Phil. 2:12, 13:—“So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.”
Nothing could be more fundamental to Paul’s conception of salvation than his teaching as to its relation to “works.” He is persistently insistent that this relation is that of cause rather than of effect. The “not out of works, but unto good works,” of Ephesians 2:9, 10, sounds the keynote of his whole teaching. In “good works,” therefore, according to Paul “salvation” finds its realization: the very essence of salvation is holiness of life, “sanctification of the spirit.” And equally in “salvation” “good works” find their only root: and it is only on the ground of the saving work of God that men may be hopefully exhorted to good works. As it is pregnantly stated in the passage from Ephesians we have already adverted to, God has prepared beforehand good works, to our walk in which we are introduced by a creative act on His part, in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:10). Accordingly Paul’s epistles (as is the whole New Testament), are full of particular instances of appeals to conduct based on the inception and working in us of the saving activity of God (e.g., 1 Thess. 2:12; 2 Thess. 2:13-15; Rom. 6:2; 2 Cor. 5:14; Col. 1:10; Phil. 1:21; 2:12, 13; 2 Tim. 2:19). Possibly in the words of our text we meet with the most precise expression of this appeal. Here the saint is exhorted to “work out his own salvation” just because “it is God who is the worker in him of both the willing and the doing, in pursuance of His good pleasure.” If there is an antinomy involved in this collocation of duty and motive, it is in this passage certainly brought to its sharpest point. There are also many minor matters of interest in the language of the passage, which attract us to its study. Let us try to see briefly just what the Apostle says in it.
It will be useful to bear in mind from the beginning that the exhortation is addressed not to sinners but to saints: it is to “the saints in Christ Jesus” (1:1), that Paul is speaking. That is to say, this exhortation has reference not to entrance into Christian life but to the prosecution to its appropriate goal of a Christian life already entered into. This is already advertised to us by the very verb used. Paul does not say simply “work your salvation,” but “work out your salvation”— employing a compound verb which throws its emphasis on the end, “bring your salvation to its completion.” It is also involved in the contextual connection. This exhortation closes a paragraph which had begun (1:27) with the appeal, “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ”; and it closes it with a reversion to the same dominant thought. These Philippian readers already stood with the Apostle in the fellowship of the gospel: his earnest desire for them was a complete realization in life of all that the gospel meant. They had entered upon the race; let them run it through to the goal. They had in principle received salvation in believing; let them work this salvation now completely out in life. At the opening of the letter Paul had expressed his confidence that, as God had begun a good work in them, He would perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ (1:6). He now exhorts them to strive to attain the same high end. “Work out your own salvation,” i.e., work it completely out, advance it to its accomplishment, bring it to its capstone and crown it with its pinnacles.
Had it not been brought into doubt by some students of the passage, it would seem a work of supererogation to pause to assure ourselves that what Paul has in mind in his exhortation to “work out salvation” is primarily the attainment of ethical perfection. The eschatological reference of “salvation” must not, of course, be obscured. But neither must it be obscured that the pathway that leads to the eschatological goal of salvation is that walk in good works unto which Christians have been created in Christ Jesus, that “fruitage of righteousness” which is through Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God, with which the Apostle longs to see the Philippians filled “against the day of Christ” (1:10, 11). When he exhorts his readers at the close of this paragraph “to work out their own salvation,” he obviously has the same thing in mind which he had at its beginning, when he exhorted them to “let their manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ”; and the same thing which he explains in the course of it to include steadfastness in testimony to the gospel, love to the brethren, humility of mind and the like Christian virtues. In the acquisition and cultivation of such graces they would be “working out their salvation,” realizing in life in its ever-growing completeness what is involved in “salvation” as its essential contents.