Salvation is not like a mutual fund where you make your payments and leave the rest to someone else. It is more like an investment fund where you are the manager. You interact with it daily - hourly. You make the choices. You determine the distribution of funds. It is fully hands-on work.

There was a commercial on the television recently that depicts a woman and her "guardian angel." I think it is an ad for Capital One credit cards. In the ad, the angel is shown as derelict in his duties. A paperboy throws a newspaper at the porch where the woman is sitting. The angel ducks and the paper clobbers the woman. The angel is inattentive as he is riding with the woman on her mo-ped and she runs into some trash cans. A timer malfunctions on the tanning bed and the lady gets a bad sunburn while the angel is distracted reading a book. Then at the last, of course, as she pulls out her credit card to pay for the tanning bed session, the angel intervenes just in time to keep her from the mistake of using that "other" credit card and suggests that she use her Capital One "no-hassle" card. I don’t know whether we have guardian angels or not but I do know this, that no one, angel or human, is going to protect you from missing salvation if you do not take a personal interest in it yourself.

That’s what I want to talk to you about this morning. My message is called "Work Out Your Own Salvation."

The text is Philippians 2:12-13. Please join me there in your Bibles. These are the words of the apostle Paul:

Notice that Paul is talking about "salvation" in this passage. He says "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Salvation is the most important issue that there is in this life. It ought to be your number one concern – before your job, before your health, before your investments, before your recreation – before everything. If, when you and I leave this life, we don’t have salvation, nothing else will matter. So let’s focus our attention on Paul’s words.

Several important truths are taught here that are essential for Christians to understand. I’ve picked out four of them. The first is this:

The word "work" is used two times in these verses. Notice who is working when there is salvation. Verse 12 speaks of our work and verse 13 speaks of God’s work. Our work is seen in the words, "work out your salvation." God’s work is seen in the words, "it is God who is at work in you…."

So is salvation the result of God’s work or our work? Christian scholars have debated that issue since the early days of the church – and there are opposing views. The opposing views have even been named. There are the quietists and the pietists.

The quietist believes that man can do nothing himself to be saved – that God does it all. Quietists are passives when it comes to salvation. They use phrases like we’ve all heard today: "Let go and let God" and "Christ did it all, there is nothing you can add to His finished work." In fact, some extreme quietists believe that if you ever put forth any human effort as a Christian, you are actually nullifying your salvation. Of course this leads to the "do nothing" faith that so many hold today. Such people believe that all that is necessary for salvation is to say a prayer of acceptance and then show up in church once in awhile – but even the church attendance is optional for some. Beyond this they just live their own lives as they please.

On the opposing side there are the views of the pietists. Pietists in the extreme believe that you must work your own way to heaven without assistance from God. God is cast as a performance judge whose role is to set the qualification bar for salvation and then judge each person’s accomplishments accordingly. Pietists differ as to how high the performance bar is set, but the thing they all have in common is that the performance is based solely on human effort.

I hope you already know that neither of these extremes is what Christ and the apostles taught. That is seen clearly in our text. Verse 12 says we are to work out our salvation. In verse 13 tells us that God is working in us. Salvation is a joint effort. I’m not aware of a single passage that explains all the details of how God works in us, though with some effort we could probably produce some of the ways from Scripture. I tend to think of it in terms similar to other venues that require a joint effort between God and man. In our series on the fruit of the Spirit I showed you that though the nine character traits mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23 (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.) are the result of the presence of God’s Spirit within a Christian, we must also pursue them. I used the illustration of a farmer who must work the land if he is to be productive. He must plow, fertilize, weed, and otherwise do the things that make for a profitable farm. Yet without God he can do little to produce a crop. God provides the sunshine, the rain, the soil, the farmer’s health, and all the other things that, if they were absent, no amount of work on the part of the farmer would get any results. Salvation is a joint effort between God and us.

This joint effort is seen elsewhere in the New Testament. For instance, in Ephesians 2:8-10 Paul wrote:

This describes God’s part of salvation. Salvation is a gift from God. We cannot earn it. Yet in the very next verse we read:

This describes our part. We are brought into the realm of salvation by God’s work. We cannot get there on our own. But once we are in that realm, we are to do good works. That is the reason God saved us. Our works show our faith. Our works tell of God’s presence within us. If we have no works, then we have no saving faith. That is what James meant when he said in James 2:26, "Faith without works is dead."

If you have obeyed the gospel, God has begun His work in you. Earlier in the book of Philippians Paul said in Phil 1:6

In saving us, God did what we could not do on our own, no matter how hard we might try. Now that we are saved we must do what we can do with God working in us. Such working, though not perfect, shows our faith and guarantees our salvation. (More on this last statement if a few minutes.)

Another essential thing to understand from our text in Philippians 2:12-13 is that:

Paul says in our text, "work out your salvation…." The King James Version is even more emphatic about the personal responsibility. It says, "work out your own salvation."

Your friends cannot save you. Your relatives cannot save you. Your parents cannot save you. The preachers and elders in the church cannot save you. If you will be saved it will be because you took personal responsibility for your own relationship with God. That is not to say that others cannot help, but the final responsibility lies with you.

It is just like you must take personal responsibility for your health. Sometimes people under a doctor’s care don’t follow the doctor’s orders. Somehow they feel that if they can just slip something past the doctor, then they’ll be OK. If you wish to receive the benefits of the doctor’s help you must take a personal interest in your own health. The doctor isn’t going to follow you around to see if you are taking your medicine or doing the exercises that were prescribed.

Sometimes a doctor’s treatment just isn’t working. You aren’t getting well. Perhaps you suspect that he or she isn’t as aggressive in treating you as they could be. In such cases you must take charge of our own health. You may ask for a second opinion. You may even switch doctors. Don’t think that just because you’re "seeing a doctor" that you are doing all that can be done for your health. Such thinking could lead to more serious illness or even death.

Likewise, you must assume personal responsibility for your own salvation. You must work out your own salvation.

It isn’t the job of the preacher or elders to drag you to the Christian assembly. It isn’t someone else’s responsibility to make sure that you are not daydreaming (or sleeping) your way through the singing, the communion, the prayer, and the preaching. No one could possibly do such things effectively anyway because they don’t have access to your mind, not to mention that they have themselves to be concerned about.

People may exhort you about these things. It is the responsibility of the church leaders to teach you about them. But no one else can do it for you. Neither should you expect anyone else to baby-sit you to be sure your are doing what you need to be doing.

Sometime back I overhead someone who had missed the assembly for four weeks in a row say that no one had called them to check on them. The person was pretty miffed about it. What kind of a church was this that didn’t care about its members! But I ask you, whose responsibility is it to get you here? Whose responsibility is it to be sure that you have spiritual input beyond these walls? Whose responsibility is it to live the Christian life? It is yours. No one else can do it for you. Work out your own salvation!

No one else has, or can have, as much interest in your salvation as you have. And if you have little or no interest then my friend you are in grave danger. Others can offer assistance. Others can teach you. Others can exhort you. (A little of that is being done right now.) But you are the final arbiter of what happens to you with regard to salvation.

Salvation is a joint effort. You must take personal responsibility. Thirdly, from our text:

"Wait a minute," someone says." "Are you going to start preaching hellfire and brimstone? Don’t you realize that is outdated? Don’t you know that fear is not a proper motivator for the sophisticated people of today?"

If that is what you are thinking, then tell it to Paul. He said it. He’s one of the apostles empowered to teach us about Christ and salvation. And what again did he say in our text? He said, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Not just fear but also trembling!

"Surely there is something in the Greek or some cross reference that would soften these words!"

Sorry. If that’s what you’re looking for you’ll be disappointed. The word "fear" in the Greek language means just that - fear. The word is PHOBOS, which is the root of our English word "phobia." Strong’s lexicon says it means "alarm or fright."

The word "trembling" is the same. Strong says it means, "Quaking with fear."

"But I thought as Christians we didn’t have to fear God anymore. Didn’t He say someplace that we don’t need to fear – that we could call Him ‘Abba, Father’?"

As Christians we don’t have to fear the condemnation of God, provided we are working out our own salvation. The fear of slipping away from it motivates us to keep on.

If you are a true Christian who is striving to please God and accepting responsibility for your own salvation then the only thing you need to fear is getting off that track. If you are a diligent worker, then God will be working in you. If you are shirking that responsibility then you have plenty to fear.

Salvation is a joint effort. It involves personal responsibility. It involves fear and trembling. Finally, according to Paul’s words in Philippians 2:12-13:

In this joint effort of salvation, God’s redemption work is finished. Jesus said on the cross, referring to His work of deliverance, the planning of which began even before the earth was created, "It is finished." His work in purchasing our pardon is done. But our part is still going on. We must "work out our own salvation." We must, as Peter said in 2 Peter 1:10 in the KJV, "be diligent to make [our] calling and election sure." We must, as John said in Revelation 2:10, "be faithful until death." While God’s redemptive work in making provision for us through Christ is finished, God is still working with those who are His to help us learn to live for Him.

Paul said, "work out your own salvation." The Greek word he used for "work out" (KATERGAZOMAI) carries the connotation of continuing to work on something until it is completed.

Please listen. Salvation is not like a mutual fund where you make your payments and leave the rest to someone else. It is more like an investment fund where you are the manager. You interact with it daily - hourly. You make the choices. You determine the distribution of funds. It is fully hands-on work. And you continue with this hands-on work until you finish this life. If you are not willing to do that, then it is proof either that you were never really saved in the first place or that you have forgotten what salvation is all about. Let me show you a New Testament passage that says just that.

2 Peter 1:5-9 says:

Notice that the character qualities mentioned here are to be pursued diligently by us. Peter says, "…applying all diligence, in your faith supply" these things. He’s talking about our part of the joint effort. He continues:

Such developing character qualities, as they increase, render us fruitful for God. If we have no concern for their development in our lives, it shows that we’re either blind or forgetful of what God has done for us.

Peter goes on to say that our striving to develop these qualities also assures our salvation. He continues:

Do you want to be sure you never stumble? Do you want confidence in your eternal reward to be "abundantly supplied" so that you are sure about where you are going? Then, Peter says, practice these things and increase in them.

We live in a culture that loves acronyms. The March 18, 1993 issue of Spokesman Review carried the following piece entitled "Nine Workplace Attitudes Bosses Hate"

They were:

NMJ—not my job
NMM—Need more money
WCT—Wastes company time
PPP—Promises, promises, promises
NMH—Needs more help
ACD—Always complaining and disagreeable
CWS—Clock watcher’s syndrome
TTM—The trouble maker
SRM—Supports rumor mill

There are plenty of attitudes God hates, too, but in the final analysis there is one that pleases Him a lot:

WYS – Work out your own salvation.

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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