There are four things that stand out in this passage:

…that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment…

Paul does not pray for simple love. The modern notion of love says love is blind and free otherwise it is not love. But even as Paul prays for the love of believers to abound, he prays that it would abound with knowledge and all discernment. This does not mean believers can ever be stingy with love, but it does mean that as believers exercise their love, they are to practice discernment informed by knowledge. Our hearts must be connected to our heads as we seek to exercise love in a way that is pleasing to God. So true love does not engage in sin and true love does not give approval to sin.

…so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ…

Related to what was just said, the love believers are to have will ultimately give approval to that which is excellent. Excellence is determined by knowledge and all discernment which is grown through prayer and is given through the Word of God. But this means things are not determined to be excellent just because individuals approve of them, but Christians only approve of those things discerned to be excellent by the standard of Christ. And so the result for us of this love which abounds in knowledge and all discernment is that when we arrive at the day of Christ we will be found pure and blameless. This means the abounding in this kind of love and the right judgment of what is excellent and what is not is part of God’s sanctifying work in our lives. Through Christ God is purifying his bride, making us spotless so that one day Christ will present a spotless bride to his Father.

…filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ…

And here we see Christ’s work most clearly. A growing love that exercises knowledge and all discernment, giving approval to that which is excellent, will lead a person to be filled with the fruit of righteousness. This fruit can come only through Jesus Christ, so it must be Christ who works in us to abound in love so that we can then be filled with his fruit.

For the believer, there is a long-term goal of sanctification: that we might be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. But there is also a daily goal: that Christ’s sanctifying work in us might lead to fruitfulness. Being filled with the fruit of righteousness on the day of Christ requires bearing fruit each day. We normally think of fruitfulness as tangible results – how many people you led to the Lord, how many homeless people you helped, how much time you spent with your family, etc, but that isn’t really the point. Tangible results are a result of fruitfulness. The fruit of righteousness is the fruit of the Spirit – bearing in our lives the very character of Christ as found in passages like Galatians 5:22. So as we abound in the love of God we become more like Christ and will demonstrate his character when he returns. In the meantime, the daily outworking of our growth in Christ will be increased obedience to God’s commands such as love, justice, proclamation, service, etc.

…to the glory and praise of God.

The ongoing purpose of abounding in love is that we grow in our fruitfulness. The eventual purpose is that we be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. But the ultimate purpose is that God will be glorified and praised. We are not out of the spotlight of God’s work, but nor are we in the center. The spotlight is on God. We are mirrors that magnify the light shining on him and through Christ’s sanctifying work we are enabled to reflect him all the better. But God is the goal. We exist to give glory and praise to God. Our question each day cannot be whether the events of our lives give us personal fulfillment and the satisfaction we think we deserve but whether the events in our lives help us grow in Christ so that we might better bring glory and praise to God. And as we grow in Christ, we will find that our satisfaction is no longer in personal fulfillment on the world’s terms but personal fulfillment in the cause of bringing glory to God.

The greatest satisfaction in our lives should come as we, in all things, give glory and praise to God.

Bad news for those who think God rescues and rewards all regardless of righteousness:

The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his rules were before me, and his statutes I did not put away from me. I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from my guilt. So the Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.
Psalm 18:20-24

Good news for those who feel they can never satisfy the standard of God’s righteousness:

For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? – the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless.
Psalm 18:31-32

God shows favor to the righteous, but it is God who equips, strengthens and makes the sinner into a saint, makes the unrighteous man into a righteous man. It is all of God, not of me.

Continuing to go through Read the Institutes in a Year, today’s reading was interesting as it relates to both the argument over imputed righteousness and the question of what Christ did at the cross.

Emergents seem to increasingly favor the idea that what Jesus did in his life and at the cross was little more than set an example for us to follow. He was living righteously simply to show us how to live righteously. His death did little more than show us just how much he meant what he had said. It all sets an example for us, it doesn’t actually cause anything to happen in us.

Here is what Calvin says in 2.1.6:

We must surely hold that Adam was not only the progenitor but, as it were, the root of human nature; and that therefore in his corruption mankind deserved to be vitiated. This the apostle makes clear from a comparison of Adam with Christ. “As through one man sin came into the world and through sin death, which spread among all men when all sinned” [Rom. 5:12], thus through Christ’s grace righteousness and life are restored to us [Rom. 5:17]. What nonsense will the Pelagians chatter here? That Adam’s sin was propagated by imitation? Then does Christ’s righteousness benefit us only as an example set before us to imitate? Who can bear such sacrilege!

To answer your question, Calvin, many people in the church today can bear it.