I cannot think of a single job or occupation that does not attempt to tell the difference between one thing or another. For instance, a doctor must discern constantly between the levels of severity of a cough, or a pain, or an x-ray, etc… He must be able to tell the difference between one thing or another with precision. A police officer must learn the difference between the times to use lethal force or not. He has to learn to discern between a man with bad intentions or a man with good intentions. A housewife needs to learn the difference between one child who is telling the truth and the other who is not.
To learn the difference between one thing or another is necessary to everyday life: when to stop driving, when to go; when to keep talking, when to stop and listen; who to trust and who not to trust. The list can go on, and on.
However, when it comes to righteousness, we don’t want to make those distinctions. The church seems to be resenting the men who, as elders, leaders, pastors of local churches, have it as their “occupation” to make constant distinctions between levels of righteousness and how to react to them. For some reason, the church has come to resent an elder who brings up the harm that a certain behavior can do to a person if he/she continues going a certain direction. Or, there is self-protecting disagreement when a pastor brings out a passage of Scripture meant to instruct a brother or sister in Christ against wrong and towards right.
Well, you get the point.
Paul wrote:
Philippians 1:9–11 (NAS): 9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;
11 having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Paul’s prayer is that the believers of Philippi, believers who are going a good direction and are receiving praise from the apostle to the Gentiles, are encouraged to grow in their love. To that end, he prays for them.
But, notice: love must include discernment. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Kittel, Friedrich, Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1964, Logos electronic edition, αἰσθάνομαι, vol.1, p.188.), writes that the word carries the idea of “(that) which constitute the psychological point at which moral decisions becomes actual.” There is a point at which the shot has to be fired, so to speak. The timing of the shot is decided upon by the “organ of the soul” that is discernment.
The other uses of the word include: the Septuagint in Proverbs 1:7 for wisdom; Luke 9:45 for the ignorance of the disciples; Hebrews 5:14 for the inability of the spiritually immature to tell the difference between solid food and spiritual milk.
For a Christian to reject the exercise (literally, “gymnastics” of Hebrews 5:14) of the faculty of discernment is for the Christian to remain a child-undiscerning, tending towards foolish decisions, and little-to-no sense of right and wrong (or, as the OT puts it, “(the unbelieving Ninevites) don’t know the difference between their right and left hand…” Jonah 4:11). This kind of mind that is simple, non-discerning, giving validity to any kind of emotion, behavior, or ideaology, is a mind that is like a child and like an unbeliever who remains in darkness and can’t see for lack of light.
May I encourage you? Don’t resent discernment and those who impose that kind of thing on you. Receive the verdicts and wise counsel of those who have had their senses trained by the Word of God enough to know, very acutely, the distinction between right and wrong.
Sketches of Scripture 