Albert Barnes Commentary Philippians 1:9

"And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;" — Philippians 1:9 (ASV)

And this I pray. We pray for those whom we love and whose welfare we seek. We desire their happiness, and there is no more appropriate way of expressing that desire than by going to God and seeking it from his hand. Paul proceeds to list the blessings he sought for them. It is worthy of observation that he did not ask for riches or worldly prosperity; instead, his supplications were confined to spiritual blessings, and he sought these as the most desirable of all favors.

That your love may abound, etc. Love to God, love to one another, love to absent Christians, love to the world. This is an appropriate subject of prayer. We cannot wish and pray for a better thing for our Christian friends than that they may abound in love. Nothing will promote their welfare like this. We would do better to pray for this than for them to obtain abundant riches and share the honors and pleasures of the world.

In knowledge. The idea is that he wished them to have intelligent affection. It should not be mere blind affection, but an intelligent love based on an enlarged view of Divine things—on a just apprehension of God's claims.

And in all judgment. The marginal reading is sense. See the notes on Hebrews 5:14.

The word here means the power of discerning, and the meaning is that he wished their love to be exercised with proper discrimination.

This love should be in proportion to the relative value of objects. The overall meaning is that he wished their religion to be intelligent and discriminating: to be based on knowledge, and a proper sense of the relative value of objects, as well as to be the tender affection of the heart.