Work out your own salvation

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye 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 which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Phil. 2:12-13

These two verses are perhaps some of the most important verses in all the Bible to help us see how sanctification happens in the life of the Christian. In particular, they help to keep us from two dangerous extremes that have come up again and again in the life of the church.

The first extreme is the danger to "let go and let God," which basically argues that all that is required for making progress in obedience is the right amount of faith in God, and that if you have this faith it will launch you into a higher plane where holy living is a piece of cake. This is not what this verse says. Always, the Christian life is work; and it is work that we are to carry out with fear and trembling. In other words, this is not easy work but work which requires all the "conscientious solicitude" (Charles Hodge) of maximum effort.

On the other hand, we want to avoid the danger of the extreme which teaches that sanctification is all up to us. This error confidently proclaims that God has done all he can do; now it is up to you. But this is not what the apostle teaches, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Though it is true that we are to work, yet we are not to work in our own strength, but in the strength which God supplies. This is where faith comes in, for by faith we lay hold upon God's grace and power, by which we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Or, as Paul puts it to the Romans, we are to mortify or put to death the deeds of the body, but we do so "through the Spirit" (Rom. 8:13).

In other words, as we put sin to death and pursue holiness, we are to "act the miracle" (John Piper). The miracle is God's power in us sanctifying us, but we act the miracle by working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We work and God works; not in the sense that we do something and then God does something, but in the sense that in all our working, God is also working.

This is the Biblical balance. We can put sin to death because God empowers us to do so. We work because God works in us. When we look at it this way, we see that the Biblical perspective takes away our excuse to be lazy because it is only as we work that we can say that God is working. But at the same time, it also takes away our tendency to despair because it tells us that it is God who works in us. And it takes away our tendency to become arrogant because God works in us.

Brothers and sisters, work out your own salvation with all your might and strength. Do not expect to make gains in godliness in any other way. But do so in faith, knowing that at the end of the day it is not your power that enables you to work out your salvation, but the power and grace of God.