Philippians Prayer: Fruits of righteousness

It is now time to look at the final verse. It speaks about being "filled with the fruit of righteousness".

Verse 9-11
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-- to the glory and praise of God.

What does it mean for us to be filled with the fruit of righteousness? In Galatians 5, Paul has spoken about the fruit of the Spirit (eg love, joy peace etc) but here he is speaking about the fruit of righteousness. Fruit seems to speak about bearing fruit. Rightesousness speaks about the way we live our life? Do we have a living life in the right way. Romans 3 tells us that no can obtain righteousness by what they do themselves. It is appropiate then that here that Paul makes clear that you can only be filled with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ. It is good to know that God is the source of all righteousness.

The prayer ends like the previous prayer we looked at in Ephesians with a doxology. While this is a phrase which may be used in a Jewish prayer, the prayer recognises that all the praise and glory is to go to God like the previous doxology. To view that post click here