God Is Working in You All…So Work Out Your Salvation

Text: Philippians 2:1-13
There was an Old Order Mennonite man standing at a subway stop in New York City. If you can imagine him – black plainclothes, long beard, wide-brimmed hat. While he waits, a long-haired “Jesus freak” or one of the Jesus People came to him and asked, “Are you saved?” Well, the Elderly Mennonite stood there a minute pondering the question and finally answered, “I suppose you should ask my neighbours.”

In the past I have explained this story from the perspective of individual eternal salvation because that is immediately where Christians in the evangelical world would go with it. We assume that the Jesus People fellow was wanting to know if the Mennonite gentleman had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour so that he may go to heaven when he dies. Yet, the Mennonite gentleman, being more aware of the community aspect of the Christian faith, answers indicating that our eternal salvation, if valid, would be evidenced now by our conduct towards our neighbours. Faith cannot be separated from works of love. As James writes, “Faith without works is dead” (Jm. 2:26).

Well, this morning I would like to monkey about with that story a bit in an effort to explain what Paul means in Philippians 2:12-13, “…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.” The end result is that I hope we will have an expanded definition of what salvation is and a greater awareness that the Trinity is working in us as the catalyst to salvation.

I must note that the possessive pronoun “his” is not in the Greek text though nearly all English translations throw it in there. Philippians 2:13 is best translated “For God is the one effecting in you both to will and to work for the furtherance of the well pleasing.” The Greek word for “well pleasing”, eudokia, is literally “good thinking” which is being minded upon the things of the Trinity rather than the things of humanity. In the Biblical world one's thinking, the things one is minded towards drives the conduct of life. Jesus set his mind towards Jerusalem and the cross. We should therefore set our minds on being conformed to his mindedness as Paul says in verse five “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” which he follows up with the Christ-hymn. This way of life, the Jesus way of life could be called Cruciformity.  The self-emptying, community building way of love which leads to the cross is the well-pleasing mindset we have in Christ.

First, I want to tell you about the Jesus People movement. My first exposure to them was from that old ‘70’s trucking song “Convoy”. The truck driver known as the Rubber Duck on the CB radio gets a convoy of trucks together to go speed across the USA thinking that the police can’t stop a massive line of tractor-trailers for speeding. The convoy gets going and finally the police call out the National Guard to block the road and C.W. McCall sings: “There's armoured cars and tanks and jeeps, and rigs of every size. Yeah, them chicken coops was full of bears and choppers filled the skies. Well, we shot the line. We went for broke with a thousand screamin' trucks and eleven long-haired Fiends of Jesus in a Chartreuse microbus.” For me, those long-haired Friends of Jesus were simply hippies on a drug induced Jesus-trip. In reality, yes, the Jesus People movement were hippies, but they were looking for an alternative lifestyle to the drug culture, the Vietnam War, and the American Dream. They wanted to be like the early church. So, they lived in communes and shared their possessions. Healings and “miracles” were known to happen among them. Though they looked like hippies, the Jesus People movement truly resembled the early church. They lasted only ten years, but their legacy includes what we call contemporary worship and contemporary Christian music.

With that way of life in mind, maybe what that long-haired friend of Jesus gentleman meant by asking, “Are you saved?” was “Do you know that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour of all Creation and he has delivered you from all things in this world that oppress you and keep you from knowing and worshipping the true God. Come with me and meet my friends for the Kingdom of God is here and you can truly live in it.” Salvation as he had experienced it in the Jesus People communities was a “this world” thing as much as it was a “coming world” thing. We really do a disservice to the salvation God wrought in, through, and as Jesus the Christ when we limit it to being simply about what happens after death. Salvation as far as the Bible is concerned is the Trinity's acting to deliver not only his people but more so the entirety of his Creation from evil powers that oppress.

In the early church, salvation had more to do with present situations than one's eternal state. The Jews who became the first church were waiting expectantly in great hope for God to act in their lives by sending his Messiah, the Anointed One, who would deliver his people from the evil oppression of the Romans, from their own corrupt monarchy, and from their crooked priesthood. They also expected that God’s Messiah would then establish the reign of God, that the Holy Spirit would be poured upon God’s people, and that all nations would flock to the Messiah to be healed. Throw in there also an open can of whoop on all evil spiritual powers which worked through idolatry. The early Christians were not really concerned about their after life other than the expectation of the resurrection of the dead. Their hope was for salvation to come about in the now of their lives, their hope was for Jesus' eminent return and his establishing his kingdom here on earth. All definitions of salvation must find its roots in this coming event.

The Song of Zechariah at Luke 1:68-79 reflects this well: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” This song truly portrays that the first Christians expected the Trinity to act to save them in their present lives from all oppressive powers and the God of Israel did exactly that in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth who by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension and the free gift of the Holy Spirit has reconciled the world to the Trinity’s very self.

And so it is with us, salvation is here in our present reality. The Trinity is at work in us causing us, enabling us to will and work for the well-pleasing, for Cruciformity – the self-emptying way of love which leads to the cross. Did you know that repentance begins with the Trinity working in us to bring about the desire to turn to him and not the other way around? Because of sin we are truly unable to “repent” apart from a work of the Trinity’s grace upon us. The Greek word we translate as repentance in Greek is “metanoia” which quite literally means “with-minded”, to be with-minded with Jesus. Paul tells us to work out our salvation fearfully for the Trinity is working in us. That little word “for” there is a powerful little word. It structures the sentence to mean that God’s working in us comes before our ability to work for him. The Triune God of Grace first saves us and then we must live in that salvation. It’s like the emancipation of the slaves in the States. When freedom was decreed, they had to go live as free people and that was scary and difficult for them for they had only known slavery. So the truth today is that our faithfulness, our working out of our salvation is preceded by, established by, and enabled by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working grace in us.

At the beginning of chapter 2 Paul tells us how to work out our salvation. He writes: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,…”. Even though Paul uses the word “if” at the beginning and makes the whole thing sound “iffy”, according to the rules of Greek grammar Paul isn’t being iffy here. He’s actually using a rhetorical device to state what is certainly true among the Philippians. There is encouragement among them. There is comfort in love. There is affection and sympathy. These well-pleasing things are in their midst because of their relationship with Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit who dwells in and among them. Therefore, they are able to share the same love in Christ. They can now be harmonious and single-minded in their pursuit of living a lifestyle worthy of the Gospel of Christ – the life of Cruciformity. The Philippians had this communion in love because of the free gift of the Trinity’s working in them…and so do we.

Since this is the case, the way we are to work out our salvation is as Paul instructs us by not doing anything from selfish motives. But rather, doing all things in humility. This is a difficult task for it means before we do or not do anything and before we say or not say anything we have to do an inventory of our motives. Is our mindset self-thinking or Trinity-thinking. Is it for selfish motives or in humility? We must look after the interests of each other as if those interests are our own. We must regard even those who are the most obnoxious among us as being more significant than ourselves. The Trinity has enabled us to be this way, the way of Jesus and we must do our best to follow through on it for it is what salvation is and looks like. Salvation in practice looks like the way of the cross for the way of the cross is is what the Trinity looks like in practice. The Trinity is as he does therefore let us be as he has done. Let us live from the cruciform mindedness of Christ Jesus that is in us by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let us in love die to ourselves and be each others slave. Amen.