Philippians 1:9-10
9And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
There are two different types of integrity that we need to concern ourselves with. There is the kind that is in my heart, and I am responsible for doing what I am convicted is the right thing to do in a certain situation. That is the obvious sense of integrity: doing the right thing because we believe it is the right thing to do. And I believe that is what Paul is writing about here when he says to be pure. But there is another part of integrity that has to do with being blameless. This has to do somewhat with the perceptions of others. It has to do with the appearance of evil. We are also responsible, to a certain degree, with how we come across to others. Not to put it too severely. Say a person sees you drinking iced tea sitting on your front porch (does anybody do that anymore?) and they assume you are drinking alcohol. You wouldn’t be responsible for their assumption of you unless you gave them some reason to think it was alcohol. If you went to a bar to hang out with some friends, and someone saw you going into the bar, that would be a little bit more what I am talking about. There is nothing inherently sinful about going into a bar, but it is usually not a place that a Christian should fit in. Let’s face it, a lot of sin takes place at bars, or starts there and continues after the bar, and the people there usually aren’t thinking about loving Jesus. I am talking about most American bars. I am not familiar with foreign bars. My point here is not to rip on bars, because there are instances when it would be appropriate to go to one, and I am not saying that the people who make judgements about others without confronting them are in the right. My point is that a part of integrity is also being blameless, in other words, not having anything anyone can bring against you. No questionable behavior. We as the body of Christ are all connected to each other, and we are responsible to each other. Our goal is not to see how close we can get to the world, but to come apart from it and be seperate, and see how close we can get to God.