PHILIPPIANS 2:12-13

12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Verse 12 It’s not difficult to do the right thing while others are watching. Which is why Bill Hybels once entitled one of his books Who You Are When No One Is Looking. “Character,” he says, “is what you are in the dark.”

Sometimes it’s only when the rest of the world goes away that we find out just how skin-deep our commitment really is. We can shock ourselves by how easily we can let things slip. We all rely much more than we imagine on invisible, unrecognized support systems: our partner, our youth leader, our small group, our minister. And when our support system is removed – or proves untrustworthy (for example, your minister goes off with someone else’s wife) – it causes a major crisis, and makes us think: how much of this stuff do I really value? How firmly do I believe?

And so Paul says: the time to prove your obedience is not while I’m on the scene. It’s while I’m away, and you have to make the best of it on your own. If you can keep going without my presence to keep you in line, you will prove to yourselves that you are not just baby Christians any longer. You are becoming self-motivated rather than authority-driven. And that’s one marker of adulthood.

So what must they do? Here Paul uses the phrase which (I think) lies right at the centre of the message of Philippians. “Work out your salvation.” It has often been pointed out that there are two things this doesn’t mean:

(a) that we have to earn our salvation by a life of good works. Before writing to Philippi, Paul has only just sent off another letter - containing Ephesians 2:8,9. (Or perhaps he still has to write it, but will soon.) He can’t have changed his mind so radically about the way people become right with God!

(b) that we can live in any way we like, as long as we somehow hang on to the basics of faith. It isn’t that we will all “work out our salvation” in different ways depending on how committed we are. No – Paul has very definite ideas about how we should live.

Edward Fudge, a remarkably careful and thorough Bible teacher, has analyzed the nine other places where Paul uses the verb katergazomai (“work out”). His conclusion: “To "work out" in these passages is to do the specified action which produces what by nature is inherent in something.”

So what this verse does mean, clearly, is that God has implanted his “salvation” within us, and now we need to allow his saving grace to affect every area of our lives – our minds, our relationships, our choices, our ambitions. The reality of our experience will be determined by how much of that we allow to happen:

It is not what we eat
but what we digest
that makes us strong;
not what we gain
but what we save
that make us rich;
not what we read
but what we remember
that makes us learned;
and not what we profess
but what we practice
that makes us Christians.
(I’ve borrowed this from a sermon by the practical, warm and funny Bruce Goettsche, whom I find one of the most helpful preachers on the Internet.)

And we’re to do it “with fear and trembling”. If this sounds a bit extreme, we need to realize that Paul uses exactly the same phrase when he’s describing how servants should relate to their masters (Ephesians 6:5) and how Titus was respectfully received by the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 7:15). In other words, it’s not advocating stark gibbering terror, but an attitude of reverence, with an edge of anxiety lest we get it wrong.

Barnes’ Notes comment that we should be worried about several things; first, the undeniable fact that many people become shipwrecked Christians, and we could easily end up there too; second, the deceptive temptations and snares which make living in this world problematic for anybody who wants to serve God; third, the brevity of life, and the pressing necessity of making the right decisions now; fourth, the immensity of the stakes involved.

None of which means we need to become paranoid, driven Christians, neurotically terrified of making any bold move in case we crash and burn! But nor should we be careless and casual about our commitment. Possessing salvation is one of the greatest responsibilities in the universe, says Paul, and we need to be extremely careful about how we work it out.

It’s a bit like being presented with a cheque for a million pounds – then having to walk half a mile down the High Street to bank it. I don’t know about you, but in that situation, I think “fear and trembling” would describe my feelings nicely…

Verse 13 Here’s the other side of the equation. We have the responsibility for “working out” our salvation. But we don’t do it alone. In fact, we’d never get started unless it were for the new force within us which drives us forward, implanting new desires, wild ambitions, strange thirstings after righteousness, unexpected urges to serve others and deny ourselves. We do it – but God does it.

What does he do? Two things. First, he produces the willingness inside us by changing our attitudes. Second, he provides the power to make the whole thing work. Neither of these actions would be enough on their own. If God gave us the will without the power, we’d just be frustrated, longing to reach a moral and spiritual standard that would be forever beyond us. And if he gave us the power without the will, we’d never use it.

However, both things are available to us, and we need to remember this, because the devil will try to convince us otherwise. He may attempt to tell us that we just haven't got the will power, that serving God might be a praiseworthy thing to do, but honestly we just can't be bothered... yet. Or he may acknowledge that we'd really, really like to do it, but will try to give us the impression that we just don't have it in us to live up to our wishes. We need to remember that God's energizing is available in both departments - will and action - to help us do what we should.

But God works with the whole person: the will that drives us on invisibly inside, and the actions we perform visibly outside. We still need to “work it out”; but all the initiative, and all the resources, are always his.