Philippians 2:12-13 | Working Out the Work of God

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

If you believe what you've just sung, then what you've just sung will impact the way you live.

You've just sung, you've declared your allegiance and commitment and trust that Christ will lead you all the way home.

Then why do you worry?

Why are you anxious?

Why do you wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Does not your father care for the birds of the field, the flowers of the field and the birds of the air?

Open your Bibles with me too, the book of Philippians, please.

So we consider more on this topic from God's Word in the New Testament book of Philippians.

I spent a good deal of the first half of my life in the Montana Mountains, otherwise known as God's country.

A yearly backpacking trip was normal for my life, at least until my body began to complain too loudly.

Throughout those years and trips into the mountains, I learned a few laws of physics that I could not learn in a classroom.

I learned over the years of lugging a backpack up and down thousands of feet of mountainside all kinds of lessons.

For example, first I learned that carrying heavy weights is harder going uphill.

That means you can walk much faster going downhill.

Second, I found that carrying heavy weights is easier on your knees and ankles when you're going uphill, but much more painful on your knees and ankles when going downhill.

Third lesson that I learned is that the weight you carry must be carried uphill by your own muscles and willpower.

However, that same weight, that same mass that you're carrying on your back helps push you downhill.

And there's a fourth truth I learned as a young boy spending a week in the mountains.

There's something about a hot, greasy cheeseburger and fries at the end of the week that motivates the miles out of the mountains.

Going into the mountains requires effort and endurance and willpower.

But coming down out of the mountains while it's painful on your joints is easier because you can rely on physics and the motivation at the end of the trail to push you forward.

While it's not an exact comparison, there are similarities to the Christian life found in Philippians chapter 2, verses 12 and 13.

Philippians 2:12

You know, we often live our lives following Christ as if we are constantly going uphill.

As though we're pushing against everything that's against us.

We're trying to go uphill, and it feels like it's always under our own strength, under our own willpower, and it is full of effort.

We put all of our energy, all of our strength into it as it, as it were, climbing up to heaven.

We understand God's requirements and God's laws.

We understand his word.

We understand to some extent, at least, we increase in this as we go throughout our Christian life what God calls us to do.

What God calls us to be, how he wants us to live.

And we look forward to the end of the trail when Christ leads us home.

But we often do this without realizing that God has designed the Christian life with a lot of downhill in it.

In the sense of there is energy and motivation in the Christian life that propels us forward.

We have a path or a trail to follow.

Christ has gone before us into heaven.

Hebrews talks about him being the trailblazer, the pioneer that goes before us and blazes the path that we should follow.

So we have a path to follow.

Not only that, though, God is working within us to shape us into his son's likeness.

He energizes our movement along the path of life homeward.

And just like the anticipation of a cheeseburger at the end of the trail, God has promised that he will complete his work.

Look with me at Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Help us remember where we've come from.

I want to begin reading in verse 3, if you'd like to follow along.

Philippians chapter 2, verse 3.

Philippians 2:3

It says, Do nothing from selfish ambition 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, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Yahweh to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, 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.

Amen.

It's written from a Roman prison cell.

And it expresses the apostles' love and concern for the church in that city.

You can see all of that at the beginning of chapter one.

So as a spiritual father, he reminds them of a very precious reality in chapter one and verse six.

He says, I am certain of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Several key components in that verse, in chapter 1, verse 6.

First key component is that the work has started and it's underway, but it's not finished.

But like all of God's promises, like all of God's work, it will be completed.

You can have no question about that.

What God has begun, God will complete.

And in between, it feels like walking uphill carrying a backpack.

But in reality, God is working in you all along to empower and to energize and to change you into the image of Jesus Christ.

That doesn't mean that everything will go smoothly until the very end.

I learned very painful lessons of walking too fast, going downhill out of the mountains.

You don't pay attention, and the moment you don't pay attention, your toe comes into contact with a tree root.

And then you fall forward flat on your face, and that's a lot more painful with a heavy backpack on you.

Life doesn't always go as we expect.

But it's not a surprise to God, is it?

We learned in chapter 1 of Philippians that some people in the city of Rome were preaching Christ out of envy, out of rivalry, and even an attempt to worsen Paul's imprisonment.

They wanted to hurt him.

So there's disunity and dysfunction in Rome.

And that's likely happening in Philippi, too.

But walking worthy of the gospel of Christ as he calls us to means we labor to stand firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.

The key to living that way is fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author, the beginner, and finisher of our faith.

Because as we've seen here in chapter two, he is the glorious, eternal, all-powerful God who set aside his glory to take on flesh for the sole purpose of becoming obedient to the point of death, demonstrating that he considered us more significant than all of the privileges of his deity.

That humble path leads to eternal glory as we read in verses 9, 10, and 11, where God now proclaims, this is not only my beloved son, this is Yahweh, the Lord Jesus Christ.

That humble path is the one that we must follow as we take up our cross and follow him.

Now in Philippians chapter 2, verses 12 and 13, we begin to see how the promise and the work of God come together in us.

Philippians 2:12

God has begun a good work in us, he will complete that good work, but now we're in between.

That in-between is sometimes filled with pain, sometimes filled with joy, sometimes filled with uncertainty, sometimes uphill, sometimes downhill, sometimes flat on our faces.

What are we to do in the middle?

These two verses call us to faithfully work out the work that God is doing in us.

It's as simple as that.

Work out, live out what God is already at work doing in you.

I want to spend a few moments looking at that together.

We're going to start looking at God's work.

Then we're going to consider our work.

And after that, we're going to look at the cheeseburger at the end of the trail.

Sorry, I don't have a cheeseburger to offer you, though.

And that cheeseburger in this case is God's promise.

God's work, our work, and God's promise.

So first we need to see that God is at work in us.

This divine work is primary and foundational.

The command to work out our own salvation is built on that foundation.

The floors, the walls, and the roof of our Christian lives are built on God's work.

That's what that little word for means at the beginning of verse 13.

We are to work out because God works.

Not only is God's work foundational, though, he initiated it.

That's why we start in chapter 1, verse 6.

God began a good work in you.

God began the work of your salvation.

The Apostle Paul here is writing to Christians.

So this applies to every person who has heard the gospel that the good news, that's what gospel means, that Jesus Christ died to pay the price of your sins and has believed in him as the atonement, the payment for your sin.

Christ died your death for your sin.

And if your faith is in that and in the person who did that, then this text describes you.

God began the work of saving you.

And when we say salvation here, it's beginning to end.

For the one who began a good work in you will complete it.

We saw in chapter 1, verse 29, that the word granted refers to God's gracious giving.

For it has been granted to you, it has been graciously given to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.

God began the good work of your salvation by graciously giving it to you.

We are saved by what?

Grace.

The Gospel of John says it a little differently.

John says in, Jesus says in John chapter 6, verse 44, that no one can come to me unless the Father draws him.

John 6:44

God the Father is the initiator of your salvation.

He has begun a good work in you.

But the word works in chapter 2, verse 13, it is God who works in you, indicates that it's not merely a work in the past, it's an ongoing, continuing work.

Praise God that none of us is finished yet.

We are all works in progress.

Even now, he is at work in you as you are listening to the preaching of his word.

It is God who works in you.

It's true, as Ephesians 2.10 declares, that we are his workmanship.

God has begun a good work, and he continues the work of your salvation.

Friends, no matter how hard the uphill walk to heaven feels, always preach to yourself that God is at work in you.

You may not feel it, you may not sense it, you may feel as though he is far away, but you can't trust your feelings because God's word is truer than your feelings.

And it says, if you belong to him, God is at work in you.

He is at work.

It is God who works.

And he will complete that work.

The fact that the completion of that work is in the future, at the day of Christ, chapter 1, verse 6.

He's begun a good work and he will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ.

He began it.

There's a future time when it will be complete.

That shows us that we are all works in progress.

All of us who believe in Jesus Christ are works in progress.

As we break that down a little further, we see that Philippians 1.6 refers to the beginning and the end of God's saving works.

Philippians 2.13, however, refers to the middle, to the now.

The continuing process of making us more like Christ.

It's a glorious day when you hit the trailhead with a backpack on your back, looking forward to the glorious few days ahead in the mountains.

But before long, you start walking up those switchbacks up the side of a mountain and you start groaning and complaining.

And then you hit a valley and you come back down, you think, oh, this is glorious.

I'm so glad I'm on this trip.

And then you walk over some rock slide where your feet are being twisted and turned as your feet are being placed on boulders and sharp, jagged edges of rocks, and your feet start to complain and to hurt.

And then you walk through a nice level tree-covered lane that has the path full of pine needles and it's soft, and you think, boy, this is glorious.

And it's cool.

And then you get a nice, refreshing cold drink from mountain water.

It's a glimpse of heaven.

But then you're out in the open for miles and miles and miles, and you're drenched with sweat and you're suffering because you're hot.

And you long for the end of the day when you can rest and break out your camp and sleep.

That's the Christian life.

That's the now.

And it's through all of those moments that we need to remember God began a good work and God will complete the work.

And in the middle, He is at work in us.

We call that sanctification, where God sets us apart more and more to himself in Christ-likeness and more and more distinct, set apart from the world.

Now there's an emphasis in the first part of Philippians on our salvation being of God.

He began it, he continues it, and he will complete it.

That's the basis, the foundation of the command, then to work out our own salvation.

We are all God's projects at various stages of completion.

Sometimes my wife gets a little frustrated that I don't complete projects on the best schedule.

God doesn't get frustrated with his projects.

But where we are in the middle is not necessarily where somebody else is in the middle.

Somebody else may be going through a nice tree-covered lane while you're scrambling over rocks.

Someone else might be satisfied with a nice cold, refreshing drink while you're sweating to death out in the sun.

We are all at different places on the path.

But we would not be able to work out our salvation if God were not already at work in the world.

Us.

Living worthy of our calling would be impossible if God were not already at work in us.

And that reality should generate the humility of Christ in us.

Humility towards God and humility towards others.

We've already seen in our reading how God the Son humbled himself by becoming obedient to the will of God.

In his humanity, he submitted himself to the will of the Father, even to the point of death.

So our Lord's example sets the tone for us to hear the truth of God's grace and to align ourselves under that gracious and merciful work.

But as we saw in the verse that we started with reading this morning, we must also grow in grace and humility toward others because we're all works in progress.

We need to be gracious in our consideration of others, humble toward others.

All genuine believers are on the same path toward heaven.

We began this trek by believing in Jesus, and we continue on a sanctifying path toward the same end.

The completion, the utter perfect completion of our salvation and glorification with Jesus.

But the details in the middle are going to look different with every single person.

Some people, for example, will have a clear and definite moment of saving faith.

I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ on this day, at this hour, at this minute of the day.

That's great if you have that.

Praise God for that.

Others may have a more progressive experience where they're not able to identify the exact moment of faith in Christ.

Some will struggle with different sins than yours.

You wouldn't want others to think less of you for your particular struggles.

So why would we think less of someone else for their struggles?

You may have no problem with the heat of the backpacking trip.

But you struggle on the rocks.

Others may not have a problem on the rocks.

They may enjoy climbing on the rocks, but they can't handle the heat.

Why would we look down on one another for the different struggles that we have?

Some of us are like limestone, soft limestone that chips easily.

Christ's work comes clearly and neatly, and we have soft hearts, and we're easily molded.

We have soft hearts that are motivated by conviction, and Christ can work in us easily.

But some of us, frankly, are more like granite.

Our hard hearts are shaped into Christ's likeness much more slowly.

We need to value others more than ourselves and encourage one another along the way instead of being judgmental.

Some of us get tied in knots because others don't hold to our particular theological leanings.

So, for example, someone might get irritated that I've begun with the subject of God's sovereignty and salvation, even though it comes second in our text.

They might hold more strongly to human responsibility and internally react.

While others might be thinking, boy, I'm so glad you nailed that first.

Do you see how that pits us against each other?

And so we're then lifting ourselves up as more significant than others.

We tend to view our convictions as the only right way to see things, and we tried to hold others to them.

But the flow of Philippians indicates that we need to hold our convictions more humbly and to value others more than ourselves because that is how we reflect Jesus.

Maybe that's one reason why human responsibility and divine sovereignty coexist in these two verses.

To lead us into humility.

God is working to accomplish his will and his good pleasure.

Our salvation is a work of God from beginning to end, and that truth should motivate humility in us.

But it should also motivate responsibility.

Genuine saving faith does not stand alone, it works its way out of the person whom God is working in.

So consider now how we work out God's work in us.

He says in verse 12, therefore, which you should stop and think, why is that?

Therefore, therefore, right?

It takes us back to the grandeur of the exaltation of Christ, right?

That the humble one is now exalted and declared for all that this Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord of all, and every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess.

Therefore, my beloved, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

The apostle Paul hoped to get out of prison and to visit Philippi.

And looking back on his history, he's encouraged by the believers' obedience to Christ while he's with them.

That's an encouragement to him.

Now he says it's even more important to obey in Paul's absence.

He doesn't explain why.

He doesn't explain for us why it's important to obey when he's not there.

We can make some educated guesses that might be fairly accurate, though.

One reason is that they might be discouraged, that Paul is in prison.

And in their discouragement, they could get off track and drift.

They might be drawn back to their old lives.

Another reason might be that it's always easier to obey when an authority is present, right?

It's always easiest to obey when mom or dad is right there watching.

Or it's always easier to do the right thing when the boss is right beside you.

It's easier to make sure your room gets cleaned while mom is watching.

I remember playing sports as a kid and slacking off because I knew the coach was paying attention somewhere else.

One commentator suggests that the apostle is, and I quote, writing as an absent parent who has heard of problems among the kids while away, and he writes to urge them to behave until he returns.

He might be right.

He might be right.

Those are some likely guesses.

But the reason for that statement is less important than the command.

Work out what God is working in you.

Notice that we aren't told to work for our salvation.

We don't earn that.

We don't do things to get it.

We can't pay for it with money, we can't pay for it with effort or any good works because salvation is by grace alone.

It is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one is able to boast.

The apostle here is discussing the outcome of God starting and maintaining a good work in us.

If you buy a fruit tree and you plant it in your backyard, you dig it deep and you set it down and you put wood chips around it and you build it up and you protect it, you fertilize it, you water it, and you prune it carefully, you expect that fruit tree to bear fruit.

If you purchase a new car and you go to the gas station and you fill the tank with gas, you expect that car to take you places.

The expectation for Christians is similar.

In John's Gospel, in a different metaphor, Jesus described it using the image of a grapevine.

He said, we as people are attached to a vine, which is in this case Jesus.

And the life of the vine flows to all of the branches.

That's God's power working in us to make us more like his son.

That's God's work at work in us.

It's his life flowing through us.

The life of the vine is in the branches.

And just like a faithful vine tender, God cares for us.

He feeds us, he waters us, and he prunes us to shape us into Christ likeness.

There's something interesting about plants, too, is that if you if you put a plant down in your basement and you start it out as a seed and you grow it up, it grows up all by its own, very weak.

And it comes up pretty spindly.

And if that's all you do and you take it outside on a spring day and you plant it, it's likely that that little plant is going to blow over because the stalk is not strong enough.

It needs some wind movement, it needs some air movement so that the muscles, if you will, of the plant start strengthening and it can stand on its own.

So too, God knows when you need to be trekking uphill.

He knows when you need to be scrambling across the boulders.

He knows when you need to grow thirsty.

But through all of that, the life of the vine is flowing through you.

That never comes away.

The life of the vine is always there, and he is always at work, continuing his work in us.

He is powerfully at work, killing all that is sinful in us and growing us to righteousness so that we reflect the life of Christ more and more and begin to produce the fruit of the Spirit.

We then are to rely on that work of God as we work out and obey Christ.

Working out our salvation is striving to live according to Christ by the power that is already at work in us.

So this Philippians 2 passage continues to describe how we are to work out our salvation.

Look at verse 14.

Do all things.

Which things?

All things.

Comprehensively, all things without grumbling or disputing.

Be blameless and innocent like children.

Hold fast to the word of truth.

Maybe even be poured out for Christ.

We might summarize living out our salvation, working out our salvation as living like Jesus in a fallen world.

We'll look more at that next time and how he describes our world as crooked.

Because God is at work in us and he desires his good pleasure to be formed in us, to make us like Christ.

We are given the command to work out what God is working in us.

And friends, it is a lie to say, as a genuine Christian, I can't.

That's a lie.

Now you may not do it perfectly.

You may succeed one time and fail the next.

It may take a long time to grow significantly.

But if the life of Christ, in the power of Christ, is at work in you, we then ought to have the desire and the motivation to work out our salvation because God is already at work in us.

And in that work, he provides the strength to do whatever he set before us.

Now he has not given you, friends, necessarily the strength to do what you need to do next year, now.

It's only February.

Give him time.

But God has given you the grace for today.

He has given you the strength for this moment.

So to say I can't, I can't resist this temptation is a lie.

So how do we work out our salvation?

Well, it's it's best, I think, to start with very practical things.

Be in scripture every day.

Let it let it infuse you.

Let it infuse your heart and your mind and your soul so that it's there.

So that when you're processing how to do something or what to do, scripture comes to mind and helps form how you view things.

Talk to God.

Even if it's just something short in the moment, cultivate that prayer life.

Worship.

Sing in the shower when nobody can hear you.

That's okay.

Even if they can hear you, sing anyway.

Worship.

Turn your heart towards the exalted Christ.

Tell somebody about the joy and the hope that is within you.

Maybe take a moment to consider somebody else more significant than yourself.

Strive to live out humility.

Now we need to consider the bacon cheeseburger at the end of the trail.

God promises to finish what he began.

Christ will lead you all the way home.

He will lose none of his sheep.

Freeze-dried food has improved substantially over the years.

If you don't know what freeze-dried food is, you might consider yourself blessed.

Freeze-dried food is dehydrated, is a dehydrated dish or or food like vegetable or something.

It's a kind of dish that is dehydrated and packaged in a foil pouch.

And you get water boiling over a little canister heater or a fire, and you put water in the pouch and you stir it up and you seal it and you let it rehydrate for a few minutes.

Then it's ready to eat.

Roughly 1980, plus or minus a few years.

That first experience of dehydrated food was nothing less than awful.

It didn't help that I accidentally kicked some sand into my spaghetti.

And my dad told me that's all you have to eat.

I couldn't eat it.

And I was hungry.

I was hungry.

We had hiked a ways, we'd arrived at a lake, and we were having our lunch, and there was nothing more for me to eat.

Friends, let me tell you, spending a week in the mountains with nothing but freeze-dried food turns a greasy bacon cheeseburger into a heavenly delight.

That cheeseburger at the end of the trail is the stuff that dreams are made of.

About day three, you start having daily and sometimes multiple times a day, dreams about that cheeseburger at the end of the trail.

And the dream pushes you through the next few days.

It emboldens you to keep going.

It energizes you for the miles upon miles of downhill trudging that crushes your knees and your ankles.

What God has begun, he will complete.

Now he's not going to complete it until the day of Christ.

So you're going to be a work in progress for a long time.

You're going to have to put up with me for a long time in that work in progress because we're all works in progress until the day of Christ.

But the cheeseburger is at the end of the trail.

Not really.

You have to unpack and then clean up and drive a half an hour into town and takes patience.

Working out our salvation should make us increasingly aware of how unchrist-like we really are.

You don't realize how much your heart is prone to grumble until you go backpacking.

And you grumble about going uphill, and then you grumble about going downhill, and you grumble about freeze-dried food, and you grumble about how cold the nights are.

You grumble about how stinky the guy next to you is.

Your heart is full of grumbling.

And that sense of unchrist-likeness should be like ancient freeze-dried spaghetti dashed with sand, so that our appetite yearns for the promise of the completion of our salvation.

And that promise ought to spur us on to love and good works.

We ought to join the Apostle Paul as he describes over in chapter 3, verse 13.

He says, one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the upward call of Christ.

And then he says, join in imitating me.

Press on.

Keep going.

We are commanded to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, pointing back to the exalted Christ.

Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

There's some fear there.

It's a recognition of who began our salvation, who continues it, and who will complete it.

We work it out with reverence and awe and fear even of disobedience, looking forward all the while to the fulfillment of the promise.

And we can't forget, friends, that humility is the context in which all of this is done.

The humility of Christ in chapter 2 grounds the outworking of our faith.

We all think we have things figured out.

We all think we know what it takes to go uphill.

We all think we know the best way to go downhill.

We all think we know which rock is going to shift and move if you step on it and which one won't.

And when you think that, watch out because you're going to get surprised.

We think we know what the Christian life ought to be like.

We think we know how it ought to be lived.

We think we know how to crush sin.

We think we know how to be holy.

We think we know which theological truths and systems are right and which are wrong.

We think we know when Christ will return and so on.

And then we begin to bully one another with those convictions.

But that's exactly what the Apostle Paul was correcting in Philippi.

We're going to see more about that next time.

But the reality of Christ considering others more significant than himself ought to motivate how we work out the work of God in us.

We all do.

It's a trek.

We all have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.

For yet a little while, God says, and the coming one will come, and he will not delay.

But in the meantime, while you're working out your own salvation, my righteous one shall live by faith, quoting Habakkuk.

And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

And the author of Hebrews says, but we, all of us who are on the path, on the trail, we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed.

But we are those who have faith and persevere.

We are those who work out our salvation.

All the while trusting that Jesus, the author of our salvation, will complete what he has promised.

May that motivate you to follow Christ, trusting him each and every day as you work out what he has begun in you.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we commit ourselves to you.

By confessing as we often do our failures.

So often, Lord, you make us aware of our weaknesses.

You make us aware of just how selfish and self-centered we are.

How much room we have to grow, how much we rely, have to rely on you.

Oh Lord, open our eyes to see and to hope and to dream of the fulfillment of the promise.

Cause our hearts to trust more fully in you each and every day, till you bring us home.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.