How do you pray for your friends and loved ones? If they could have one blessing, what would you want it to be? Health? Wealth? Happiness?

However good all of these things may be, none of them are on the top of Paul’s list as he offers prayer for the Christians in Philippi. Instead, he wants them to know more of Christ’s love for themselves, and wants them to share that love with others. He wants them to have more discernment of God’s will, so that they will be able to make good choices – preferring the things that are truly excellent in His sight. He wants them to put God’s will more consistently into practice in their lives, so that they might be blameless before God when Christ comes again. In short, Paul prays principally not for the Philippians’ happiness, but for their holiness.

And the good news is that such prayers are not only admirable – they are realistic. That’s because as verse 11 says, all those who love and trust Jesus have already been filled with the fruit of His righteousness. Now, I hope we all know that the sins of all of us who love and trust the Lord Jesus have been imputed, credited to Christ’s account and thus paid for by His sacrificial death on the cross. But it is just as true that Christ’s righteousness has been imputed, credited to our account. The amazing truth is that when God looks at Christians, He sees the righteousness of Christ.

In other words, God has already laid the groundwork for the holiness in which Paul prays the Philippian Christians would grow. Paul is thus simply praying that they would become whom God has already declared them to be. And that’s why he can have the confidence he has in verse 6 – if God has declared us Christians to be pure and holy, and if God has filled us Christians with the Spirit of Christ, Who is conforming us more and more into the image of Christ every day, Paul is confident that God will continue that sanctifying, cleansing, renewing work in us Christians until the day Christ comes.

So, do we want that kind of progress in holiness for ourselves? Will we cooperate with God as He works in us to make us more holy? And will we pray that He does the same work in the ones we love?

Philippians 1:1-18 (ESV)

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,
4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,
5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel,
13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.
14 And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will.
16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.
17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.
18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice.