Be Filled with the Fruits of Righteousness
Philippians 1:
3 I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
4 always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy,
5 for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now,
6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
…
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment
10 that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ,
11 being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Let us take confidence in the fact that our calling goes far beyond the foot of the cross. Our calling does not end at the cross, but begins at the cross. It should inspire us that God takes care to develop us and shape our character into His image. Our salvation is not the completed work of God but the beginning of what God seeks to do in our lives. The word ‘work’ taken from verse 6 comes from the Greek word ergon, which literally means ‘to produce an accomplished product by hand’ and ‘complete’ or ‘epiteleo’ means to complete to perfection. Paul is telling us to be confident in our fellowship in the gospel knowing that your relationship with God means that God works in you with individual, careful attention so that He can bring you into heaven as an accomplished treasure fashioned by His own hand. You are an individual treasure with such immense value that the Bible says that the entire world does not compare to the value of your soul. The shaping of your salvation is compared to the refining of precious metals such as gold and silver. With impurities in the metal, the value is stripped. Each refining only increases the value. The only way you can be incomplete when you stand before God on the ‘Day of the Lord’ is by ignoring His call for you to follow.
So what is our role in the process of refining? We must actively submit to God. When we resist and go our own ways, God does not shape us. God has given us a free will so that we must choose to love God and choose to love the things of God or choose our own ways. He could force us into a mold, but then we would be no different than the rest of creation. God has clearly shown His love toward us by paying the debt of our sins by His blood on the cross. If we have truly trusted Him with our sins, we shouldn’t have trouble trusting Him with our lives. There are 3 areas we must act upon as revealed in this passage; love His truth, approve what is excellent, and judge sincerely so we may be without offense. If you do these things, you have the promise that Jesus will fill you with the fruits of His righteousness.
1. Love His truth. Verse 9 says, "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment". Love comes from the word agape, which can be translated as unconditional love. There are two other Greek words that we translate into the word love. There is eros, which refers to passion and philia, which means warm affection or friendship. It is easy for us to understand how to love based on passion or warm friendship, but because emotions are not the trigger, agape must be a part of our willful choice. Only man, created in God’s image has the ability to exercise agape love. The rest of creation loves as a response to receiving and cannot love without conditions. Agape is a love based on choice, not feelings. We are instructed to love/agape knowledge and all discernment. We are to love knowledge based on truth, not based on feelings. We are instructed to base discernment on truth, not on what makes me feel good or on what stirs my emotions. I am to love the things of God by understanding with or without the benefit of feelings. Feelings are unstable. Anything in life that is rooted in feelings is on unstable ground. Temptation to sin arises from feelings. If it didn’t feel good, I would not be tempted to do it. Agape is choosing to love God and love His commandments not based on feelings but based on truth as revealed by His word. All other forms of love are based on emotions but only agape stands like a rock – refusing to change with the climate around it. Agape can stir up our emotions but does not depend on emotions. Eros and philia are based on what we can get. Agape does not seek its own, but seeks to be self-giving.
Our agape is to abound more and more in knowledge and discernment. Knowledge, or epignosis in the Greek, means precise and correct knowledge. Our knowledge is to exceed to the point of overflowing and must be founded on precise truth. It is discernment that sharpens our knowledge. Discernment, or aisthesis means to have perception with the senses and the intellect and to have moral discernment in ethical matters. It is discernment that directs us to knowledge and truth. My judgement of the validity of truth is not based on what I feel but is based on my love for God and His word. When I base my faith on feelings, precise knowledge is in jeopardy if truth conflicts to what I feel at the moment. We have all heard truth rebuked because it does not make us feel good. The reality is that it isn’t truth that hurts our feelings, but the unwillingness to let go of a lifestyle that contradicts truth. If we base our relationship with God on feelings instead of knowledge of the Word, we will doubt when we don’t feel energetic or bubbly, or we will be led astray by feel-good doctrines that generate short lived emotions. A life that is founded upon agape love for the truth will be stable even when our feelings make their usual shift. A life founded upon feelings will not have a foundation. Because feelings are driven by circumstances and every wind that happens by, so the life based on feelings will be driven by every wind as well. When feelings take a dive, a feeling driven life will dive with it or frantically seek an emotional fix in anything that offers temporary gratification. Our relationship with Christ is to be based on a precisely accurate knowledge of the word of truth. That knowledge must abound and our lifestyle should continue producing an abundance of knowledge that overflows. That means a lifestyle actively seeking God daily.
2. Approve what is excellent. To approve is to put everything to the test of scripture. Examine everything and scrutinize it to see if it is genuine and worthy of acceptance. The determination of excellence means to judge between good and evil and judge what is of the most value. We first must have precise knowledge and the ability to discern, then based on that understanding we scrutinize everything that comes into our life to determine if it is valuable and worthy enough to enter into our lifestyle that is founded upon Jesus Christ. This is where temptation passes or fails. If I don’t have enough knowledge to pick out the good from the bad, I will accept anything that gives a good sales pitch. Some evil is very subtle as it is masked as good. There are two ways we are deceived – by out of control emotions or deception by a counterfeit.
The devil will wrap sin in godly wrapping if it will lower your guard. How many husbands or wives leave their mates behind because another relationship makes them feel good? I have heard men and women alike justify their sinful choices by saying it is God’s will. People can justify adultery by convincing themselves that they can serve God better with someone who might have similar ideas. People say things like, "How can it be wrong when it feels so right?" If they had precise knowledge of God’s stated will in His word, they would have clearly seen the violation of scripture. If they had loved the truth with agape, they would have based their decision on truth and not on feelings. God will not bless a relationship that violates His stated word. God will not bless a ministry that is founded on sin. For the Christian, sin is almost always presented with enough truth to lower our defenses and draw our attention. We must measure each decision based on truth. Good or bad, every decision we make is measured and approved by our will. If our measurement is bad, our decisions will be wrong. We must be sure of our method of measurement. We also want to be careful not to choose what is shallow over what is excellent. God has instructed us to discern what is excellent so that we are not swept away with emotions or a pleasant feeling with no value behind it once the feelings fade.
Banking tests the validity of each bill based on the original. Without studying and understanding the original, there is no consistent way to identify a counterfeit. The same is true for the choices in our lives. If we measure our choices based on what others are doing, we will almost always make the wrong choice. Everyone is doing it is a very poor measurement for choices that effect our lives and relationship with God. To measure a good choice, we must compare our decisions to the truth of God. The majority of believers sacrifice what is excellent and choose what is polluted because they were not able to identify false doctrines, false emotions or false values. We must choose one or the other. You can’t have a polluted life and the promises of God. People choose what is corrupt because they either measure it against their unstable emotions or they could not discern the error because of a lack of precise knowledge based on truth. Problems are often the symptoms of wrong choices. The Bible warns that we will reap what we sow. If we sow righteousness, we will reap the blessings of God, the benefits of godliness and the rewards in heaven. If we sow sin, we will reap the consequences in this life and will give an account in heaven. We have to approve what is excellent. We are the ones who examine what comes into our life and determine whether it is good or evil and whether it is of great value based on scripture. Our actions are always a willful choice.
3. Be sincere. To be sincere, or the original Greek word heilikrines, means to be found pure when unfolded and examined by the sun’s light. When God examines your life, His light will reveal all that is hidden and God judges righteously without watering down the truth. Hebrews 4:12 says that the word of the Lord is powerful and living. Like a razor-sharp two-edged sword dividing bone from the marrow, His word can separate the thought from the intent of our heart. Nothing is hidden from Him and God will examine our sincerity. I can blind myself and fool others, but not God. We easily justify our actions, but God unfolds our heart and examines our intent along with our actions. I can tell myself that I am acting out for noble reasons, but God unfolds my intentions like a book. His word reveals whether my motives were out of love or self-centeredness. My goal should be to live sincerely to do His will so that when I am examined I will be found pure in the light of His word. 2 Chronicles 16:9 says, "They eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is completely His". That is what this passage in Philippians means by being sincere. A sincere heart is a heart that seeks God’s will and not its own. It is my job to strive to reach the point of self-giving love toward God. It is God’s job to satisfy me. If I take over God’s role, I will corrupt the task.
This sincere mindset is illustrated further in Isaiah 26:3, "You will keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts You". This can literally be translated that God will guard with peace those whose minds lean on Him because he remains secure or confident in You. When I lean upon God for my choices and draw my direction from Him, then I will have that peace that surpasses our understanding (Hebrews 4:7). I lean on Him because I am confident in His will knowing that He will be my guard and looks out for what is my greatest benefit so I no longer have to concern myself with searching for my own benefit. I can also rest securely in His unchanging word. To be sincere, I must abound in the love of the knowledge of His word, approve what comes into my life according to that knowledge and if I do these things, I will be found sincere in the light of His word.
This passage is summed up in verse 10 and 11, as we are instructed to be "without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God". Righteousness does not come from our works, but is credited to us according to our faith. The same is true for the fruits of righteousness. By faith we must strive to complete the good works God has prepared for us, but the fruit of our labor comes through Christ. Only by His strength do we have strength. Only through Jesus will we have the power to run the race set before us with endurance and only Jesus can produce fruit in our lives. Only Jesus can bring the increase. If there is no fruit, we should ask ourselves if we are where God wants us to be. By our own power we can do nothing. Jesus said in John 15:4 that we must abide in Him and He within us for without Him we can do nothing. Jesus also said, "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples." John 15:7-8. We must remain in Christ as a part of a consistent lifestyle and His words must abide in us in order to produce perfect knowledge and discernment which gives us the foundation to build upon. Our purpose is to be a man or woman that God can use to bear fruit of righteousness so that God is glorified. We have the promise of God that if we love God’s word and do these things, we will succeed and will bear fruit. Love God’s truth, approve what is of eternal value, have the sincerity of an open book, and God will produced these things in your life so that you will be filled with the fruits of righteousness. The promises of God bless and satisfy us now and produce the promise of our treasures and rewards in heaven so that we will stand with joy and confidence on the Day of the Lord.
*** This sermon can be downloaded as a Word document by following the link at http://www.exchangedlife.com/Sermons/sermons.htm
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