Working Out Our Salvation

“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”  Philippians 2:12

We are not told here to work for our salvation, but to work it out - that is, to demonstrate its reality in our daily lives. Our salvation must be received entirely by grace through faith, not of works (Eph. 2:8-9), or else it is not true salvation. Works can no more keep our salvation than they can earn it for us in the first place. It is not faith plus works, but grace through faith.

Nevertheless, a Christian believer, if his salvation has been real, can testify that “I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18). Good works - consisting of a righteous and gracious salvation. We have been “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

The context of our text, in fact assures us, on the basis of Christ’s sacrificial death, glorious resurrection, and exaltation (Phil. 2:8-11) that “it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (2:13). God is thereby enabling us to “work out” our salvation in visible practice, through the indwelling Holy Spirit of God.

Thus, it is beautifully appropriate that the life of a genuinely born-again Christian, possessing true salvation, should be “blameless and innocent, children of God...as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life” (2:15-16). We do need to “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5), and we are admonished that “we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3).