The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, the
second chapter, at verse twelve.
Philippians 2, twelve.
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed,
not as in my presence only, but now
work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling.
For it is God which worketh in you
both the will and to-do of his
good pleasure.
Concentrating on the words, work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling.
For it is God which worketh in you
both the will and to-do of his
good pleasure.
There can be no question, but in this
text we are commanded to work in connection
with the attainment of our own salvation.
The words are, work out or work at
your own salvation with fear and trembling.
And no doubt to a great many people,
this text has caused a good deal of
difficulty.
Because they are well acquainted with the doctrines
of salvation by grace, and by grace alone.
And how can we be saved by grace
if we are to work out our own
salvation?
How can it be when in other texts
we read so plainly, not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but according to
his mercy he saved us by the washing
of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy
Ghost.
For again, he saved us and called us
with a holy calling, not according to our
works, but according to his own purpose and
grace which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began.
We are all very familiar with the passage
in Ephesians 2.8, For by grace are
ye saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God.
How then in such a text as this
can it be said, work out your own
salvation, if in these other passages it is
clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that
salvation is of the Lord, and that it
is entirely by grace, and not by works
of righteousness?
Well, the answer to that question lies in
the distinction between the salvation which believers have
now in possession, the salvation which they come
to possess by faith, by faith alone, and
the salvation that is kept in store for
the children of God, the salvation to be
bestowed in the future.
That is to say, the distinction between salvation
as we come into possession of it in
this life, and salvation as it will be
completed, or consummated, or perfected, the coming of
Christ in glory.
The word salvation is used in these two
distinct senses.
When Paul says, for example, the gospel is
the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth, he is thinking particularly of that
salvation into which a person comes in possession,
of which a person comes into possession by
faith, and which he is at present possessing.
But in that very same epistle the apostles
say, now is your salvation nearer than when
you believed.
Now he cannot be using the word salvation
there in the sense of the salvation that
is already in possession, because of such he
couldn't say, now is your salvation nearer than
when you believed.
And so he is thinking of the salvation
that will be completed, that will be consummated,
that will be brought to its final realization
at the coming of Christ.
And of that salvation he says, now is
it nearer than when you believed.
Or again, when the apostle Paul in the
first epistle to the Thessalonians, at this chapter,
at the eighth and ninth verses, says, But
let us who are of the day be
sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and
love, and for an helmet the hope of
salvation.
For God has not appointed us to wrong,
but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus
Christ.
He is using the term salvation in both
of these verses.
Not just the salvation that is now in
possession by the believer, but the salvation that
is of hope.
The salvation which is now in the possession
of the believer is not of hope.
It's an actual possession.
But here Paul speaks of the hope of
salvation, or the hope that is directed to
salvation.
For God has not appointed us to wrong,
but to obtain salvation.
That is the completion, the perfection of salvation
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And again, when the apostle Peter says, for
example, He are kept by the power of
God through faith and through salvation ready to
be revealed in the last time.
He's using the word salvation with reference to
something that will be secured in the future.
The salvation that is ready to be revealed
in the last time.
That is, at the last day.
And likewise, when Paul says in this passage,
work out your own salvation, he's not talking
about that salvation into which we come into
possession in this life.
That salvation is by effectual calling, which is
the act of God alone.
It is by regeneration.
It is by union with Christ.
And it is through the instrumentality of faith,
but contrasted with faith.
By grace are ye saved through faith.
And that not of yourselves, it is the
gift of God.
But the salvation that is stored up for
the people of God, the completion of salvation,
the consummation of salvation, is something in connection
with which the people of God are not
only exhorted, but commanded and required to work.
And it is just as if we should
say that our own working, that is the
working on the part of believers, is indispensable
to their sanctification.
This salvation that is reserved for the people
of God as a whole, salvation complete and
consummate, is something that is achieved through process,
through progression, and in connection with that process,
in connection with that progression, unto the attainment
of glory.
There is, you
remember what the Apostle Paul says after this,
We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
unto good works, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them.
Do you remember how emphatic the Apostle, the
writer of the Epistle of James is when
he says, Faith without works is dead?
Show me thy faith without thy works, and
I will show thee my faith by my
works.
And it is a distinct distortion of the
doctrine of the Gospel, and a distortion that
is distinctly prejudicial to the Gospel of grace,
is the supposition that in connection with the
salvation that is to be attained at the
last day, we are to do nothing, that
we are completely inactive.
The great truth is this, the templation clearly
on this fact, that all the activities of
our persons, all the activities of our beings
are to be operated in connection with the
working out of that completion of the whole
salvation process.
And it is a complete heresy, nothing less
than blatant heresy.
So to emphasize the grace of God, that
we think of sanctification as something in connection
with which we are entirely satisfied.
We can become heretical, not simply by blatantly
denying a particular truth, but by putting truth
out of focus.
And it is a heresy that is gravely
prejudicial to the interest of the Gospel of
God's grace.
For us to think that in connection with
this process of sanctification, we are just entirely
inactive.
If we are inactive, then we are not
the partakers of a person's salvation, and we
shall not be partakers of the salvation that
is stored up for the people of God
as their final hope.
Faith without worth is dead.
We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus
unto good work.
In connection with good work, there is the
agency, the activity of the person concerned to
the fullest extent of his energy, to the
fullest extent of his will, that every fiber
of his being, every energy with which he
is endowed, are enlisted in the service of
good work, in the service of obedience after
the good pleasure of God.
Now, in order to guard this precious truth,
and against misunderstanding, there are certain propositions which
I am going to state.
And I shall just simply state them in
order.
First of all, in sanctification, that is in
this process of progression, that we'll find this
final realization in this salvation that is stored
up for the people of God.
In sanctification, our working is not excluded because
God works.
There's no incompatibility, there's no competition between our
working and God's working in this matter of
sanctification.
These two are complementary, and they are not
mutually excluded.
That's the first proposition, that our working is
not suspended or excluded because God works.
Works in us.
And second, God's working is not excluded because
we work.
That is to say, God's working in us,
to will and to do of his good
pleasure, is not excluded because we are working
also.
And the third proposition is this, that our
working is wholly dependent upon God's working in
us.
That the manifestation of God's working in us
is our working.
And if our working is absent, then God
is not working in us.
We are wholly dependent.
It is, work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling, for it is God that
works within you, both to will and to
do of his good pleasure.
And the fourth proposition is this, that it
is just the fact that God works in
us, to will and to do of his
good pleasure, that provides the incentive and the
urge and the encouragement to our working.
It is just the conviction that God is
working in us, just the consideration that he
is working in us, that gives us encouragement,
that is to work out our own salvation
with fear and trembling.
And the fifth proposition is this, that God's
grace in us, God's energy within us, by
the indwelling of his Holy Spirit, is that
which enables us both to will and.
But the very willing itself, the very movement
of the human spirit, of the human heart,
of the human will, proceeds entirely from the
fact that God himself is providing the energy.
God is, as it were, the cause behind.
Our very agency in willing as well
as in doing that which is after.
And the sixth proposition is this, that this
working on our part, entirely in our part,
the expression which Paul uses here, and which
is rendered in our version, to will and
to do of his good pleasure, is in
the original language simply on behalf of his
good pleasure.
To will and to do on behalf of,
for the sake of his good pleasure.
God takes delight in these good works because
they proceed from an energy which he himself
supplies.
How could it be otherwise that the good
works of God's people would not be well
-pleasing to God when he himself is, as
it were, the causal agent behind them?
When all the force behind them proceeds from
himself?
Good works done in obedience to God's commandments,
out of love to him and to the
end of his glory, are well-pleasing to
him.
And it is just, and it is not
only that they are well-pleasing to him,
but the norm, as it were, by which
we are to determine what this working is,
is that which God has revealed to us
to be his good pleasure.
What, after all, is the standard of human
conduct?
How are we to know what is good,
and distinguish from what is bad?
Simply and solely the revealed good pleasure of
God.
We cannot devise by our own imagination.
We cannot devise by our own invention what
is according to God.
It is just the work of obedience, as
is indicated in the earlier part of this
text.
Wherefore, my beloved, as we have always obeyed,
obeyed what?
Obeyed the revealed will of God.
And we have no guarantee that anything whatsoever
is well-pleasing to God, except that we
have the commandment of the revealed will of
God.
And the final proposition that I want to
make in connection with this text, this service,
is that all self-confidence and presumption might
seem as if we would be able to
entertain a good deal of self-confidence, and
even a good deal of self-confirmation, in
doing those things which God has commanded us
to do, because, after all, it is God
working in us, so willingly do of His
good pleasure.
And you know, the line of distinction between
vice and virtue is not at all a
wide one.
The line of distinction between vice and virtue
is very, very close indeed.
And it is here that we need to
be very careful to avoid that self-confidence,
that self-congratulation, in the performance of the
revealed will of God.
And we are warned against that self-confidence,
that presumption, in this very text, when Paul
says, with fear and trembling, with fear and
trembling, because we are entirely dependent, in this
matter even, of working.
And we are to be constantly aware of
our own helplessness, apart from there's no place.
Helplessness, forced, free from helplessness, with
fear and trembling, and therefore with the whole
of helplessness, is altogether, after all, of the
grace of God.
It may seem contradictory, but it is the
absolute truth, that it is altogether by the
grace of God.
The grace of God, in this case, working
in us, to will and to do of
His good pleasure, that we are able and
great from God, and working in us, that
is, working on our part, with reference to
our own salvation, perfectly complement each other, and
are perfectly coordinated by the grace of God,
that we are able.
But because it is of the grace of
God, that does not eliminate the necessity for
the responsibility that rests upon us, that we
are to enlist every activity and energy of
our being in the working out of that
which will one day be the appearing of
the glory of the great God and our
Saviour Jesus.
It's just in other terms the words of
our Lord Himself.
Without Me, ye can do nothing.
But again, in the words of the Apostle,
I can do all things through Christ.
My grace is sufficient for Me, and My
strength is made perfect in weakness.
It is just to the extent of which
we realize our complete dependence upon God that
we shall be most active and most determined
and most conscious and most persistent in the
fulfillment of this commandment, to attend to your
own salvation with fear and trembling.
For it is God which works you to
will and to do of His good.