Discernment: Rooted in Love, Fueled by Grace

Discernment has fallen on hard times. In our times, it seems that anything goes, even within the Church. Sadly, many Christians don’t understand discernment or how to practice and grow it. Perhaps some of us even have negative connotations with the word, thanks to “discernment bloggers.” And yet, discernment is something every Christian is called to practice and grow in. But what is it? Why are we called to it? How do we grow in it?

Defining terms

In our days of being loosy-goosy with the dictionary, defining terms is important. I appreciate the one Jay Adams penned and commend it to you, “the divinely given ability to distinguish God’s thoughts and ways from all others.”[1]

We are called to be people who can judge truth from error and what is good from what is excellent. There is no neutrality in this life. Jesus made it clear that whoever is not for Him is against Him (Mt. 12:30), which is why we must understand what discernment is. We want to discern rightly, according to God.

In 1 Corinthians 2:10b-16, Paul tells his readers,

“For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.””

From the get-go, we must understand that discernment is from the Lord. We are utterly and totally dependent on Him!

Why Is Discernment so important?

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9-11, ESV).

This passage teaches that discernment is tied to our love for God and others. Love motivates the desire and need to be discerning.

When asked what the most important commandment was, Jesus answered in two parts: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27, ESV).

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us that we can prophesy, speak in tongues, understand all mysteries and knowledge, have faith to move mountains and give away everything we have, BUT if we don’t have love, we are nothing, and we gain nothing. In fact, we can have all those things, but they will pass away, and only love will remain (1 Cor 13:8-10).

God prioritizes love over everything else. So, the first “why” behind discernment, the reason for pursuing it, is to love the Lord and others according to His will. Our love for Him and others will grow, deepen, and mature as we grow in knowledge and discernment.

It’s worth saying that a Biblical understanding of love is vitally important. The Lord governs, confines, or puts the borders around how we think about and act in love. This includes instruction not only on what we may and may not love but also on what love looks like and what it’s not. Please take the time to study the Word to gain wisdom and understanding here as well!

You’ll be woefully misguided if you rely on our culture to inform you. We must turn to the Word. 

Excellence, Purity, Blamelessness, and Fruit

Approving what is excellent raises the bar for us. It’s one thing to discern between evil and good, and that’s important. But, similarly to how we don’t want our kids to stay in kindergarten but advance through all of the grades, continuing to learn and grow in knowledge, understanding, and maturity, Paul calls us even higher; he doesn’t want us to stay at the elementary level of discerning evil from good. He desires that our level of maturity in discernment grows.

Paul wants his readers and us to learn to choose what is excellent in every area of life. He says that the way to do this is “with knowledge and all discernment.” We are to learn about many different things, essentially any aspect of God and life on this earth as we know it! In saying this, Paul places an onus on us. We will be held responsible for our choices, claiming ignorance isn’t an option.

The author of Hebrews corrected his readers who failed to do this in chapter 5, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

He addresses the reason for their failure a few verses before: “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” (Heb 5:11). The word dull in the Greek is nōthrós, which means slow, sluggish, indolent, dull, languid. In other words, they could not handle solid food because they were lazy.

Let us not be found lazy! We are to move from milk to solid food, which will mean fruitful labor for us!

The purity that Paul speaks of is regarding the heart. He wants his readers to be unstained and unmingled from the world. He wants us to be unsullied. Our hearts, ideas, messages, and people can lead us astray and into sin, away from Christ, staining our souls. We’ll be easily deceived and captured if we lack knowledge and discernment.

In v 10, he also says that he wants them to grow in these things so they can be blameless for the day of Christ. This sounds the same as pure, but the Greek word means unblameable. He wants us to be found without blame. Not people who lead others to sin, not people who are led into sin, and not troubled by an awareness of sin. We are to live lives of integrity all the way down. This is so important to Paul that he repeats himself three times throughout his letter.

He gets specific as to what this looks like in chapter 2 when he calls them to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (2:3-4) and in other letters, we learn that we should not be stumbling blocks for others.

Again, we must understand that Paul has told us how we do this: by knowledge and all discernment. So, for example, we need to know what is in the books, TV shows, music, and movies our children watch and listen to. If we don’t, and they consume filth or anything that leads them away from Christ, we will be blameable.

Paul urges his recipients to live “worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27). We, too, live in a crooked and twisted generation and must consider what we do and how we act. Our actions affect others. We want people to come to Christ by our example, not stumble because of it. Unbelievers are blind and foolish, but at least some know a little of what the Bible says and won’t hesitate to call us on it. Some intellectually honest unbelievers will see right through unintellectually honest Christians.

Future Orientation

Lastly, Paul desires his readers to be filled with the fruit of righteousness in the day of Christ. Like a heavy basket overflowing with fruit from the orchard, Paul wants us to overflow with fruit that comes through Christ.

In all of these things, Paul wants us to have a future orientation, to think about and prepare for the day when Christ returns. Our everyday decisions have a future eternal weight and consequences. Daily decisions can corrupt our souls or purify them. They can lead others astray. All it takes is a little compromise here or there, repeatedly, which leads to desensitization to the things of the world that are corrupting, and then, before we know it, we’ve embraced those things and potentially led others into those things as well.

We must grow in discernment to choose excellence, remain pure and blameless, and be filled with the fruit of righteousness. Love for God and others undergirds it all.

And here’s the very good news: if you read this and think, “I’ve failed here,” I have, too. In some ways, this is part of how we grow in discernment. But, with the Lord, it is never too late to start growing. His grace abounds! Run to Him, and receive His glad help!

Plus, a heart that loves to learn about anything and everything in God’s created world makes us really interesting people! 😊

If you haven’t listened to episode 3 with Blane about Discernment on the podcast, check it out here!

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[1] Adams, Jay. A Call for Discernment: Distinguishing Truth from Error in Today’s Church. (Memphis, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2021), 32.