October 5

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, — Phil 1:9 BSB

Love is especially the result of knowledge, and love, we know, is a fruit of the blessed Spirit. As the Holy Spirit reveals the precious truths of God to the soul, love embraces what He reveals. In this way, there is a knowledge of the one true God, taught by the Spirit. But our love is to grow not only in knowledge, which is its foundation, because without knowledge of the Lord there can be no love for Him or His people, but also in all feelings, in all spiritual sense, in all experience.

Spiritual knowledge and personal experience are the two sources that nurture Christian love. They are like two streams flowing from the throne of the Most High, meeting and merging into that vast river of love. It is through this union of knowledge and experience, divine light and heavenly life, the Spirit’s teaching and His witness, the truth in our understanding and the feeling in our hearts, that love is sustained in the soul and flows toward the Lord and His people.

This spiritual knowledge is vastly different from mere intellectual head knowledge. One is like a flowing river, the other like a stagnant pool; one nourishes the heart, making it fruitful in every good work, the other leaves it a barren swamp, filled with everything vile, producing only sickness, decay, and death. The union of knowledge and experience, sustaining love, distinguishes the Spirit’s true work from any counterfeit. Where the true work of the Spirit is, there will be genuine knowledge and heartfelt experience.

This is the unique blessing of living experience, that it works hand in hand with gracious knowledge to sustain heavenly love. Christ is the end and purpose of both—the goal of all saving knowledge and the purpose of all true experience. In everything, He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.