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I’ve told this story a few times before, but there is no hurt in redundancy. It makes things stick. There was an Old Order Mennonite man standing at a subway stop in New York City. While he waited, 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 what the Jesus People fellow meant was had the Mennonite gentleman accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour so that he may go to heaven when he died. Being more aware of the community aspect of the Christian faith, the Mennonite gentleman’s answer indicated that our eternal salvation, if valid, would be evidenced by our conduct towards our neighbours. Faith cannot be separated from works. As James writes, “Faith without works is dead” (Jm. 2:26).
Well, 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.” I hope that maybe we will gain an expanded definition of what salvation is and a greater awareness that God is working in us as the catalyst to salvation.
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 Rubber Duck 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 friends of Jesus in a Chartreuse microbus.”
When I thought of those those long-haired friends of Jesus what I pictured was simply hippies on a drug induced Jesus-trip. In reality, though the Jesus People were hippies, they were quite something more than strung out at Woodstock and all that. The Jesus People were actually looking for an alternative lifestyle to that Hippie drug culture that was looking for an alternative to the Vietnam War and living the American Dream. The Jesus People rather 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 truly resembled the small, household churches of the early church. They sprang up and became a movement that lasted only about ten years, but their legacy includes contemporary worship and contemporary Christian music.
With Jesus People’s way of life in mind, maybe what that long-haired friend of Jesus gentleman meant when he asked the elder Mennonite, “Are you saved?” wasn’t “Are you going to go to Heaven when you die”, but rather “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.” Come with me and meet my friends and live in the Kingdom of God is a far cry from “Are you going to Heaven when you die? Salvation as this friend of Jesus had experienced it in the Jesus People communities was a “this world” thing as much as it was a “coming world” thing. Salvation could be lived out right now rather than something elusive to be waited for after death. We really do the salvation that God wrought in, through, and as Jesus a disservice when we limit it to being simply about what happens after death.
In the early church, salvation had as much if not more to do with present situations than with 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, the Kingdom of God on Earth and 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 as well. The early Christians were not so much concerned about their after-life which to them was the expectation of being with Jesus when they died while they waited for the resurrection of the dead as much as they were that their hope for salvation to come about in their lives right now. They wanted God to put things right in the world right now. That was Salvation (capital S).
And so it is with us or should be. Salvation is here in our present reality. God is at work in us causing us, enabling us to will and work for his good pleasure. Paul said, “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.” That little word “for” there is a powerful little word. It structures the sentence to mean that God is here working in us, prompting us and making us able to work out our salvation.
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. He’s actually stating what is true among the Philippians. They did have encouragement among themselves, comfort in love, affection and sympathy. They have all this because of their relationship with Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit who dwells in and among them. Therefore, they could share the same love in Christ. They could be harmonious and single-minded in their pursuit of living a lifestyle worthy of the Gospel of Christ. They had all this communion in love because of the free gift of God’s working in them…and so do we.
Since this is the case, the way we are to work out our salvation is by not doing things from selfish motives. But rather, do all things in humility. This is a difficult task for it means before we do or say or not do or say anything, we should do an inventory of our motives. Is it for selfish motives that I do this or is it according to humility? We must look after the interests of each other as if those interests were our own. We must regard even those who are the most obnoxious among us as being more significant than ourselves. God has enabled us to be this way – humble – by giving us the Holy Spirit – the mind or mindedness that Jesus has – and we must do our best to follow through on it because this life-changing, deep love expressed in serving each other is what salvation is and looks like. It is what God looks like. So, let us live from the mindedness of Christ that is in us, not trying to be gods. Rather, let us in love be each other’s servant. Amen.
