“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” Philippians 2:12-13
Paul is always good for a nice, mind-bending paradox. Look at these verses. He’s saying, basically, “Work because God works in you to work”!
Before we get into how this working works, let’s establish what the object of this work is: “your own salvation.” We know that in many other places Paul clearly argues that eternal salvation,
the salvation of the individual from hell is “not of works,” and instead is by grace through faith,which is “the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
So, I think that the salvation being discussed here is not the salvation from the penalty of sin, but salvation from the power of sin (to borrow a distinction made by Arthur Pink in his work, A
Fourfold Salvation). This salvation from the power of sin is also known as sanctification--the process of becoming holy, becoming like God. This process of sanctification is described a chapter earlier: “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God” (1:9-11). Sanctification is here pictured as growing in love, knowledge, discernment, approving what is excellent and so becoming pure and blameless, producing the fruit of righteousness to the glory and praise of God.
So, we return to the question: who does this work of sanctification? Are we doing the work? Is God doing the work? Both?
Here is what this paradox made me think of:
In my family, for big holidays, we all bring food to my grandmother’s house. For as long as I can remember, my sister and I have been in my mom’s kitchen the night before a holiday gathering putting together cakes, casseroles, and salads to take to my Gran’s the next day. The three of us work together in the kind of seamless synchronicity that only comes with years of practice.
The recipes are only reminders, largely unnecessary because we’ve made the dishes so many times, but they come out every year, either on the splotched pages of spiral bound cook books or in my mom’s handwriting on blue note pages.
One Thanksgiving, as dish after dish lined my grandmother’s countertops, one of my aunts asked me,“Do you know who made the squash casserole?” I immediately replied, “Momma did.” But then I thought, “Wait, didn’t I make it?” I had put it together and stuck it in the oven while on another counter a sweet potato casserole was being assembled and water was boiled for deviled eggs.But, my knee-jerk reaction was, if it came from Momma’s kitchen, she made it. It was her recipe, her ingredients, she’s the one who taught me to cook.
I wonder if sanctification is something like this. Good things produced while abiding in the presence. It is, of course, work. But also pleasure and peace. And, assuredly, something for which to give thanks.
