Whatever Happens, Develop a Virtuous Cycle
By Robert J. Morgan
Growing up, I listened to Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee on the radio. He was born into dire poverty, and as a child experienced 24 moves and the tragic loss of his father. When asked about his college experience during the Great Depression, he said:
When I completed my senior year and took my degree, my roommate found me sitting on the edge of the bed and feeling hopeless. He said, “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve lost your best friend!”
McGee said, “I’ve lost everything. God brought me up to this moment, but I can’t go to seminary. I don’t have a dime. I’m going out this afternoon and hitchhike back to Nashville, Tennessee.”
Then the phone rang, and I went to the phone. Two dear little widowed ladies from Memphis, Tennessee, were calling. They said, “We want you to come over because we have something for you.” Well, they had sent me a tie for graduation, and I thought that was their gift. So I went over that afternoon…
McGee talked with them, received two envelopes, thanked them, and left. He quickly opened them, and each one contained a large check.
McGee’s Sunday School class sent him money as well, but that evening someone gave him something arguably more important. They said to him, in effect, “Vernon, I want to give you a Bible verse.” It was Philippians 1:6, and from that moment it became J. Vernon McGee’s favorite verse and it became what we call his “life verse.”
It was Philippians 1:6: “…being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Over 75 years later, McGee said God made good on that promise every day of his life.
Background: Philippians 1:6 contains the entire three-phase sweep of the Christian life—justification when the Lord began a good work in us; sanctification or Christification as the Lord continues to do it; and glorification, when it will be completed at the return of Christ.
In the next verse—Philippians 1:7—the apostle Paul leads into a prayer that describes the virtuous cycle of Christification. He is going to articulate the process God uses to accomplish this good work. How does God go about turning us into miniature images of Jesus Christ?
Scripture: Let’s read Philippians 1:7-11:
It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the Gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Are you familiar with the term, “Virtuous Cycle?” Simply put, a virtuous cycle is when a chain of events leads to another and to another in a circular way. One city mayor described it like this:
Government improvements in a neighborhood lead to people moving in, which lead to businesses being established, which lead to finances flowing into the area, which lead to taxable revenue, which is pumped back into the community and the whole cycle keeps going in an upward cycle—a virtuous cycle.
Well, in this passage in Philippians, the apostle Paul explains the virtuous cycle of Christification—of how God carries on to completion the good work He has begun in us. There are six steps—and he prays them into the Philippians in verses 9-11.
1. Treat Others Generously
At the very top of this list is treating others generously, which is agape-love: And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more….
Let me say something about this Greek word agape. During the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments, a group of Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew Bible—our Old Testament—into Greek. This became known as the Septuagint. Paul read and studied the Septuagint alongside his own Hebrew Bible.
Of the Greek words for love, one rarely used one was agape. The Septuagint translators found that word and infused it with fresh meaning. The Greek Old Testament describes the sweet and superlative love of Almighty God, a divine love we should exhibit to one another–God’s own true love supercharged with grace. The first thing prayed for the Philippians is this—that their agape would abound or overflow more and more.
How exactly do we define agape? Look at the next chapter—Philippians 2:3-4: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interest but each of you to the interests of others.
The love the world offers says: What can this person do for me?
Agape love says: What can I do for this person?
Tim Tebow recently gave an interview. Many of us have followed this man because of his outspoken witness for Christ and the ups and downs of his athletic career. In this interview, he said:
The same year I was voted one of the most popular athletes in America, I was cut from my team. So in the same year, am I going to be at the high, or am I going to be at the low? I’m so grateful that when I hold on to God’s truth, I don’t have to be either—I am who God says I am.
Then he said:
The first verse my parents made me memorize as a five-year-old boy was ‘The greatest among you will be a servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.’ I didn’t understand it, but my parents knew I was so competitive, and I wanted to play and I loved it. And so before we would play, we had to memorize scripture verses, and for me, they were primarily on humility. And it was crazy, because along the way these verses would pop into my head. Sometimes it feels like you’re on a rollercoaster, but we get to get off and hold on to a firm foundation—and that’s the Word of God.”
Now, Tebow’s foundation is talking the Gospel in word and in tangible help to those who need it around the world.
This is the virtuous cycle! Our lives are intended to be generous, to be marked by humility, and to seek to meet the needs of those who cross our paths.
Romans 5 says that the agape of God is poured into our hearts. And that leads to the next step in the cycle.
2. Make Decisions Wisely
As we begin to grow in that kind of love, we learn to make wiser decisions because we see things more clearly.
Verse 8 goes on to say: And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best.
As we love more and more with agape, we will learn more and more about God’s will and His ways.
Every decision has consequences, and one bad decision can reap a whirlwind. I read about a young girl who modeled good decisions. But one bad decision led to a flare gun causing a house to catch on fire–killing three small children. Later in court, the girl said, I “made a bad decision that turned into the worst mistake of my life.”
One bad decision leads into a downward cycle, the very opposite of what God wants for us.
Through the years, I’ve made some bad decisions. But the more time I spend in Scripture—reading it, studying it, memorizing it, pondering it—the more I’m able to grow in knowledge and depth of insight so I can discern what is best. One of my frequent prayers has been:
Teach me Thy way, O Lord.
Teach me Thy way.
Thy guiding grace afford;
Teach me Thy way!
Help me to walk aright,
More by faith; less by sight.
Lead me with heavenly light.
Teach me Thy way.
Here’s the way that J. I. Packer puts it:
Some [of us] who trust Jesus as…Savior have formed the habit of going to Him about everything that comes up, in order to become clear on how [we] should react to it as His disciples. “Going to Him’ is an umbrella phrase that covers three things: praying; meditating, which includes thinking, reflecting, drawing conclusions from Scripture, and applying them directly to oneself in Jesus’ presence; and holding oneself open throughout the process to specific illumination from the Holy Spirit….
These Christians cope with events in a spirit of peace, joy, and eagerness to see what God will do next. Others, however, who are no less committed to Jesus as their Savior, never master this art of habitually going to him about life’s challenges.
If we go to Him in everything, we’ll have wisdom and discernment on every needed occasion—which is just about always.
3. Build Inward Purity
As we do that, it only stands to reason that we’ll develop inward purity. Look at verses 9 and 10 again:
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
Pure and blameless are words that point to personal holiness.
Recently I’ve pondered this quote from Cicero: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Whenever I’m reading in my library, I take breaks to go out into the garden and water things and pull weeds.
I typically use tools or occasionally herbicide, but there is something very satisfying about grabbing a weed by the stem, pulling it by the roots, shaking off the dirt, and tossing it away.
My library and my garden!
It’s the same in our personal lives. We must continually go back and forth from our Bibles to our hearts and lives. We read God’s Word and then water the good habits in our lives and weed out the bad ones. I’ve been working on it for a long time, and my garden isn’t yet all I want it to be.
But as long as I live, I’m going to work at eradicating weeds from my life and watering the plants that belong to faith and obedience.
To quote J. I. Packer again, holiness is “the habit of agreeing in God’s judgment, hating what He hates, loving what He loves, and measuring everything in the world by the standard of His Word.”
What is the next arc in the circle? It is serving God continually.
4. Serve God Continually
Look at our verses again: And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness.
But what is the fruit of righteousness?
Remember that Paul was a student of the Hebrew Scriptures. You can find this phrase in Psalm 72:3; Amos 6:12; and Proverbs 11:30. It refers to the behavior of a righteous person.
This is the outward manifestation of inward holiness, leading to our next step.
5. Embody Christ Daily
As the virtuous cycle continues, we find ourselves enjoying Christ richly—more and more.
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
This is the greatest secret of the Christian experience. I think my wife, Katrina, and I both learned this through the teaching of Major Ian Thomas, the British Bible expositor. He said:
It is your living faith in the adequacy of the One who is in you, which releases His divine action through you. It is the kind of activity that the Bible calls “good works,” as opposed to “dead works.”
This is the fruit of righteousness.
I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loves me and gave Himself for me.
6. Glorify God Greatly
And all of that results in glory and praise to God.
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
This is the virtuous cycle. It’s not something that just happens once. It keeps cycling over and over in our lives until we cycle all the way to Heaven. We experience the agape-love of God and it begins to work on our hearts. That clarifies our thinking so we make better decisions. We build inward purity and begin serving God continually. We do that only when we embody Christ daily.
Conclusion
God is cultivating us–showing us how to think and act and speak and live.
Gutzon Borglum envisioned turning Mount Rushmore into the faces of four famous Americans. He studied every hair on Lincoln’s head, every line on his face. Just before launching his project on Mt. Rushmore, Borglum took a ten-ton block of marble and chipped and carved and fashioned it into the head of Abraham Lincoln.
God is active and busy, chipping and carving and fashioning each one of us into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
As Randy Alcorn put it, “People had only to look at Jesus to see what God is like. People today should only have to look at us to see what Jesus is like.”
The above devotional (and featured image) originally published at robertjmorgan.com.
Robert J. Morgan leads Robert J. Morgan Ministries, a nonprofit whose goal is to energize God’s people with a greater understanding and appreciation of the Bible and Christian heritage. Previously, Rob was involved in pastoral ministry for over 40 years in Nashville Tennessee. He is a best-selling, gold-Illuminations, and gold-medallion winning writer with more than 35 books in print and approximately 5 million copies in circulation in multiple languages.
For more info on Robert J. Morgan: Bio