WORKING OUT OUR SALVATION – Philippians 2:12-13

Preached June 12, 2011
from
Philippians 2:12-13

Theme: We are to cooperate with God by working out our salvation in practical living.

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(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)

There’s a saying that is quoted so often, it has almost become an inherent part of the thinking of our culture. Some people who quote it even assume that it’s from the Bible. But it’s something that most biblically-minded Christians know is not a part of Scripture—and have rejected. I’m sure you’ve heard it. It’s that old saying, “God helps those who help themselves.”

The reason biblically-minded Christians reject this old saying is because it is easily misapplied; and is often made to sound as if we can somehow do something to help God in bringing about our salvation. All genuinely saved people know that we are utterly helpless to do anything to save ourselves; and that we needed God to do all the work in our salvation all along. Romans 5:6 says, “For when we were still without strength”—that is to say, “helpless”—”in due time Christ died for the ungodly”. Apart from God’s grace, we wouldn’t even be able to place our faith in Jesus to be saved by Him; because, as Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it”—that is, the very faith itself through which we are saved—”is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast”. There’s absolutely nothing that any of us could ever do to “help” God save us. Instead, He graciously saves helpless sinners who—in all their helplessness and inability—simply cry out to Him in faith. Rather than say, “God helps those who help themselves”, redeemed people would rightly say that God helps those who stop trying to help themselves, and who utterly trust God to save them by His grace alone.

I’m committed to that conviction. I hope you are too. But I want to announce this morning that I no longer feel that I can entirely reject that old saying either. I have come to believe that there is aspect to our salvation in which it is very true and biblical to say that we cooperate with God; and in which God truly helps those who help themselves. That particular aspect is spoken of in Philippians 2:12-13.

The apostle Paul—who is, without question, the greatest preacher of salvation by God’s grace alone who ever lived—wrote to his beloved brothers and sisters in Philippi and said:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13).

Just think of that! Paul—who always stresses in his letters that we are helpless to save ourselves—here says that we are to “work out” our own salvation; and that we’re to do so because “it is God who works in” us. And so; there’s a sense, dear brothers and sisters, in which we truly do ‘cooperate’ with God in the work of our salvation.

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To really appreciate what Paul is saying, we need to go back to the way that he begins this letter.

When he wrote it, he was far away in a prison cell for the preaching of the gospel. He didn’t know what might happen to him. He wasn’t absolutely sure if he would be released and live on to minister the gospel, or if he would be executed and would go to be with the Lord he loved. But at some point during his imprisonment, his dear brothers and sisters from the church in the ancient city of Philippi sent him a financial gift that helped sustain him in his trials. He wrote this letter, in part, to say ‘thank you’.

And that’s how he starts this letter. He says,

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace (Philippians 1:3-7).

And I ask you to notice, in particular, verse six. Paul was confident, with respect to his beloved brothers and sisters, that He who had begun a “good work” in them—that is, God the Father—”will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus”. Those of us who are believers have grown to love those words deeply; because they give us the assurance of the certainty of our salvation.

Now; think about those words carefully. There are two very important aspects of our salvation that are being set forth in them. The first aspect that he mentions has to do with the very beginning point of our salvation in Jesus Christ—that is, our justification. And the second aspect that he mentions has to do with the final outcome of salvation in Christ—that is, our glorification. And both of these are aspects of our salvation that are brought about completely by the work of God. We do not—and cannot—in any way cooperate with Him in them. We can do nothing to set those aspects into motion or bring them to completion. We can only be the recipients of them by His grace through faith.

Justification—the very beginning point of our salvation—is that “good work” that God does for us in which He declares us to be 100% righteous in His sight. To be “justified” in God’s sight doesn’t have as much to do with how we live as it does our standing before a holy God in spite of how we have lived. It means that He not only declares the poor sinner who trusts in Jesus to be “no longer guilty” of breaking His holy commandments, but to actually be as “righteous” as if he or she had kept them perfectly. It’s not because the sinner actually has kept God’s commandments perfectly; because no fallen human being ever has or ever can. But rather it’s because Jesus Christ—God’s Son—became a human being like us, lived a sinless life on this earth as a man, perfectly kept the righteous demands of God’s law for us, and paid the debt for our sins by dying on the cross in our place.

When a fallen sinner places his or her trust in what Jesus has done for them, God declares them “justified” by faith. It’s just as Paul said in Galatians 2:16;

knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified (Galatians 2:16).

I sincerely hope you have consciously ceased from trying to earn salvation by your good works, and have instead deliberately placed your trust in what Jesus did on the cross for us. If you have, then God has already declared you completely righteous in His sight. He no longer holds any of your past sins against you. He now looks upon you as someone who is as righteous in His sight as His own precious Son Jesus. It’s a wonderful thing to be declared “justified” in God’s sight. It’s the beginning point of God’s work in saving someone. And it’s a work that He alone does. We have no part in cooperating with Him in it. We only receive it by faith.

And, as Paul then goes on to say, the very God who began this good work in us is also the one who “will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”. This, dear brothers and sisters, speaks of our glorification—the end result of what was begun by God in our justification through faith in Christ.

The end result that God the Father purposes for all those He justifies is that they share forever in the glory enjoyed by His Son Jesus. This will happen when Jesus Christ returns to this earth; and we are raised up from the dead to meet Him. As Paul says in Philippians 3:20-21;

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself (Philippians 3:20-21).

So; those are two aspects of our salvation that are mentioned at the very beginning of Paul’s letter: justification and glorification. They go together, and cannot be separated. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:29-30;

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified (Romans 8:29-30).

God does not begin something, and then not finish it. His work of our justification will lead to His finished work of our glorification. And they are two aspects that we, in no way, cooperate with Him in bringing about. We can not advance our standing before Him as “justified in His sight” by our good works; and we can not do good works to make ourselves more “glorified” at the end. These are things that He alone does it for us by His grace through His Son Jesus Christ. You can trust in the promise of His word, dear brothers and sisters; and rest assured that “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”.

But there’s a third aspect of our salvation that falls between our justification at the beginning of our salvation and our glorification at its completion. And that’s something called sanctification. You can probably understand the meaning of that word just by thinking about what it means to say that something is “sanctified”. It means that it is made “holy”—set apart by God from the common things of this world. Sanctification, then, is a process by which God graciously renews every part of the man or woman He saves; and, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, enables that man or woman to live a ‘not-of-this-world’ kind of life—that is, to live more and more like what He declares them to be in their justification and promises to make them in their glorification.

Sanctification is an aspect of our salvation, dear brothers and sisters, in which we do cooperate with God. And it is precisely this very aspect of our salvation that Paul is speaking of in this morning’s passage when he says, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”

In this sense, then, it’s very true that God helps those who help themselves. We are responsible to do our part in it. In fact, we’re commanded to do it.

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Let’s look a little closer at this passage; and consider, first . . .

THE ASSUMPTIONS IT MAKES OF US.

Paul writes, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence . . .” And I think it’s worth noting how he addresses his friends in Philippi. He calls them “my beloved”. These were people that Paul deeply loved, because they loved the same Lord Jesus that he also loved. He says in 1:8, “for God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.” They are people who, like him, had forsaken a trust in their own good works as a means of righteousness before God; and could say, as he did, that they seek to be found in Jesus, “not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith . . .” (3:9).

I can’t stress that enough. This morning’s passage would be an extremely dangerous one to misapply; and it would be severely misapplied if it were embraced by anyone other than those of us who have first placed their faith in Jesus Christ and trusted Him alone for righteousness before God. It’s not a passage for those who are trying to “work” in order to “earn” a salvation they don’t have. It assumes that those who “work out” their own salvation have first had the experience of God working “in” them what they are seeking to work “out”.

And this would be a very good time for me to pause right now and ask—have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior for full justification in God’s sight? You may have worked all your life long to earn God’s favor. But no fallen sinner can ever earn righteousness before a holy God—no matter how good a “fallen sinner” they may make themselves in the sight of other men. He gives it as a free gift to all who turn to Him in faith for it. As it says in Acts 16:31, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved . . .”

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So; that’s one assumption that’s made about us in this passage—that we have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and are truly among the “beloved” Paul spoke of. But another assumption has to do with the fact that he was not with them to continue to spur them on. He was in prison; and he didn’t know when he would be released to come and minister to them again. But he had confidence in them. He knew that they didn’t need him to be there; because they weren’t ultimately dependent upon him but rather on the Lord.

A little earlier, he wrote; “Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel” (1:27). And now, he tells speaks of his confidence that they will continue to stand fast “as you always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence . . .”

And this is another assumption this passage makes of us—that once we’ve trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have begun to learned to walk with Him on our own; and not on the basis of an unhealthy dependency upon someone else. The great apostle Paul didn’t even want his beloved brothers and sisters in Philippi to have an unhealthy dependency upon his presence with them!

One reason some Christians do not grow in maturity in the way that God calls them to, and learn to “work out” their own salvation, is because they have depended too much on someone else to live the Christian life for them and to tell them what to do. They’ve become dependent upon their pastor, or upon a Christian leader or popular Bible teacher, or upon another godly family member, to live the Christian life for them. They haven’t learned to walk in an “independently dependent” way in following Christ for themselves.

Dear brothers and sisters; let’s always be thankful for the pastors and teachers and mentors and Christian leaders and godly examples that God gives us. But let’s make very sure that we honor their work in our lives by faithfully obeying the Lord Jesus for ourselves—not only in their presence, but much more in their absence. We cannot work out our own salvation as God would have us unless we learn to walk with Jesus on our own. No one else can work out our own salvation for us!

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So then; these are the assumptions that this passage makes of us—that we are truly among the “beloved” who are justified in Christ; and that we are growing and maturing and learning to stand in obedience to Christ on our own.

And that leads us next to consider . . .

THE COMMAND IT GIVES TO US . . .

the command to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .”

As we’ve already seen, to “work out” our salvation can’t mean that we work to bring about a salvation that we don’t already have. Rather, it means to work—in a continual, habitual way—to put into practice the transformation in our lives that God has begun in our salvation. It means to cooperate with God in the whole process of sanctification that comes between our justification and our glorification.

I think that the best way to understand this is through the example that Paul himself gives us. He would never have said that he made himself righteous in the sight of God; but he most certainly sought to live out the righteousness that God declared him to possess through Jesus. And he would never say that he could make himself glorified in God’s sight; but he earnestly sought to live consistently with the glory that God said he would one day possess. And so, in Philippians 3:12-15, he wrote;

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you (Philippians 3:12-15).

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Dear brothers and sisters; let me ask you—are you, like Paul, pressing toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus? Are you daily working out your salvation? Your sanctification in Christ—your increased “holiness”—is the one aspect of your salvation that you are to cooperate with God in bringing about. Are you progressively turning away from sin? Are you saying “no” to more and more of the things of this world; and “yes” to the commands of the Lord Jesus as you find them in scripture? Are you doing this, in fact, with an attitude of “fear and trembling”?

The “fear and trembling” that Paul speaks of isn’t because we’re afraid of God. We’ve already been declared righteous in His sight. Instead, it’s because of a sense of reverent awe over the greatness of what it is that we’re working out in cooperation with Him. You’ll notice at the beginning of this passage that Paul uses the word “therefore”; and this points us back to what is said in verses 1-11;

Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (vv. 1-11).

“Therefore”, with an attitude of reverent “fear and trembling” at the greatness of what God is doing in and for us, diligently and faithfully “work out your own salvation”! Think of it, dear brothers and sisters! We’re cooperating with God in the great program—a program for our own future glory—that moved the Son of God to graciously leave His heavenly throne, condescend to take humanity upon Himself, bear all of our guilt and shame upon His own holy Person, die in our place on a gruesome cross, and rise again in glory and honor; all so that we would be seated with Him in the heavenly places and be made sharers forever with Him in His eternal majesty! How could we ever be indifferent about such a thing? How could we be thinking rightly about it and not work out our own salvation with an attitude of reverent fear and trembling?

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What a great salvation this is that we cooperate with God in bringing about! Who among us is sufficient for it? But before we depart from this passage, consider finally . . .

THE ASSURANCE IT AFFIRMS TO US.

Paul urges us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure”. It truly is a work of cooperation with God!

Notice that it is God who works in us! No less than God Himself! Do you realize that the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him at the right hand of glory is the same power that is at work in you and me—helping us to work out our own salvation? When Paul wrote to the Ephesian believers, he said that he prayed they would know

what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:19-23).

Do you realize that that’s the power at work in you, dear brother or sister—helping you to work out your salvation? What area of your past life of sin is there that you could not overcome with such power as your constant resource? Indeed; we can say the same thing that Paul says in Philippians 4:13; “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

And notice how completely He enables us in this great work! He helps us—as Paul says—not only to do it, but to want to do it! So often, people can’t grow because they don’t want to grow. They can’t turn away from the sin in their lives because they don’t want to turn from it. But when God works in us—justifying us in His Son, destining us for glory—He Himself works in us both to “will” and to “do” for His good pleasure.

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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; I hope that we will rethink our reject that old saying, “God helps those who help themselves”. Let’s not throw it away. Instead, let’s just be sure that we apply it rightly.

We will never be able to help God one little bit in bringing about the beginning of our salvation—that is, our full justification in Christ. And we will never be able to help God bring about our the end of our salvation—that is, our full glorification with Christ. But between the beginning and the end, we have a work to do in our sanctification. It’s a great work that’s worthy of being done in an attitude of the deepest and most reverent awe; because it’s a work that we do in cooperation with God our Savior.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13).