Goodness

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, (Philippians 1:9-10 ESV)

Love for God means a love for goodness. Sin has made us evil, God desires to make us good again. His love for us is a restorative love. Salvation is the process by which God is restoring us back into what we were before the Fall. The first thing he does is give us a new heart, a heart that loves goodness again, a heart that longs to be good because it loves God.

The path to this place of goodness is a path of love for God. The formula is quite simple. Love God actively and passionately and we will become what God wants us to be. This is what Paul is praying for when he says "that you may approve what is excellent." He longs for, and asks God for, that character to be developed in them.

But we don't get there through self-effort. This is not something we do. This is a change God makes in us when our love "abounds more and more." Theologians like to give names for concepts like this. They develop a sort of short-hand of terms that sometimes look a little frightening when we are unfamiliar with them. This particular word, though, is not that big a word. It is, however, chock full of meaning. The concept involved here is called sanctification. It simply means that God is working in us to make us holy in a practical way. God is working in us to change us and make us more like him in character. And that godly character begins in and works itself out through love.

I don't think it is possible to over-emphasize the role of love in our sanctification or the importance of love to our Christian living. I will give you two passages that emphasize this and then leave you to reflect. The first is this statement by Jesus to his disciples in the upper room on the night he was betrayed.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV)

Love is to be so strong a character trait in us that it becomes that by which we are known. If we were who we are supposed to be then we would be known as the people of love.

The second is this passage from the first epistle of John:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8 ESV)

In this passage it becomes clear that love is the determining factor in whether we are genuinely Christians or not. Genuine love is from God. Those who genuinely love have been born of God and know God. If we do not love, then we do not really know God, no matter what we may profess, for God is love.

It is love that makes us who we ought to be in Christ. Only in love and through love will we learn to "approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ."