God at Work in You

Philippians 2:12–30

Read Philippians 2:12–30 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort (for the sake of his good pleasure) is God.

Philippians 2:12–13

Work Out Your Salvation

The Christ Hymn has ended. The great descent and ascent have been sung. The mind that was in Christ Jesus has been laid out for the Philippians, and for us, as the pattern of every Christian life. And now Paul does what he always does after a stunning piece of theology: he draws out the implication. The implication is for daily life.

He begins with a turn: so then. After the great descent and ascent of the Christ Hymn, he turns to the Philippians: so then, my dear friends, continue working out your salvation. Not in his presence only, but even more in my absence. And, most importantly, with awe and reverence. The Greek is meta phobou kai tromou, which the NET renders with awe and reverence and older translations render with fear and trembling. The verse continues with the reason: for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort (for the sake of his good pleasure) is God.

The verse has been read in many ways across the centuries, and some of those readings have led Christians far astray. The call to continue working out your salvation has sometimes been heard as if Paul were telling the Philippians to earn their salvation, to manufacture their standing before God by their own labor, to add their works to Christ’s saving work as a kind of supplement. That cannot be Paul’s meaning. The man who has just finished singing of Christ’s emptying Himself for our sake, the man who will say in chapter three that he regards his own credentials as liabilities, even as dung, for the sake of a righteousness from God by faith, cannot mean that we are to earn what Christ has already given. So what does he mean?

He means what he says in the very next phrase. Continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, he writes, for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort (for the sake of his good pleasure) is God. The reason we are to work out our salvation is that God is already working in us. The imperative is grounded in the indicative. The command rests on the gift. The work of the Christian life is the working out of the salvation God has worked in us: bringing into visible expression, into daily practice, into the texture of a life, what is already true at the deepest level of who we are.

The verb work out, katergazesthe, has the sense of bringing to completion, working through to its full expression. It is not the verb for producing or creating something from nothing. It is the verb for taking a reality that is already there and developing it to its full extent. A field that is plowed and planted needs to be worked (tended, watered, weeded) so that the seed already sown will produce its full harvest. The Philippians have the seed already. They were baptized into Christ. They received the Word. The good work God began in them, as Paul said in chapter one, He will bring to completion at the day of Christ. Their part is to tend the field. God’s part is the harvest.

And the tending is to be done with fear and trembling. The phrase has its own long history in Lutheran piety. The Small Catechism’s refrain, “We should fear and love God,” names the same posture: reverence joined to trust (SC I). The phrase captures something the gospel never lets us forget: that what we are dealing with, in our salvation, is not a project of our own making but a gift of inexpressible weight. We tremble not as slaves cringing before a master, though holy fear does guard us against the false security that presumes on grace. We tremble because we have grasped, however dimly, what has been given. To be a Christian is to handle holy things. The fear and trembling is the appropriate posture of those who know what they are handling.

Then comes the second half of the sentence, the half that anchors everything Lutheran in this passage. For the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort (for the sake of his good pleasure) is God. The word Paul uses for God’s working, energōn, is the verb from which we get the English word energy. God is energetic in us. He is the active worker. And He works at two levels: to thelein kai to energein, to will and to work, or as the NET has it, both the desire and the effort. To will (to want, to desire, to choose) and to work (to do, to act, to perform). God produces in us both the willing and the doing. The whole movement of the Christian life, from the first stirring of desire to the final act of obedience, is the work of God in us.

This is monergism, as we saw it in Session 1, but applied now not only to the moment of conversion but to the whole shape of the Christian life. The same Spirit who called us by the gospel and brought us to faith is the Spirit who is now working in us to will and to work the things that please God. We do not generate the willing. We do not generate the working. We discover, day by day, that we are willing and that we are working, and we recognize, with fear and trembling, that the One who is willing and working through us is God Himself.

The Formula of Concord, in its treatment of free will and conversion, presses this point home with characteristic Lutheran precision (FC SD II 65–66). The natural man, the man not yet renewed by the Spirit, has no power to will the things of God. Conversion is entirely God’s work. But once the Spirit has begun His good work in the believer, the believer is not passive. He cooperates, not in the sense that he contributes anything of his own to his salvation, and not as two horses pull a wagon together, but in the sense that the Spirit produces in him a willing and a working that are genuinely his while remaining fully the Spirit’s. The Christian life is not God’s work done to us with us standing by. It is God’s work done in us, taking shape through us, while we, with fear and trembling, work it out into the fabric of our days.

The whole Lutheran understanding of sanctification lies in these two verses. The salvation is God’s. The working out is ours. And our working out is, in its deepest reality, His working in us. There is no place for boasting, because everything good in us is His. And there is no place for spiritual passivity, because He is at work, and what He is working we are to bring to its visible expression.

For the sake of his good pleasure. The end of God’s work in us is not first of all our happiness, our success, our blessedness. The end is His good pleasure. We are being shaped into something He delights in. The harvest He is working toward, in every Christian, is a life that pleases Him. That is the goal. The blessedness comes as the byproduct.

Shining as Lights

The exhortation continues. Do everything without grumbling or arguing. The two nouns, gongusmōn and dialogismōn, pick up the language of Israel in the wilderness. Israel, redeemed from Egypt, grumbled in the desert. Israel, fed by manna from heaven, complained about the menu. Israel, on the verge of the Promised Land, disputed and rebelled. Paul is warning the Philippians not to repeat the pattern. The redeemed people of God can be remarkably ungrateful. The new Israel, the church, is to be different.

The grumbling and arguing are not minor matters. They corrode the unity Paul has just called for. They are the verbal expressions of the selfish ambition and vanity (literally, “empty glory”) he has just warned against. Where there is much grumbling, there is little humility; where there is much arguing, there is little treating of one another as more important than oneself. The Christ Hymn that has just been sung does not tolerate either.

Why does this matter so much? Because of what the church is in the world. The Philippians are to be blameless and pure, children of God without blemish, Paul says, though you live in a crooked and perverse society. And in that society they shine as lights in the world. The image is striking. The Philippians are children of God without blemish: amōma, the word used in the Old Testament for the unblemished sacrificial animal. They are God’s possession, set apart, blameless in Him because they are clothed in Christ’s own blamelessness, though every one of them still confesses his sins. And they are this in the midst of a crooked and perverse society. The world around them is bent, distorted, off-true. The church is not bent in the way the world is, because it lives from forgiveness.

This is not arrogance on Paul’s part, nor is it sectarianism. He is telling the truth about what the church is by virtue of what Christ has done. The Philippian Christians have been made blameless by the blood of Christ, sanctified by the Spirit, set in the midst of a world that has not yet been so changed. They are the children of God now, in this crooked society, before the day of Christ has come. And the world around them, for all its crookedness, can see them.

In which you shine as lights in the world. The verb shine, phainesthe, is the verb for the appearing of a heavenly body in the night sky. The Philippians, in their crooked society, are like stars in a dark sky. They are not the source of the light, of course; the source of the light is Christ. But the light shines through them. Their lives are how the light becomes visible in their neighborhoods.

And the way they shine is by holding on to the word of life. The verb, epechontes, means to grip something firmly, to keep hold of it through opposition. The Philippians are to hold on to the gospel. As they do, the gospel becomes visible through them. The shining is not a separate strategy or a special program. It is what happens naturally when Christians hold fast to the word of life and live their ordinary lives in their ordinary places.

This is the doctrine of vocation again. Christians are not called out of their callings to do something special for God. They are called to fulfill their callings (as parents, workers, neighbors, citizens, members of their congregations) in a way that is shaped by the word of life. The mother who feeds her child without grumbling; the worker who does his job without grumbling; the husband who serves his wife without grumbling; the citizen who pays his taxes and votes his conscience without grumbling: each of them shines, in the crooked society that surrounds them, with the light of the One who has come into the world.

Paul ends this section with a personal note. On the day of Christ, he writes, he hopes to have reason to boast that he did not run in vain nor labor in vain. Paul has not run in vain. The proof of it will be the Philippians themselves, standing among the lights of the world on the day of Christ. Their faithfulness will be his joy, and his crown, at the parousia.

And then, in a turn that is pure Paul, he raises the stakes. Even if he is being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, he says, I am glad and rejoice together with all of you. The image is sacrificial. In the Old Testament cultus, a drink offering of wine was poured over the main sacrifice as part of its presentation to the LORD. Paul casts himself as the drink offering, and the Philippians’ faith as the main sacrifice. His life, his ministry, even his blood if it comes to that, will be the wine poured over their faith. And he rejoices to be so used.

The connection to the Christ Hymn is clear. As Christ emptied Himself for the Philippians, so Paul is being emptied for them. As Christ became obedient to death for the church, so Paul will, if necessary, be poured out for the church. The mind of Christ is taking shape in Paul. And Paul wants the Philippians to take part in his joy. And in the same way you also should be glad and rejoice together with me. The joy is shared because the sacrifice is shared. The whole church is being conformed, together, to the image of the Christ who emptied Himself.

Timothy

Then Paul turns to practical matters. He wants to send the Philippians news of his situation, and he wants to send them a trusted messenger. The man he has in mind is Timothy. I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, Paul writes, so that I too may be encouraged by hearing news about you. Paul has not yet sent him; he is waiting to see how his own case is going. But Timothy will go, as soon as it is possible. And the reason Timothy is the right man to send tells us much about both men.

For there is no one here like him, Paul writes, who will readily demonstrate his deep concern for you. The phrase is striking. Paul is not paying a compliment; he is making a comparative judgment. Among all the co-workers Paul has at hand in Rome, Timothy is uniquely qualified for this errand because Timothy is uniquely free of self-interest in carrying it out. Timothy will not use the trip to Philippi as an occasion for his own advancement. He will not press his own preferences on the church. He will not magnify his own role. He will, when he arrives, show exactly what Paul promises: deep concern for you. Theirs, not his.

The contrast Paul draws next is sobering. Others are busy with their own concerns, not those of Jesus Christ. The others go unnamed, but the meaning is clear. Among the Christian co-workers in Paul’s immediate orbit, most are looking after themselves rather than after the work of Christ. We do not know who Paul has in mind: perhaps some of the bad-motive preachers from chapter one, perhaps others. What we know is that Paul has lived long enough in the Christian ministry to make this judgment without flinching. Timothy is rare. Most Christians, even most Christian workers, do not have Timothy’s freedom from self.

This is a hard sentence. It indicts a great deal of the Christian work that has been done in every age, including our own. We have always had a tendency, even in our service of Christ, to do it for ourselves. We make ministries that fit our gifts. We pursue assignments that advance our reputations. We choose service in fields where we will be appreciated. And then we tell ourselves, often without realizing it, that we are serving Christ when we are largely serving ourselves. Paul’s comment is a quiet rebuke to this whole pattern. It is also a quiet exaltation of the few who have escaped it.

What makes Timothy different? Paul tells us. You know his qualifications, he writes, that like a son working with his father, he served with me in advancing the gospel. The Greek word behind qualifications, dokimēn, means proven worth. It is built on the same root as the verb in the prayer of chapter one, where Paul asks that the Philippians be able to decide what is best (dokimazein, to test and approve). It is the word for what has been tested and found genuine. Timothy has been tested. The Philippians know it; they have seen it. Through the years they have watched Timothy travel with Paul, suffer with Paul, work with Paul, endure with Paul. He has been tested in the fire of the apostolic ministry, and he has come out tested-and-true.

And he has done it like a son working with his father. The image is tender. Timothy, much younger than Paul, joined Paul’s ministry in Lystra during the second missionary journey. He has been with Paul for a decade or more by the time this letter is written. Paul calls Timothy his genuine child in the faith in First Timothy; in this letter he speaks of Timothy as a son who has served with him as a son serves with a father. The relationship is not one of equals but of generations. The older man has discipled the younger; the younger has labored under the older; and the gospel has been served by both.

This is also a model of vocation. Timothy did not have to be Paul; he had only to be Timothy, faithful in the place where God had set him, serving the one God had given him to serve. Many of us are called not to be the apostles but to be the Timothys: to come alongside those further on in the work and to serve the work with them, in the slow obedience of the second chair. There is great glory in this calling, though it does not look like glory at the time. The proven worth that Paul commends in Timothy is not glamour. It is the quiet steadfastness of a son with a father, year after year, in the service of a Lord who is greater than both of them.

Epaphroditus

Then Paul turns to a second man. He has considered it necessary, he says, to send Epaphroditus to the Philippians. The piling up of titles tells us much. Epaphroditus is my brother, coworker and fellow soldier, Paul says, and from the Philippians’ side, your messenger and minister to me in my need. Epaphroditus is Paul’s brother (adelphos), a fellow member of the household of God. He is Paul’s coworker (synergos), one who labors with him in the work of the gospel. He is Paul’s fellow soldier (systratiōtēs), one who has been in the trenches of the spiritual battle with him. And from the Philippians’ side, he is their messenger (apostolos, their sent-one) and their minister (leitourgos, the one who has carried out their service to Paul).

Epaphroditus, in other words, is the bridge between the Philippian church and the apostle. They sent him with their gift to Paul. He arrived in Rome. He has been at Paul’s side, serving Paul on their behalf. And now Paul is sending him back, because Paul has discerned that Epaphroditus’ return is what the situation requires.

What was the situation? Epaphroditus, Paul tells us, greatly missed all of you and was distressed because you heard that he had been ill. In fact he became so ill that he nearly died, Paul says. But God showed mercy to him (and not to him only, but also to me) so that I would not have grief on top of grief. We can piece the story together. Epaphroditus traveled from Philippi to Rome with the church’s gift for Paul. Somewhere along the way, or shortly after his arrival, he fell gravely ill. The news of his illness reached Philippi. Word of his recovery had not yet caught up. Epaphroditus, hearing that his home church was worried about him, was himself distressed, not for himself but for them. Paul, seeing the situation, decided to send Epaphroditus back early, both to ease the Philippians’ minds and to ease Epaphroditus’s own concern for them.

But God showed mercy to him, the verse says, and not to him only, but also to me, so that I would not have grief on top of grief. The Christian life knows the mercy of God in the smallest of mercies. Paul, already in chains, already facing trial, would have felt the death of Epaphroditus as a heavy weight added to his already heavy load. God spared him that. The recovery of Epaphroditus is named, in this short verse, as a mercy of God toward Paul as much as toward Epaphroditus himself. The God who works in us to will and to work for His good pleasure also works around us, in the lives of those near us, in ways that are designed for our good as well as theirs.

Paul’s instructions to the Philippians regarding Epaphroditus are striking. So welcome him in the Lord with great joy, he writes, and honor people like him. The reason: it was because of the work of Christ that he almost died. He risked his life so that he could make up for your inability to serve me. The phrase honor people like him is not a small directive. Paul wants the church at Philippi to recognize, publicly and honorably, what Epaphroditus has done. He has nearly died for the work of Christ. The Greek verb behind risked his life, paraboleusamenos, comes from the same word family as our English parable (Greek para + ballō), but here the sense is closer to a gambler’s risk: Epaphroditus rolled the dice with his own life, willingly hazarding everything for the sake of the work. He came close to death. He survived. And his survival is itself a witness.

There is a profound theology of vocation here. Epaphroditus did not seek martyrdom. He simply did what his church had sent him to do (carry their gift, serve the apostle, see the work through), and the danger that came was not his choice but the cost of his obedience. This is how most Christian suffering happens. Most of us are not called to seek the cross; we are called to do what God has given us, and the cross finds us in the doing. Epaphroditus is a picture of the ordinary Christian who, by simply being faithful in his calling, ends up in a place where his life is at risk for Christ. Honor people like him, Paul says. The church always has Epaphrodituses among it, and the church should always honor them.

The two men, Timothy and Epaphroditus, are placed deliberately together at the end of this chapter. Both are living examples of the mind of Christ described in the Christ Hymn. Both have, in their own way, emptied themselves for the sake of others. Timothy has spent his life in the service of Paul’s mission and is willing to be sent wherever the mission needs him. Epaphroditus has nearly lost his life in the service of his church’s care for Paul. Neither has counted his own interest above the interests of others. Neither has stood on his rights. Both have looked not to their own concerns but to the concerns of Jesus Christ. And so the session that began with continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence ends with two living illustrations of what such working-out looks like: two ordinary Christian men in whom God is at work, willing and working for His good pleasure.

This is what sanctification looks like. Not heroism, not drama, not the grand gesture. Just two men, in a particular city, doing what their Lord has given them to do, with their eyes on Him and not on themselves. Two men in whom the mind of Christ has come to its quiet, daily expression. The church will always need more of them.

Gathering the Threads

Philippians 2:12–30 takes the great Christology of the Christ Hymn and translates it into the lived texture of Christian community. The mind of Christ is not an idea to admire. It is a pattern to walk in. And the walking is itself the work of God in those who are walking.

The Lutheran shape of this passage is unmistakable. Continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, Paul says, for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort (for the sake of his good pleasure) is God. The believer is not passive (there is real working, real fear, real trembling, real life), but the believer’s work is, at its deepest level, God’s work in him. The same Spirit who gave faith is now producing the willing and the working that constitutes a Christian life. There is no boasting, because everything good in us is His. And there is no spiritual idleness, because He is at work, and what He is working we are to bring to its visible expression.

The doctrine of vocation runs through every paragraph. The Philippians, children of God without blemish, are to shine as lights in a crooked and perverse society, not by being plucked out of the world but by being faithful in the places where they have been set. Timothy serves his apostolic father in the slow obedience of the second chair; Epaphroditus, sent on a courier’s errand, ends up gambling his life for the work of Christ. Neither sought the cross. Both found themselves in cross-shaped service simply by doing what their Lord had given them to do.

And the theology of the cross continues its quiet work. Paul speaks of being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice of the Philippians’ faith. The apostle is being emptied for the church, as Christ was emptied for the world. The pattern of the Christ Hymn becomes the pattern of every Christian life. We are being conformed, day by day, to the image of the One who emptied Himself for us.

Beneath all of it, the gospel hum: God works in us, both to will and to work, for His good pleasure. Every good thing in the Christian life is God’s gift. The fear and trembling we bring to the working-out is the proper posture of those who know what they are handling. The salvation is His. The working out is ours, because He is at work in us. And the final harvest, when the day of Christ has come, will be a field of His own raising, to His own praise, for His own good pleasure.

For Discussion

This session calls us to the day-to-day shape of the Christian life. The questions below invite you to think about how God’s work in you is taking visible form in the texture of your daily living, and how the examples of Timothy and Epaphroditus illumine the kind of Christian discipleship the gospel produces.

1. Paul commands, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, and then immediately grounds the command: the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort (for the sake of his good pleasure) is God. How does the second half of this sentence change the way you read the first half? Where in your own life have you been tempted to either spiritual self-sufficiency (working as if it depended on you) or spiritual passivity (waiting as if it depended only on God)?

2. Paul warns the Philippians against grumbling or arguing, the words that corrode Christian unity. Where in your own life and in the life of your congregation have you seen the small, daily speech-habits of grumbling do their slow damage? What would it look like to break those habits in the power of the Spirit?

3. The Philippians shine as lights in the world by holding on to the word of life. In your own ordinary callings (at work, at home, in your neighborhood, in your congregation) where do you find yourself shining most clearly? Where do you find yourself dimmed? What does the difference depend on?

4. Paul says of Timothy that he will readily demonstrate his deep concern for you, in contrast to others who are busy with their own concerns, not those of Jesus Christ. How honest can you be about your own motives in Christian service? Where do you suspect you have served Christ in ways that were largely self-serving, and what would change if you let Paul’s contrast cut into your patterns of service?

5. Epaphroditus nearly died for the work of Christ, not because he sought martyrdom but because he was faithful in a courier’s errand. In what callings has the cost of obedience surprised you? How does Epaphroditus’s example reshape what you imagine Christian faithfulness ought to look like?

6. Paul says of Epaphroditus, honor people like him. In your own congregation and in your own life, who are the Timothys and the Epaphrodituses, the quiet faithful ones whose service goes largely unnoticed? How might you honor them, and how might you become more like them?

Looking Ahead

In Session 5 we turn to Philippians 3:1–11, where Paul issues a sharp warning against false teachers who would compel Gentile Christians to be circumcised, and then turns the warning into a stunning autobiographical confession. He will list his Pharisaic credentials (his pedigree, his learning, his zeal) and count them all as loss, even as dung, compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. He will confess that the righteousness he now wears is not his own, derived from the law, but the righteousness from God that comes through faith in Christ. The passage is the Pauline center of the letter, and the autobiographical heart of the doctrine of justification.

Read Philippians 3:1–11 before our next session.

Closing Prayer

Gracious God, who works in us both to will and to work for Your good pleasure, grant us the fear and trembling that befits those who have been entrusted with so great a salvation. Make us a people who shine as lights in this crooked generation, holding fast to Your word of life. Free us from grumbling and from arguing, from selfish ambition and from empty glory. Raise up among us many Timothys, who serve the gospel with proven worth, and many Epaphrodituses, who risk their lives for Your work. And bring us all, at the day of Christ, to the joy of the harvest You have planted, to the praise of Your name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.