. 'Who is weak and I am not weak?' he asks. When another Christian is frustrated, held back from growing, Paul too is held back. We grow only together. It is incidentally, a powerful indication of what is new and mysterious about the role of ministry in the Christian community. The apostle, the public witness of Jesus' resurrection, who directs the thoughts and prayers of the Church, is the one in whom the porous boundaries of life in Christ are most pronounced, the one who senses most acutely both the joy and the pain of other believers. The apostle's ministry is thus not essentially one of control but one of literal com-passion, suffering with, and congratulation, rejoicing with. There is something to ponder for those of us who hold 'apostolic' roles in the Church; it should not be like the priesthoods and hieararchies of ancient religion, because it is to do with inhabiting the common life with a particular intensity, so that the minister can point with authority to what is basic in this common life"
My take-away is this: in order to grow we need each other to be porous in the way Williams suggests.
