Philippians 2:12-13

In both cases, the word work here is in the present tense. Work out your own salvation because God works in you. It is happening right now. It is happening in your attitude toward this sermon or what have you. God is using every situation in your life to help you grow in the mind of Christ. He wants you to be as much like Christ as possible, so He gives us a lifetime full of tests and challenges and other things, and just plain experiences so that we can learn to grow. And He also gives us instruction and all those things that we need. But that is part of salvation.

So, Paul tells us here that salvation must be worked out. It is the Greek word katergazomai. It is Strong's 2716 and it means "to affect or to produce," "to bring out as a result," or "to accomplish." I like the last one best of those four because he is telling us to accomplish our salvation, to bring about the product that God has started us producing, to bring it to an end, to finish it. And what we have here is the idea that salvation is a process designed to produce a result through the combined cooperative effort of God and the Christian. It is a project; we are both doing this project. We both have different jobs in getting the project done.

We work out, Paul says here, indicating we manifest godliness. It comes out. We show that we are doing God's will. And then God works in us giving us inside the will and the energy and all the necessary whatnots that we need to do the job. To get the product made, to get to complete the program, to reach the end, to finish. There is a lot of other words I could use. To mature, to become perfect. Those are all parts of the project that He has chosen us to work with Him in finishing. We do our part and He works in us so that we have what it takes to do our part and finish the job.

Philippians 2:12-13

And so he says, "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation." Help him to get over this great crater that he had found himself in so that he could start again, so that he could move forward in his life. He knew that he could not do it on his own if he did not have God to give him a boost somehow through His, as he calls it here, generous spirit or His willing spirit. I like it willing a little bit better because it shows God's willingness to help when we are at our lowest. But he knew that if God did not help, he would remain in that crater forever. He could never get out of it. Which reminds me of Philippians 2:12-13, "Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling" because God is doing His work in you to finish your salvation here.

We can never forget that we are not the one actually putting in the most in our salvation process. God is always the fueling us and we are just responding to Him and what He wants for us. Hopefully we are responding in joy. That this is the way we want to go and that we want to have that deep relationship with Him and we are then cooperating with Him.

Philippians 2:12-16

So the Father and the Son gave everything to make our redemption possible, so we must likewise go all out, give our all to grow in righteousness and holiness. What I am saying here is, just to put it another way, is that between now and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, we must participate fully in our sanctification. We cannot wish holiness upon us, we cannot hope that we will be made better without actually participating in the process, getting rid of old habits that are sinful, putting on new habits that conform to the character of Jesus Christ. Paul says this in Philippians 2. I am going to go and read that one.

Philippians 2:12-13

We may have the will to do something, but if we actually do not put on our boots and go out to work, it is not going to have the right result. So it is He and us together working for the same goal. We both have work to do. Remember, we are walking side-by-side. It is a combo act. Yes, He is our supervisor telling us what to do and giving us strength to do it. We are the one down in the ditch digging. We are doing that work, He is doing other work, but we are both working toward the same goal, finish the same project.

Philippians 2:12-13

I think that we ought to be able to see now that the grace of God, as it is taught in the Bible, is dynamic. It is not just a passive forgiveness, but also empowerment, given freely of God, not that we might just merely be saved, but also that we might overcome and become like He is.