Philippians 1:8

Philippians 1:8. For God is my witness. He knows my heart, which you cannot know, and that I appeal unto Him is the greatest pledge of the truth of what I say.

how greatly I long after you all. The warmth of the apostle's affection is very marked in this Epistle (cf. Philippians 4:1), where, as here, the feeling is called forth because they are his joy and crown in the Lord.

in the tender mercies of Jesus Christ. The Authorised Version gives the literal rendering of the word, but to an English reader it is seldom understood. The word translated ‘bowels' was in Greek applied to the nobler portions of the interior organs, the heart, liver, etc., as opposed to the entrails, and in them was supposed to be the seat of the affections, especially those of love and pity. There was something of the same idea, though not so strictly defined, among the Hebrews, as may be seen from the language of many passages in the Old Testament (Genesis 43:30; 1 Kings 3:26, etc.), so that the rendering given above conveys the sense of the apostle. But there was also no doubt combined with this the notion of tender intimate union, and it should not be allowed by any translation to slip away. The apostle spake of Christ living in him (Galatians 2:20) in the same kind of language as Christ Himself had used (John 17:21), and the thought that the whole Christian brotherhood was one body in Christ influenced the choice of such words as this to express the intimate union and communion of those who by one Spirit were all baptized into one body.