Philippians 1: 9-10
I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.
I hate to beat a dead horse. Actually, no I don’t, because some dead horses need to be beaten over and over again! Today’s dead horse is “love.” I really like what the Asbury commentary says about “love” with respect to verse 9…”Love is the supreme commandment of God, the highest excellence of biblical religion, and the core of holiness.” Can I get an “Amen” to that?
Now that the horse is out of the way, let’s move on to the focus of today’s DOSE: “spiritual smarts.” Paul knows that for Christian love and character to abound it must be cultivated in the fields of knowledge and understanding. These fields are not found on the campuses of our schools or universities, but written on the pages of our bibles. Without an ever-deepening understanding and exploration of God’s Word, your life cannot be marked by holiness.
In order to understand “what really matters” in life, you have to be able to pick it out of the line-up that this fallen world presents to you. The Word of God provides the lens by which you can clearly see what is good and what is not…what is pleasing to the Lord and what is not. Only when you gain that ability can you then “live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.”
The definition of the word “pure” in this context is unmixed or having no foreign elements. Purity, in this case, is a lack of worldliness. Blameless, of course, sounds quite daunting because most of us think it means faultless. It doesn't. Blameless means that your motives are pure, even though your performance may be flawed. Add this all up and what do you get, in plain English?
Spiritual Smarts, acquired through the Word of God, enables you to live a life worthy of the high calling of Christ. Without it, your walk will never be more than average.
