We are continuing our series on the book of Philippians. As I have mentioned before, the book of Philippians was actually a letter, also known as an epistle, which was written by Paul to the church that he planted in the city of Philippi, which is basically what we would consider today northern Greece. We are going to continue to look at the letter to the Philippians, chapter 2. As I have been doing before the last few weeks, I would like to have a volunteer read through chapter 2 starting at verse 1 and going through verse 18, ideally the NIV version. (Scripture read here.)
As you can see in those 18 verses there is a lot of content, especially in the first 11 verses. When I originally thought about the sermon, I was going to preach on those first 11 verses until I realized that I just preached on those passages around Thanksgiving of this past year. So rather than simply repeat myself what I thought I would do is give you a quick recap of what is going on in those first 11 verses and then key in on two verse for the remaining part of the sermon. As we know, Paul was a letter writer. He liked to write letters. Some of the letters are a little bit more pleasant than others. This particular letter was a letter of friendship. He had a very good relationship with the Philippian people. But also as we read through the letter we get hints that there might have been a little bit of dissension, disunity in the congregation. Paul being one to not tolerate disunity makes out an appeal to the whole church to get along with each other. He bases that appeal on the attitude of Christ Jesus. In a paraphrase of those first four verses he basically says if you have gotten anything out of being united with Christ, if you have gotten any comfort in the love of Christ, if you have found any sort of fellowship with the Holy Spirit, in other words if you have found any benefit to being a Christian, then make me happy, “make my joy complete by being like-minded, sharing the same love, having one single purpose.” Then it goes on and says “doing nothing out of vain conceit or selfish glory” or anything like that but instead he says you should think of others as better than yourself. You should not just look out for your own interests but the interests of everybody else in the church. From verses 5-11 he gives what some people refer to as a hymn that was passed along that really talks about the attitude of Jesus Christ. He says “Who, being the very nature God,” (in other words co-equal with God) did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, something to be held onto or cling to as a possession but instead he became nothing. He took on the very nature of a slave, a servant. He was “made in human likeness”. Then it goes on to say that “being found in the appearance of a man, he humbled himself and he became obedient to death – even death on a cross. Therefore, God raised him up and gave him the name that was above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow in heaven and on earth and even under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to, the glory of the God the Father.” Can I get an amen on that? Amen. As I talked about back in November, in these 11 verses you really have a picture of the Christmas story and the Easter story. We are all familiar with the Christmas story where it says the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. The Easter story is coming up which included the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Verses 5-11 are a picture of both stories. Paul wasn’t saying these words to remind them of the Christmas and Easter story. He was trying to give them a lens to look through their own attitude and hopefully in doing so they would change their attitude about each other. He lays this foundation of Christ as this humble, obedient servant.
In the next few verses he begins to encourage the people to have that same sort of obedience as they work out their salvation. He goes on to say “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” He is trying to encourage the believers to continue on in their faith. These last two verses are where I want to camp out for the rest of the sermon because I think these verses are critical in our own understanding of the part that each of us plays in our own spiritual formation as well as the part that God plays in our spiritual formation. The apostle Paul starts out like he does many things. He says “Therefore”. Some of you know when you are reading your Bible and you come across the word “therefore” you ask what is it there for. In this particular case, it is there to remind the people that in light of what I just told you in the previous 11 verses, you should do these things I am about to say. Then he goes on and uses what I would call a term of endearment. He calls them dear friends, which affirms the friendship relationship that he has between himself and the church. Then he goes on and gives them a compliment regarding their past and present obedience.
As a side note, when he is talking about obedience, he is not talking about just following a long list of rules and regulations that he developed for the church. He is really talking about being submissive to Jesus Christ as Lord. In other words, he is trying to get the people to carry out the Great Commission. The idea that we are to go out and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commanded. That is the responsibility of a disciple. We are to obey everything Christ commanded and then teach others to do the same.
Like I said, he compliments them because they are obedient to the commands of God not only when he is present but when he is absent. That is worth pointing out for him because apparently some of the churches were only obedient when Paul was in town. When he was out of town they became disobedient, so he is giving them a compliment. But then he goes on to say something really strange. It is a few words that seem to cause a lot of grief in Christian circles. He goes on to say “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Some of you may know that this passage causes problems in Protestant Christian circles that really push the idea of salvation through faith alone. This particular passage seems to contradict what Paul had said in another letter to Ephesians about salvation and that salvation is really an act of faith. He said “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” Christianity 101, especially on the Protestant side of things, believes that salvation is by faith alone. By faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. That is the reason Christ came to earth to accomplish what we could not do ourselves. Though we try to get back to God to have a right relationship with God, we cannot do it. We can only do it through the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. Paul is either speaking out of both sides of his mouth on one hand saying you need to work for your salvation and on the other hand saying you are not supposed to work for your salvation or maybe we are misunderstanding it or not reading this passage right. Maybe what he is talking about when he talks about working out your salvation he is not talking about that initial born-again experience when you accept Christ as Lord. What he is talking about is working out your salvation in your life, particularly in your character. He is talking about a fancy word we refer to as sanctification.
At the risk of confusing you a little bit more, Protestants believe that when it comes to salvation there are at least three stages of the process. The three stages include justification, sanctification, and glorification. Justification is what we just talked about. The act in which God brings sinners into a new relationship with himself through the forgiveness of sins. We believe when you accept Christ as Lord by faith you do that and your sins are washed away. You have a clean slate and a new relationship with God. That is justification. The second stage would be sanctification which has the idea of being made holy. It means a progressive change in the character of a believer into the likeness of Jesus Christ. The third stage is considered glorification. That basically happens when believers leave the earth and they go off into heaven. It is the resurrection of a believer’s body into the kingdom of heaven and complete conformity to the likeness of Christ. Three stages of salvation: justification, sanctification, and glorification.
What most people would believe is that when Paul says continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, he is talking about sanctification, the progressive change in the character of a believer into the likeness of Jesus Christ. In Paul’s mind, it appears that what he is trying to communicate is that when it comes to our sanctification, or working out of our faith or spiritual formation or whatever you want to call it, we play a big part in that process. We do have to participate in our own sanctification. Some people really resist this because they resist any sort of effort to participate in their formation because they are afraid it is somehow going to give the appearance of works, so they prefer to do nothing. It is kind of bad theology. There is a theologian by the name of Dallas Willard who passed away a couple years ago. He put it like this: “God is not opposed to effort. He is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action.” Do you see the difference? God is not opposed to effort, but he is opposed to us taking the credit that we have earned something by our effort. God is not opposed to effort, but he is opposed to ourselves taking credit for anything. You have people that don’t want to make the effort. They are using this works-based thing as an excuse or some of them are just lazy in their spiritual formation. There is no other way to say it. What happens is they drift along in their spiritual journey, following wherever they think God is leading them. Another pastor by the name of John Ortberg would refer to this type of attitude when it comes to spiritual formation as kind of a raft mentality. A raft that you just kind of float around. I think of it as a lazy river mentality. Has anybody ever been to one of those hotels where they have those lazy rivers and you get on an inner tube and just float around? It is a very enjoyable thing to just get on some inner tubes and float down the river. I really enjoy doing this. Just relaxing and basking in the sun and floating down the river and possibly even falling asleep until you are suddenly awakened until a Frisbee hits you in the head and shatters the peacefulness. All kidding aside, that is really how many people approach their spirituality. They went through the motions. They got saved and baptized and from that point on just floated through their spirituality, trusting that God is going to lead them around and everything is fine until they hit a crisis of their faith. Maybe it could be cancer. Maybe it is a financial crisis. Maybe it is a relationship crisis. What do they do? They panic because they have not participated in their own spiritual formation. They have not developed the inward character to be able to deal with these crises when they come across. That is one mentality when it comes to spiritual formation.
On the other extreme, there is another type of mentality. John Ortberg would refer to it as the speedboat mentality. I imagine that some of you have ridden on a speedboat or driven a speedboat, but you know what a speedboat is. A speedboat is kind of the opposite of a raft. The guy on the speedboat is in control. They chart out their course and know exactly where they are going, know how long it is going to take to get there, and just goes. Pulls the throttle and goes. When you think about spirituality there are some people that take this kind of approach. They become a Christian and chart out their course and have a vision in mind of where they are going to be and they just pull that throttle back and just go. They are consumed by all sorts of courses and information or whatever else they think they need to get to their destiny. Although this seems to be a little bit better than the raft mentality, really this has the main disadvantage in that in the speedboat mentality God is not often put into their spiritual growth formula. In other words, the person in the speedboat mentality is totally in control without giving any credit to God. God may have a different course for the person than the course that the person sets out. I think there is a passage in Isaiah that speaks of this. It says “Man directs his path but God directs the steps.” Some people are control freaks. If they control everything in their life, then they are going to control their spirituality, and they don’t include God in the decision. They end up going somewhere else than where God intended them to go.
So when it comes to spiritual formation, it seems like the two approaches are the lazy river mentality or the speedboat mentality, but Paul seems to suggest further in this passage that there is a third option. He goes on to write “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” What this passage seems to tell us is that our spiritual formation is actually a cooperative effort between us and God. John Ortberg would call this type of understanding as kind of a sailboat approach to spiritual formation. I know some of you have ridden on a sailboat or skippered a sailboat and most of you have seen one. You understand that in a sailboat the crew cannot just sit back. They have something to do. You may be a guest and you get to sit back but if you pay attention usually the crew or the skipper is pretty busy doing things like hoisting the mast, trimming the sail, lowering the boom, weighing anchor, and all those nautical terms. They have things they have to do, but if something is missing it doesn’t matter how much they do. That boat is going to be dead in the water. What is it that they need to move forward? They need the wind. Without the wind that sailboat is dead in the water. When it comes to thinking about that passage really God is the wind that helps move the sailboat along while the man or woman is actually participating in that movement by doing his or her part. They have to use wisdom. They have to chart their course. They have to take care of things. But they have to pay attention to the wind. They have to pay attention to where the wind is coming from and where the wind is going so they can set the sails accordingly. So when we think about this verse again where he says “continue to work out your salvation,” again he is talking to the people, and then he goes on to say “for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” what he is implying is we are dealing with two sets of wills. It is the wills that make us work. In fact the basic understanding of the will is the part of us that chooses to take action or to not take action. We know that God has given every human being what we call free will. He did not make us robots. He gives us the freedom to act or not act. But as believers filled with the spirit of God, we not only have access to our will, but we have access to the will of God. That is a very big deal considering the fact that most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, we lack willpower, especially when somebody passes a big bowl of rocky road ice cream in front of you. All kidding aside, if we don’t have the willpower to resist a bowl of ice cream, how much willpower do you think you have to be able to begin to live like Jesus Christ? To resist the temptations that prevent you from being like Jesus Christ? Resist the temptations to greed or pride or alcoholism or busyness or workaholism or addiction to technology or whatever it is? Most of us don’t have the will to be able to do those things on our own. We don’t have the willpower. If we are going to combat any of these things in life that are trying to keep us from Jesus Christ, we need to be in partnership with the Holy Spirit. Using myself as an example again, which I don’t like to do, but when I think back to the open heart surgery I had back in September, after the surgery they suggest you go through cardiac rehab. For those of you who have been through it, cardiac rehab is basically a fancy name for a gym with people around you to make sure you don’t slack off on your workouts or drop dead if you work out too hard. It is nice. As much as I resisted it, when I went there it was kind of nice. I would go there and they would greet me and I have to weigh in. They take my blood pressure. They bring up my chart and my exercise program. They tell me what I should do that day and what I shouldn’t do that day and then they monitor my while I am working out. What I have there is a partnership between myself and this team to make sure I am able to carry through and come out in good physical health.
If having a team of people or a partner with you is important for your physical health, how important is it for your spiritual rehab? It is very important. Not a person in this room, including myself, can will themselves to do the teaching and the commands of Jesus Christ. I would say it is almost impossible to do it on your own. Having said that, we have something we need to do and we have something that God will do. What we need to do is continually do the things that put us in a position to be able to open ourselves up to God, what is collectively referred to as the spiritual practices. As scary as that sounds, I bet everybody in this room has participated in spiritual practices. Things like Bible study. Things like prayer. Things like memorization. Things like fasting. Things like meditating on scripture. Things like solitude. Things like Sabbath. Those are practices that you can do that will open you up to what God can do. You cannot will yourself into changing your character, but you can do those types of practices that open you up and allow the spirit of God to come in and do the things that you can’t do. Let’s say you tend to be a workaholic. You are going to will yourself to quit being a workaholic and you just can’t do it. But if you do the practice of solitude or Sabbath on a regular basis, over time the spirit of God takes away that need for busyness. When Jesus says you are to love your enemies, you can’t just go out on the street and say I am going to love my enemies. You see when you go out with that attitude that you fail the first time somebody cuts you off in traffic. But in your quiet time as you memorize and meditate on passages that have to do with loving your enemies, you are opening yourself up to the spirit of God to come in and help you do the things you cannot do. That is why things like the spiritual practices are so important. The good news is that, as this passage reminds us, God is more than willing to help us in this process because it is in line with his good purpose. God is all about good. He is out there doing the good and part of the good is reconciling all mankind back to himself but also transforming every man and woman into the very image of Christ.
You say that is all well and good but what about the part of this passage that I have skipped over. The idea that we are supposed to continue to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. That seems like it contradicts what I just said. If God is a God of love and mercy and kindness, what do I have to fear about it? Again, what we are probably doing is reading that with the wrong lenses. When he is talking about fear here, he is talking about a reverent sort of fear. A respectful fear. If you are an electrical contractor and you go into a house to change an electrical panel and you are a good electrician, you are probably not going to be overly afraid to take down that panel box, but you are still going to have a reverent fear for what might be behind that power box. There is a lot of power that could still come through it. When we think about our spiritual formation, we think of it in this way. The same God who is doing work inside of you is the same God that in Genesis 1:3 said “Let there be light” and all power broke loose into the universe and created the elements that created everything we see around us today. If you were to meditate just on that thought, I don’t think you could possibly even go through your spiritual formation without having that reverent fear of God. That same God who said “Let there be light.” With all that power unleashed is the same God that is trying to work in you and me. That is what we are talking about when we talk about reverent fear.
As we close today, there is a lot more I could say about this. Really what I want you to do is leave with the imagery of the lazy river and the sailboat and the speedboat. In your small groups or family time, I would challenge you to ask yourself where you fit into this. Am I a lazy river person who doesn’t want to do anything and just rely on God to push me through things? Do I take the speedboat mentality where I want to do everything myself? Or am I on a sailboat where I see a cooperative effort between me and God? If you are honest with yourself and you see you have taken a lazy river approach where God does everything, maybe you need to take a little action and make a little effort on your part by engaging in some of these spiritual disciplines. On the other hand, if you are one of these speedboat type of Christians that have to have everything in control and have to know exactly where you are going, maybe you need to let God more into the picture and let God direct your path a little bit more. Open yourself to the works of God. If you happen to be one of these sailboat type Christians and you take the sailboat mentality to your spiritual formation then that is good. Keep doing what you are doing but do it all with a healthy reverence, a healthy fear knowing that the same God that said let there be light in the darkness is the very same God who is trying to place his light, the light of Christ, inside you. Let us pray.
