“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may 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).

Paul, having expressed his prayerful gratitude for the Philippian church and demonstrated how it is that believers are called to love one another in spite of shared brokenness, in today’s verses records for the church the very words of his intercessory prayer for them. His prayer contains several elements—that they would grow in love and knowledge, be filled with righteousness, and that all of this would be to the glory and praise of God.

He begins with the request that their love “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” Paul has already, as we have explored, expressed the mutual love between himself and the Philippian church in Christ. And yet, he begins with a prayer for a further increase in love, this time for the sake of discernment. The love that Paul calls this church to is not just a warm and fuzzy feeling. It is a posture of the heart which must also be accompanied by wisdom so that it may be expressed rightly through what Paul describes as “pure and blameless.”

However, Paul’s prayer is not only about right behaviour. He prays that the church will be “filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” It is through belief in Christ’s righteousness and growing love for him and for one another, as discussed yesterday, that their lives will come to display the fruit of righteousness in what is pure and blameless. Chapters 2 and 3, the theological core of this letter, will go on to talk more about what the righteousness of Christ looks like, so stay tuned.

Finally, Paul prays that this transformation in the community in Philippi would be “to the glory and praise of God.” With this, Paul indicates that there is a relationship between what the church does, what we believe, and how we praise God. In other words, Christian ethics, doctrine, and worship are all connected. When one of these elements is disregarded or disrupted in a church community, we feel its impact deeply. We will see Paul address related challenges in the Philippian community later in the letter.

You too can likely testify to this in your own experience with churches you have been a part of. When we are not sure what we believe about God, it can be hard to make decisions about how to live our lives. When ethical questions are pressing and divisive within a community, it can be hard to worship together on a Sunday morning. These are just a couple of examples, and solutions are not simple.

So where do we start? Well, with Paul, we are called to pray for our communities, that we may grow in love and discernment which will instruct us in the integration of our worship, belief, and practice. And we remember that in all of this, Christ walks with us. It is his righteousness with which we are filled. And it is his grace which gives us peace even as we do this work imperfectly, recalling Paul’s earlier words that we can be confident that he, Christ, who has begun a good work in you, in us as his body, will carry it on to completion.

So as you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.