Working it Out
Philippians 2:12-13
(12) Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
(13) for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Philippians 1:27
(27) Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
Eph 4:1-6
(1) I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
(2) with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
(3) eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
(4) There is one body and one Spirit--just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call--
(5) one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
(6) one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
EOLS: Salvation is by Grace, but God gives us the opportunity to work out our personal maturation.
“Working out our salvation” means living out the faith we have in Christ. It is virtually the same thing as “conducting ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel”. Working out our salvation is a life-long process, as can be seen by the present tense of the imperative. It is something we “keep on doing.” (Bible.org)
He exhorts as if he were an Arminian in addressing men. He prays as if he were a Calvinist in addressing God and feels no inconsistency in the two attitudes. Paul makes no attempt to reconcile divine sovereignty and human free agency, but boldly proclaims both. (A.W. Robertson)
Salvation is a glorious word!
We can go deep into what it means. One of the Greek words, the one used here is “soteria.” As a matter of fact the theological study of all things related to salvation is “soteriology.” It’s derived from the same root as “sozo” which is usually translated “saved.”
The Greek word is much richer and descriptive than its English translation.
If you talk to people who are not familiar with “church talk” or “Christianese” you’ll get some funny looks and reactions when you talk about being saved. I remember telling you the story of when I was determined to talk to my soccer buddies at twelve years old. I asked Robby and Vincent “Hey, have y’all been saved?” They began to ask “saved from what, like drowning?” I got completely frustrated. I realized that the word as we know it is very limited, and it difficult shows the limitation of our English translation. But those of us who have been saved understand the full import of it.
Sozo/Soteria goes way farther than simply our being saved from punishment or something bad. It fully denotes an abundant life (John 10:10) and it includes a healing and wholeness in the soul, deliverance not just from transgression and punishment but from bondages. It is a full, meaningful life that we are saved TO. We are saved from God’s wrath, and to an abundant life, and toward Heaven.
There’s also a very real sense in which salvation is not a point in time, but rather a line. It is a process that is on-going.
A Biblical View of Salvation
Past-I was saved Present: I am being saved Future: I will be saved
Ephesians 2:8-for by Grace we HAVE BEEN saved by faith
2Co 4:16-17- We are BEING saved
(16) So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
(17) For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
1Peter 1:4-5 We WILL BE saved
(4) to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
(5) who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Salvation’s work was finished on the cross of Calvary by Christ. There’s nothing I could do to earn it, it was given to me by grace when I came to Christ and repented of my sins. Yet that is only the beginning!
The Bible teaches that God is doing a continuing work in my life, which will culminate in that day when I stand before Him when life’s race is finished.
All along the line, I am able to experience abundant life that lies outside the circumstances and the externals.
And that’s where we meet the words of Paul today- Work out your own salvation!
We’ve got a way’s to go on this path, and we’re going to have to take responsibility for our own maturation process. God will be there every step of the way and the Holy Spirit will be indwelling us, but it will be up to us to listen and take the right steps. NO one is going to do this for us, and we cannot afford to coast. If we are not moving forward we are rolling backward, stagnancy is not an option.Everyone’s path will be different, yet there will be some commonalities.
This passage has always seemed slightly cryptic to me. It sounds at first pass as if Paul is saying we need to work for our salvation. Nothing could be farther from the truth; Paul would completely contradict himself by suggesting anything even close to that notion.
Over the weekend, Friday night and all day Saturday the wife and I had the opportunity to attend a Couple’s Conference with a well known minister and his wife that we have followed and admired for years. It was a great opportunity and we’ve wanted to go this conference for years, and now it was almost in our back door. Too good to pass up, and we paid money to go.
It’s something of a blessing to have kids old enough to take care of themselves, but of course as you know sometimes grown kids will surprise you. Sometimes they act like adults, other times they act like three year olds! We started getting texts during the meeting, back and forth from both kids. It was the “yah yah, she said-she said.” There was bickering going on and an argument over who was going to use the car. It’s the end of the month and we are low on groceries, so there wasn’t a wide variety of food to eat in the house. Both children seemed to fear the were going to starve!
My first inclination was to call them and lay down the law. I could tell them who was going to use that car, because I bought the car and the gas! I had another twinge that told me to run home really quick (we were only five minutes away) and give them my debit card and tell them to go get some food and hush!
But some interesting words came to Angie and me almost at the same moment: Let THEM work it out!
So, we ignored the text messages, pretended we didn’t get them. Now if there had been an emergency or something they couldn’t handle we would have been home in a second, even if it meant forfeiting the rest of the conference. But this wasn’t an emergency, this was basic stuff that they needed to work through. If I solved it for them, they would learn nothing. Both of those kids had more money than I did, they both have jobs and a debit card. Let them buy their own lunch, and they can work it out about the car!
I was very proud when we came home in the late afternoon and things seem to have worked out! It was a stretch on our part not to come in and solve the problem for them but the truth is they’re not ten and twelve, they are seventeen and nineteen; they are a high school junior and a college freshman. They need to learn to work things out. If mom and dad had come rushing in, it would have only reinforced their acting like babies!
Folks, sometimes God is not going to tell you what to do. Sometimes I am not going to be there to preach to you. Sometimes your church family will not be there to cheer you on and affirm you. In these times-WORK IT OUT!
Paul is talking to his own spiritual children at Philippi in much the same terms: He’s telling them WORK IT OUT!
Look at the context in which he frames the admonition: He implies that when he (Paul) is present, that the people of the church will “obey.” They’ll do the work of the ministry, they will grow in faith, they will do right and walk in love and unity as long as Daddy Paul is around. After all, he’s the one who led most of them to Christ and the one who planted the church here. He was the one who loved them and who taught them well. He lays down the law and they listen. By extension, when he is gone they will at the very least take their foot of the accelerator, if not just quit and be lazy.
He’s telling the Philippians that while he may be their earthly spiritual father, their guardian of sorts, it is GOD who works in them. It is GOD who is in charge of this process and He is the reason they are on this path. It’s GOD’s good pleasure that they must seek, and they need to do so with
Fear and trembling!
I find that fear in this translation as well as in Greek means exactly one thing…FEAR! Shaking all over, trembling is just what we think. But still it’s not a fear like we might experience when we hear something go bump in the night or when we see a tractor and trailer crossing the line and coming at our windshield head on .
A term that comes to mind is “reverential awe.” It means having God in the proper perspective, giving Him the rightful place and realizing His greatness, His majesty and authority. It means bowing before the Father, in view of His greatness and majesty, know that it is He who created us, and it is for His good pleasure that we exist. We need to understand that He is NOT just another option in our lives, He is the very author and architect of our lives and days. We will answer to Him and do so all by ourselves.
The same one who spoke the universe into existence is the one who calls to me. We must understand that this life we lead has been given to us, and that we are responsible to Him for what we do with it.
So we work it out-for Him.
He is our loving father, yet we must hold Him in His rightful place-in reverential awe. This isn’t a game and it isn’t some option that we have. If we call ourselves Christians it is our sacred duty, our holy responsibility-to work out this salvation that was given to us freely.
So how do we work it out? We need to take a look at the practical implications and see what God is calling us to.
I. Working it out in the Word of God
You must understand that you will not prosper as a Christian apart from the Word of God. That doesn’t mean that every one of us are called to attend seminary and become Bible scholars. What it does mean is that each of you have been given a road map and the capacity to read it. You have been blessed far above many people from other nations where Bibles are scarce.
In your personal copy of God’s Word you will find keys for daily living that you will not find anywhere else. I can’t read them for you and once a week in church is not even close to enough instruction for you to go on.
Get into the Word of God! I told you last week that George Mueller read through the entire Bible over one-hundred times. My own mother recorded in her Bible that she had read through it eleven times, and that was before she started using a new Bible when the old one fell apart!
But you know, it’s not about the volume of your reading; you could read the entire Bible with the same mindset you might read a novel and it would never impact your life. But when you understand it’s the Word of God, and it’s for your own personal growth, you begin to understand how to break it into little pieces, meditate on it, and put it into practice in your own life.
Psa 119:105
(105) Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Psa 119:11
(11) I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
This is a prime example of where the “work-out” is different for different people and situations. I recommend to people just starting out not to attempt to digest the whole Bible at once. Break it off in small pieces.
Read some every day, if only for ten or fifteen minutes. You’re certainly welcome to read for an hour and it sure won’t hurt you, but the important thing is to abide in the Word. Let it speak to you daily. Memorize a couple of verses or at least get the essence of them and then when you’re cutting the grass, making a long drive or simply just taking a break you can pull them from your mental file and let God speak over His Word into your heart.
Are you in the Word daily? Work it out!
II. Working it out in God’s House
…standing firm in one spirit, with one mind
Everything Paul says in this passage is rooted in the community of faith, the church. This passage assumes that the Christian is a part of God’s house. All the results-Unity, love, spreading the Gospel are worked out in the context of the community of faith.
Christian, you will never prosper and move forward in your Christian life apart from a commitment to God’s House. If you’re serious about your faith, and if you hold God in His rightful place with reverential awe, you will attach yourself to God’s people in a covenant relationship.
On Sunday morning, at the time your assembly meets, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you are declaring your number one priority in life. God’s House must be a priority for God’s people. Unfortunately for many people, when the schedule gets busy and the plate gets full, the first thing to go is church. I have had many people tell me how they just haven’t had time or perhaps they’ve been in pain or some type of family problems. Funny how it never stopped them from vacation, from the golf course or kept them off the fishing boat. People do just about what they want to do.
It’s about priorities. Either God is a priority in your life or He is not-there’s really no middle ground. WORK IT OUT!
III. Working it out in the Gospel
…striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
Every one of us are called to spread the Gospel both to our neighbors, to our region and to our world. Every Christian is to be a partner in the Gospel in some capacity. We are not called to live in isolation but be in a continuous partnership for the furtherance of the Gospel until Jesus returns.
Mark 16:15
(15) And he said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
We won’t all be called to quit our job and move to a third-world country, though some will and they will fulfill their holy destiny in doing so. You may be called to give, to pray, to encourage. You may be called to help a local ministry in spreading Christ’s love for all people. You may play a small though tremendously significant role in simply supporting the outreach of your own church.
Closing illustration:
I will never forget going out for the high school soccer team. I had grown up playing soccer but this was the first time I’d play on the high school level. I was a pretty good athlete but now I was being thrust in with older kids, many were seniors and it was a whole new level of competition.
The first day of practice the coach ran our tails off! It was one of those “let’s see who can cut this” practices. We did five or seven laps around this huge field to start practice and to end practice. In addition to all manner of drills, we ran wind-sprints all during the practice. We did these things called “suicides” where we would run as a pack and you had to not just keep up, but the last man in line would sprint to the head of the line, and we’d do that for five or six laps.
By the end of practice, I was spent. I had never run so hard in my life. I was barely able to half-way keep up with those big guys and I knew they had been snickering at me during practice; many times I felt I was going to collapse. When the coach blew the final whistle, I had blisters on my feet, my legs were about to collapse and I didn’t even know if I could make it to the car.
I largely disliked that coach, and I felt sure we didn’t need to run that much; he was just enjoying torturing us! I started thinking about going home for a big supper, and then to lay down. I couldn’t wait.
As I went limping off the field, nursing a big blister that had just burst on my heel, I stopped to take my shoes off as I prepared to wait for my dad to pick me up. I was thinking about quitting, that coach was just too hard.
Then I noticed one of the seniors who seemed to be waiting also, alone. He was three years older than me; I would imagine he was seventeen or eighteen but I considered him a “big guy.” He was an impressive athlete and a great guy named Dale R. As I watched everyone else leaving, he was the lone man on the field. I saw Dale bend over with his hands on his knees to take a few deep breaths. It was obvious he was gathering himself and getting ready to do something.
Dale started to run. He hit the very edge of the field, next to the woods.
Instead of cutting the corners of the field lines like we would try to do when the coach wasn’t paying attention, Dale was as far out on the periphery as he could go; he wanted to run the longest route possible. I watched Dale continue to run those extended laps until my dad got there, and he was still running as we drove away.
I couldn’t believe it! I know how I felt, and even the “big guys” who were much better conditioned athletes than me were cursing under their breath about the rigorous practice. None of the others stayed behind to do more than was required, but Dale did. It’s a picture I will never forget.
You see Dale R was interested in pushing himself to his limits, to grow stronger and better conditioned. The coach had already left, so he wasn’t putting on a show for him. All of the senior guys had already left, so he wasn’t showing off for his friends. He certainly wasn’t trying to impress me, he was oblivious that I was even watching. But the guy stayed down there and ran like a maniac and pushed himself to grow in his conditioning.
Dale had already made the team, he was an athlete. He already wore a letterman’s jacket and played every sport there was. There was no doubt that he would be a starter, the coach would be depending on him. There was no need to continue running. But there was much more at stake than simply being a starting player. It was important for him to run, and it was important how he would run.
He was doing way more than was necessary to play or even be a star on the team. He was working out his own athleticism. It impressed my fourteen year old mind in a way I will never forget. This guy was working out for something way bigger than a soccer game or a high school.
I believe that’s pretty close to what Paul is telling us here. He’s telling us that he understands that as long as he (the coach) is around to spur us on to good works that his beloved church members will do the things they need to be doing. But what about when he’s gone?
Work it out! Do what’s necessary to keep on growing, do not grow stagnant!
Don’t just do what’s required, go the extra mile. Don’t stop just because coach blew the whistle and left. Don’t stop just because your teammates decided to go eat. Get out there and run some more, run as long as you can run, and then push yourself a little bit more. Grow your endurance and work that cardio!
We’re not talking about making the team here-we’ve been saved and we know that Jesus did a work in our hearts. It was something we could have never earned or bought. But that doesn’t mean that it’s over because champions do not simply do the bare minimum.
Work it out-no one’s watching, and it doesn’t matter if they do. This is between you and God, and you will deal directly with Him. It doesn’t matter what your brothers and sisters are doing or not doing, they will deal with God and He will guide and direct them. This is about YOU dear friend, this is you working out what God has given you!
If I have a little money, I can hire myself a “personal trainer.” I can have a well-conditioned and knowledgeable athlete put me through the paces of a rigorous work-out. If I keep it up, he will come back every couple of days and push me to my limits. Keep this up and eventually I will see my whole body change and my level of fitness will sky-rocket.
That same guy will leave my house after he puts me through a grueling work-out and go to a person’s house who has been very ill, or someone who has a debilitating condition and they will spend just as much time putting them through a work-out that is just as grueling to them in its own way. That person will work themselves out to the best of their ability just as much as I have.
In twelve weeks, both of us will have seen great progress; I may be doing fifty push-ups and running a 5k in a decent time. The other person may be able to walk to the mailbox and back without losing their breath. The personal trainer is quite proud of both his clients, because they worked it out. They pushed themselves beyond their self imposed limits.
Your salvation is on Him, He alone can save you by His grace. Working it out is on you, and me.
Work it out!
