Philippians 2:12–18

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. ¹⁴ Do all things without grumbling or disputing, ¹⁵ that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, ¹⁶ holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. ¹⁷ Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. ¹⁸ Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.

Thomas Merton tells the story of two monks who shared a monastic cell and lived together in peace. In fact, such was the peace they shared that they never argued and, believe it or not, actually forgot how to argue, how to have conflict! Merton tells us what happened next:

There were two elders living together in a cell, and they had never had so much as one quarrel with one another. One therefore said to the other: Come on, let us have at least one quarrel, like other men. The other said: I don’t know how to start a quarrel. The first said: I will take this brick and place it here between us. Then I will say: It is mine. After that you will say: It is mine. This is what leads to a dispute and a fight. So then they placed the brick between them, one said: It is mine, and the other replied to the first: I do believe that it is mine. The first one said again: It is not yours, it is mine. So the other answer: Well then, if it is yours, take it! Thus they did not manage after all to get into a quarrel.[1]

Now, there is something astonishing about this. I wonder how many of us are tempted to see this story as fictional, to find it to unbelievable? I suppose more than anything, we might just find it almost other-worldly…and, in a sense, it is.

The kingdom of God is not like the fallen world and when Christians actually start living out the life of the kingdom it is disorienting to the world and, sadly, sometimes to the church as well.

The New Testament calls this having the mind of Christ. Strange things happen when we truly start taking on the mind of Christ. That is what the first part of Philippians 2 is about: the need for us to have the mind of Christ. And now, beginning in verse 12, Paul is going to spell out in concrete terms what a church would actually look like if it had the mind of Christ.

Like the example of the monks above, the church would seem quite strange to the world were we to take on the mind of Christ! And yet, it is a strangeness that the world needs to see.

What would our church look like if we took on the mind of Christ?

There would be a trembling recognition of the necessity for our lives to match our creed.

We begin with one of the most discussed and controversial verses in the New Testament, Philippians 2:12.

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.

Let me share a personal word on this verse, if I may. Even as a boy trying to read the Bible, verse twelve used to bother me. I was raised a thorough-going Protestant and, indeed, I still am. And that means that I do not believe my works can do anything but condemn me. If salvation is anything other than by grace on the merits of Christ, I am in trouble and so are we all.

I believe the biblical witness is true: We cannot work ourselves into heaven. But the work of Jesus does open the door to heaven! His work is enough! So we trust in Him and are saved.

Yet I do believe that works are a part of sanctification and an evidence that we are saved. The Christian should have works! Something has gone wrong if we do not. But we are not saved by our work. This is why this verse used to trouble me. Listen again:

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

That phrase “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” used to unsettle me. What can that mean? Does it mean that I am earning my salvation by works? And should my life as a Christian be marked by fear and trembling?

When I was in doctoral school at the Beeson Divinity School, I was honored to take a seminar with Dr. Frank Thielman, the New Testament scholar. I was struck by Dr. Thielman’s humility and also his brilliance. I am happy to say that Dr. Thielman’s consideration of this verse and verse 13 is extremely helpful and, I believe, rings absolutely true.

The main points of Thielman’s consideration of these verses are as follows:

1. In Paul’s writings, he tends to use “justification” in the past tense to refer to the moment when you were born again, the moment you were proclaimed righteous on the basis of the merits of Christ. And, while Paul does sometimes use “salvation” in the past tense to refer to this, he normally uses the word “salvation” in the futuretense to refer to the completion of your salvation when you stand before Christ. Thielman summarizes Paul’s view like this: “Those who have been justified can be assured that they will be saved, but their salvation awaits the final day.”
2. Romans 5:9 is a great example of how Paul tends to use these two words. Listen: “Since we have been justified by [Jesus’] blood,” Paul says, “how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”
3. Thus, according to Thielman:

When Paul says in Philippians 2:12 that believers must “work out [their] salvation,” he does not mean that they should “work for” (JB, NJB) salvation on the final day. He means instead that they should “conduct” themselves “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27) as they await the final affirmation of their right standing before God at the day of Christ…They are to do this “with fear and trembling,” because such seriousness is appropriate to the task of living out their commitment to the gospel in a way that demonstrates that they are genuine believers.

4. Thielman then offers a helpful final point, which is that:

Paul perhaps recognized the danger, nevertheless, that someone would take his statement to mean that believers cooperate with God in the process of salvation and that if they did their part, God, meeting them halfway, would do his. So in verse 13 Paul explains that salvation comes entirely at God’s initiative and that God provides both the will and the ability to accomplish “his good purpose.”[2]

I think this is very well said! “Work out” your salvation, not “work for” your salvation. This means, then, that the “fear and trembling” in which we “work out our salvation” is not the fear that we will not be saved. We will be saved! But it is the fear that we should feel at the terrifying thought of our lives not matching our confession, of our behavior not lining up with our reality as born again people.

Another great New Testament scholar, Gordon Fee, put it like this:

The context makes it clear that this is not a soteriological text per se, dealing with “people getting saved” or “saved people persevering.” Rather it is an ethical text, dealing with “how saved people live out their salvation” in the context of the believing community and the world.[3]

That is spot on.

Church, if we have the mind of Christ, we should tremble at the prospect of our lives not looking like Christ’s life!

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. If you are saved, you dare not live like you are not saved. If Jesus is Lord, you dare not live like Jesus is not Lord! You should fear that possibility. Our lives must match our creed and our creed is this: Jesus is Lord!

Is this true in your life? Do you hate those times when you fall short of the life and example of Jesus? Do you tremble at the prospect of hypocrisy? We should! We must live as a born again, regenerated people!

There would be no wilderness grumbling or fighting.

Interestingly, Paul moves from “working out” our salvation “with fear and trembling” to the concrete example of attitude. More specifically, Paul pleads for the church not to grumble or to fight.

¹⁴ Do all things without grumbling or disputing

This may seem strange. Why would Paul’s concrete example of what it looks like to have the mind of Christ, of what it looks like to obey involve a warning against grumbling?

I think to understand this we need to understand that Paul is making a parallel between the church in the world today and Israel’s wilderness wanderings on the way to the promised land. If one thing is clear, it is that the children of Israel had a problem with grumbling against their leaders. The word pops up time and time again.

And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” (Exodus 15:24)

And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness (Exodus 16:2)

“I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel…” (Exodus 16:12)

But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses (Exodus 17:3)

And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. (Numbers 14:2)

On and on it goes. Israel in the wilderness grumbled, grumbled, grumbled!

Now, it is telling that Paul alludes to this here because, in so doing, again, he is saying that the church is in some ways like Israel in the wilderness. We have not yet arrived at our promised land. We are journeying through perilous places during perilous times. Christians face hardships, frustrations, irritations. And we grumble.

But one of the main reasons why Paul mentions this parallel is because it is made abundantly clear that when we grumble and dispute and fight, we are really grumbling against God.

This is exactly what Moses and Aaron told Israel in Exodus 16.

⁸ And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”

Some pastors use these verses to try to protect themselves from critique. They point to verses like this and try to say that any criticism of them, any critique, any questioning is wrong and means you are questioning God. Let me be perfectly clear: That is nonsense and blasphemous! No pastor, no minister, is above being questioned and the minister is not God! It is wrong for pastors to use these verses to shield themselves from critique.

No, that misses the point. Here is the point: As we travel through the wilderness of this world as a set apart, redeemed people, our attitudes must remain attitudes of hopeful expectation and of joy. We must not grumble that we do not now have the promised land in its fullness. We must not grumble at hardships. And, yes, we must not grumble and bite at each other.

I do not think Paul is saying that you should never ask questions in the church and that you should not question the leadership. A lot of bad can happen when leadership cannot be questioned! We are all human beings capable of error. But it is true that the New Testament condemns a spirit of grumbling, a disputatious spirit. In other words, if the church has the mind of Christ, then we will not have:

• attitudes of perpetual discontentment
• uncharitable critiques of each other
• stifling pessimism
• a lack of patience with each other
• a critical spirit
• a bent toward interpersonal strife
• a biting disposition

We should be a people marked by the mind of Christ and the joy of Christ, or else the world will not believe we truly know Christ! This is why the verses that follow this anti-grumbling edict are so important.

¹⁴ Do all things without grumbling or disputing, ¹⁵ that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, ¹⁶ holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

The world does not need to see a bickering, fighting, grumbling, disputatious church. The world needs to see a church that, yes, can work through issues when they arise. But a church that has a fundamental foundation of peace and optimism and hope and joy!

And this happens when each of us takes on the mind of Christ toward each other and treats one another with love and patience and kindness.

Dallas Willard wrote a number of powerful Christian books and had an amazing career as a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. After his death, John Ortberg passed on a story about Dallas that occurred in one of his classrooms.

During one of his lectures, a listener challenged him with statements that were both offensive and incorrect. Dallas paused, thanked the person for their comments, and then simply moved on to the next question. Somebody asked Dallas afterward why he had not countered the student’s argument and put him in his place. “I’m practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.”[4]

I think that is what Paul is talking about: developing those disciplines that undercut conflict and grumbling. Each of us being humble toward one another.

Merton quotes another desert father as saying this:

An Elder said: …And if anyone speaks to you about any matter do not argue with him. But if he speaks rightly, say: Yes. If he speaks wrongly say to him: You know what you are saying. But do not argue with him about the things he has said. Thus your mind will be at peace.[5]

This is the way of the kingdom!

There would be gladness and joy.

And out of this kind of personal and corporate taking on of the mind of Christ, joy emerges! Joy and gladness! Paul continues:

¹⁷ Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. ¹⁸ Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.

Joy was possible for Paul even though he was in prison, even though Paul was suffering for the faith, even for the faith of the Philippians. Even if Paul had to pay the ultimate price, he would be “glad” and “rejoice with you all.” And if Paul was going to rejoice with the Philippian church then “you also should be glad and rejoice with me.”

If the mind of Christ is embraced by the church, we will become a joyful people!

“Be glad and rejoice with me,” Paul says.

Church, joy and gladness are commanded of us, oddly enough, wonderfully enough! We must be a joyful people! Tim McConnell writes, “Happiness in the Christian community is serious business. We must take happiness in the church as a command from God, a worthy goal for every gathered church.”[6] I agree!

D.L. Moody saw Christian joy and happiness as a weapon against the devil and the lack of it as injurious to the church.

What we need today is a joyful church. A joyful church will make inroads upon the works of Satan…It is this carrying a sad countenance, with so many wrinkles on our brows, that [stymies] Christianity. Oh, may there come great joy upon believers everywhere, that we may shout for joy and rejoice in God day and night.

            A joyful church—let us pray for that, that the Lord may make us joyful…[7]

David Bentley Hart argues that, historically, joy was what distinguished the early Christians from their pagan neighbors. He writes:

This is not to say that Christian culture ever wholly succeeded in resisting contamination by pagan melancholy and gravity, or even that it ever fully purged itself of this unwelcome alloy. But the “new thing” that the gospel imparted to the world in which it was born and grew was something that pagan religion could only occasionally adumbrate but never sustain, and that pagan philosophy would, in most cases, have found shameful to promote: a deep and imperturbable joy.[8]

And why should this be? Why should the body of Christ “be glad and rejoice”? Why?

• We should be glad and rejoice because we were lost and now we are found.
• We should be glad and rejoice because the devil has been defeated.
• We should be glad and rejoice because God became a man and moved into the neighborhood.
• We should be glad and rejoice because we are not alone in the universe.
• We should be glad and rejoice because the God who made us actually loves us!
• We should be glad and rejoice because the God who could rightly judge us for our sin decided to pay the price for our sin Himself!
• We should be glad and rejoice because our aging bodies will be resurrected into transformed bodies.
• We should be glad and rejoice because the grave could not hold Him!
• We should be glad and rejoice because we get to gather and sing and pray!
• We should be glad and rejoice because God has given us His word, the scriptures!
• We should be glad and rejoice because we have Christian friends who pray for us and encourage us.
• We should be glad and rejoice because God still heals.
• We should be glad and rejoice because even if we die, we are healed forevermore!
• We should be glad and rejoice because death is not the end.
• We should be glad and rejoice because the sufferings of this life are temporary.
• We should be glad and rejoice because we get to invite other people to know Jesus!
• We should be glad and rejoice because our God is an awesome God!
• We should be glad and rejoice because Jesus is stronger than the devil.
• We should be glad and rejoice because we will see our saved loved ones again.
• We should be glad and rejoice because Jesus said, “I have called you friends!” (John 15:15)
• We should be glad and rejoice because the Kingdom of God is open to everybody who will come to Jesus in faith!
• We should be glad and rejoice because He remembers our sin no more.
• We should be glad and rejoice because young, old, and middle-aged alike get to learn from one another in the church.
• We should be glad and rejoice because God hears us when we pray!
• We should be glad and rejoice because we have been adopted into the family of God through Jesus.
• We should be glad and rejoice because right here, right now, somebody in this room might call on the name of Jesus and be saved!
• We should be glad and rejoice because we were going to hell…and now we ain’t!
• We should be glad and rejoice because we get to sing about God’s greatness!
• We should be glad and rejoice because in Heaven our singing voices will be better than they are now!
• We should be glad and rejoice because there is not a single sin you have committed that is so bad that Jesus will not forgive it!
• We should be glad and rejoice because there is not a single sinner in this room that is so lost that He will not save you!
• We should be glad and rejoice because there is not a single curmudgeon in this whole room that is so grumbly and unhappy that God cannot grab hold of his heart and make him grin from ear to ear!
• We should be glad and rejoice because there is not a single fractured relationship in your life that He cannot heal.
• We should be glad and rejoice because right here and right now is a brand new moment in a brand new day and you can meet Jesus right now right where you are!
• We should be glad and rejoice because Jesus is in the boat with us!
• We should be glad and rejoice because we get to walk out of the tomb with Him!

Ah, church, be glad and rejoice! Do not grumble and fight!

As Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1 of the church and Jesus:
⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

Amen.

 

[1] Merton, Thomas. The Way of the Desert (New York, NY: New Directions), p.67.

[2] Thielman, Frank S. Philippians (The NIV Application Commentary Book 11) (pp. 137-139). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.

[3] Fee, Gordon D. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT)) (p. 235). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Kindle Edition.

[4] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/may-web-only/man-from-another-time-zone.html?paging=off

[5] Merton, Thomas, The Way of the Desert, p.29.

[6] McConnell, Tim. Happy Church. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016), p.33.

[7] Moody, Dwight Lyman. The Secret of Success in the Christian Life. Chicago, Moody Press.

[8] Hart, David Bentley. Atheist Delusions. Kindle, 1932-35.