Love Abounding

G.D. Watson

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more …” —Philippians 1:9

In this prayer of Paul for the Philippians, we have one of those panoramic views of the elements of a complete Christian. This word “love” is emphatically the love of God. The word agape is invariably used to express a divine affection imparted to the soul by the Holy Ghost; this is the love referred to in the text. 

Previous to regeneration the soul may have various feelings toward God and Christ—of reverence, respect, admiration of His grandeur and works, a poetical taste for His natural attributes, an attachment and regard to the ordinances of religion, but every such affection can be accounted for on the basis of natural love. When we are born of the Spirit there is shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, a peculiar and hitherto unknown love for God and His Son Jesus. It is a personal attachment to our Heavenly Father, a heart passion toward the Lord Jesus, a deep yearning for the Divine, an instinctive and dominant regard for the things of God which is utterly beyond the products of nature. No degree of cultural refinement, no religious ceremony, no rigid discipline of law, no literary sentimentalism, no study of the material works of God, no poetical genius, no mere influence of Christianity, can ever produce that heavenly affection designated in the word agape. It is a river whose head waters are in a better world; it is a spring from the heart of God; it is poured like a waterfall upon the world through the atonement. It is opened up in our hearts in regeneration; and under the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost it rises to high tide, filling the banks of our being until the heart, the speech, the intellectual faculties, and all the inner senses are deluged with its holy energy, according to the prayer of the text.

The next word to be explained is “more and more.” I pray that your love may overflow more and more. This expression “more and more” is greatly misunderstood as applied to religion. We hear people speak of getting more religion, more pardon, more cleansing, etc. Such a use of the term results from a lack of spiritual enlightenment. In this passage it refers to the increase of love, knowledge, discernment, and the positive side of grace in the soul, and not to the negative side of eliminating evil.

There is a negative and a positive side to the spiritual life, both in the new birth and sanctification. In conversion the negative side is pardon, removing of guilt; the positive side is regeneration, an imparting of the love and life of God to the soul. There are no degrees in pardon—it is full, perfect, complete. But on the positive side there may be an increase in the intensity and evidence of regeneration. In like manner the negative side of holiness is the purging out from the heart the native carnal mind. The positive side is filling the purified heart with the life and grace of the Spirit. The Scriptures do not teach any degrees of cleansing the heart from original sin. In every passage where this work of purification is referred to, it is spoken of as a complete, full, entire work, without degrees or gradualism. But the filling of the purified soul with certainty, light, love, unction, energy, and all the positive forms of grace is characterized by the terms “growth,” “increase,” “built up,” “abound,” “enlarge,” and “more and more.” When a farmer clears his land, the removal of stones and stumps and all obstructions is the negative work, and can be so perfectly finished that he would never find another old root or rock in the field, but the positive side of deepening the soil, fertilizing it, irrigating it, rendering it more productive, can be increased “more and more” without a special limit. So it is with the work of grace in the soul; hence the long and beautiful vista which is opened up in this expression of “more and more “ must be understood just as the apostle designates it—the limitless enlargement of love.