saved by grace

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, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13

Outside of a cult here and a splinter group there, you don’t much hear anyone talking about salvation being by works. So let’s agree on that — we’re not saved by works.

The work of salvation was accomplished by Christ on the cross (John 19:30).

Then what in the world was Paul talking about when he said we need to “work out our salvation”? There are a couple of important points that will help us understand this passage.

First, who was Paul writing to? He was writing to Christians — a body of believers in Philippi who were already saved! (Philippians 1:1). Thus, this was not a group of unbelievers he was writing to who needed to go from a state of being unsaved to a state of being saved. He was not urging them to “come to Christ”; they were already there!

Second, let’s see Who it is that Paul says is doing the work: “…for it is God who works in you…”. So if God is the One doing the work, what is there left for me to “work out”?

Clearly Paul does not mean that there can be anything we can do as a meritorious act that will contribute to our salvation. The work of salvation was accomplished by Christ on the cross (John 19:30). The debt for our guilt of sin has been paid.

Therefore, we are not to work out our salvation from the guilt of sin; we are to work out our salvation from the power of sin. In a different letter, Paul wrote

¹¹In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires…¹⁴For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:11-14)

As a member of the body of Christ, sin does not “reign in [our] mortal body”, but that does not mean we do not sin. This is how we are to “work out our salvation” — we are to think as Paul thought and to work as Paul worked:

¹²Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

You work each day so that sin has less and less “reign” in your life. You “press on toward the goal”. You let the Holy Spirit continue the work in you that Christ started. You work out your salvation from the power of sin by giving sin less and less control over your life, as you allow the Spirit more and more control.

I read that statement recently. It was written by John MacArthur, a man with whom I agree quite often, and with whom I also sometimes disagree. Do statements ever strike you as being so outrageous they couldn’t possibly be true, but if you think about it a little they make you wonder if there is a sense in which they may be true?

Such was the case for me with this one. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with it. Read on and I’ll tell you why…

What’s the first step toward salvation?

This post will not be a “step 1, do this; step 2, do this” type of post. Everything starts somewhere though. Such is the case with salvation, and certainly to see whether or not salvation is initiated by human choice, we need to see how it is initiated. So where does it begin?

We’re told that “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). So hearing the Word is the first step toward salvation.

God prepared before creation the good works He has in store for me today.

If hearing the Word is the first step, how is that initiated other than by human choice?

That indeed is the question to answer. Could it be there are things taking place that lead to our salvation before we hear the Word? If so, then they are not actions we take, because that would be in conflict with the Word itself.

Consider:

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

⁴For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love ⁵He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will—⁶to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves. (Ephesians 1:4-6)

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)

So we are “created in Christ to do good works”. That’s a telling fact in itself, but what’s the source of these good works? “God prepared [them] in advance for us to do.” In advance of what? Certainly in advance of us doing the good works, but I believe it means more than that. The context of Ephesians 1, and on into chapter 2, is God’s eternal plan. Thus, God prepared before creation the good works He has in store for me today.

Predestined?

What about “He chose us” and “He predestined us”? So God chose before creation who would be good and who would be bad? Who would be saved and who would be condemned? No, that can’t be the proper meaning of this passage because if it is, it conflicts with several other things God told us, not the least of which is that He is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

It’s easy to read “chose” and “predestined” in Ephesians 1, and miss the critical phrase. God “chose us in Him to be holy and blameless in His sight,” meaning He foreordained that those who come to Christ in obedient faith would be “holy and blameless in His sight”. So yes, we’re predestined, but not as individuals; we’re predestined as a class of people who trust in Him.

So you see, there are many things going on in “the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:3) that are directed to draw us to Christ — things that indeed initiate our process of salvation long before we ever hear the Word.

What other passages shed light on this subject? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How can I ‘work out my own salvation’?

“Salvation is not initiated by human choice”