NOTE: This is a condensed excerpt from my forthcoming (2014) commentary on Philippians.

The ultimate goal of what Paul prays (1:9-11) is the glory and praise of God. Just as the Lord’s Prayer begins with a request that God would hallow his name (i.e., cause his name to be regarded as holy and exalted), so too Paul’s ultimate aim in prayer is the glory of God.[1] On the day of Christ, when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (2:10-11), God will be praised and glorified because of the fruit he has produced in and through his people. Not even the spiritual growth of the Philippians is exempt from the ultimate goal of bringing glory and praise to God. All that God does for, to, in and through the believer is ultimately so that his own greatness may be displayed and recognized.

What a blessing that God is not satisfied to merely give us the righteousness of Christ, but also fills his people with its fruits! And that fruit is the result of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ given to the believer. Through our union with Christ, we share in his righteousness, both in the legal sense of our standing before him and in the experiential sense of a transformed life that is under the direction of the Spirit.