God wants you to grow!  God’s intention for the rest of your life is to grow you. To make you more like Jesus.  Romans 8:29 says, you were "predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers".  

We are saved by God’s gracious work in Christ - forgiven, justified (considered righteous in God’s sight which can’t get better or worse because it is the very righteousness of Christ), and headed for heaven.  But the rest of our lives on planet earth is the path of sanctification or growing or transformation.  So the question that should occupy our minds is, “How do we grow in the power of the Spirit?” You want to grow - every true Christian does!

When we consider this question, there is a ditch on both sides of the road we can fall into - moralistic self-effort OR passive inactive, laziness.  The moralistic self-effort person says, “I must pull myself up by the bootstraps and change myself” and the passive lazy person says “If God wants to change me he will in his time - I will just let go and let God.”  So what’s the remedy so we don’t fall into either ditch?  Philippians 2:12-13 shows us!

Philippians 2:12-13 shows us that Christian growth is an inside/out reality.  We work, but it is dependent upon God’s work.  Charles Spurgeon says,

The assistance of Divine grace is not given to put aside our own efforts, but to assist [and empower] them.

And it gets as practical as God empowering you to “consider others more significant than yourselves,” and “do all things without grumbling and complaining/with joyful gratitude.”  This is the kind of growth God wants to produce in us - humility and gratitude!

The key to seeing the connection between our work and God’s work is the word “FOR” at the beginning of verse 13.  Verse 12 is the imperative.  You are commanded to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.  And we must not soft-peddle that command!  We really to work!  But it is predicated on the indicative or the reality of what God is already doing “for [or because] God is at work in you…”  So we see, “you work out salvation because God works in.”  That’s the point of this text.

The big idea from these two verses is we work out what the Holy Spirit works in.  The Holy Spirit produces change, by his mighty power. And we act out what He produces in.  God the Holy Spirit, in power, manufactures miracles in us, and we walk them out.  The Christian life is supernatural.  It is a work of God from beginning to end.  So what I would like to do is take verse 13 first, then 12, then put them together.

God Works In You

Let’s just think through this a word or phrase at a time, but first, we need to understand who this is addressing.  Believers.  Christians.  Those who have repented and trusted in Christ.  Is that you?  Then he is talking to you!  It is not good thoughts or ambiguous feelings at work in you.  It is God who works in you. It is God at work in you. And you are not like a workshop that God comes in to work on and then leaves.  You are the temple of God and God’s Holy Spirit dwells in you (1 Corinthians 3:16).  God almighty Creator of heaven and earth - the one who raises the dead and raises up rulers and disposes of them.  The one in whom all of human history has its existence and who will bring human history to a close at his appointed time - dwells and works in you!

And he works in you.  Isn’t it amazing, in almost every other religion on the face of the earth, god is seeking employees.  Needy gods looking for workers to do what they cannot.  The Christian faith is altogether different.  In the Christian faith, God needs nothing, we add nothing to him.  He is full and overflowing.

The God who made heaven and earth does not dwell in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needs anything, since he himself gives all mankind life and breath and everything. (Acts 17:24-25)

And works on behalf his people:

From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. (Isaiah 64:4).

He works.  And he works in you!  It is also important to point out the verb “works” is in the continuous form; which communicates, “God is working and always working in you.”  I think of Jesus who was in a dispute with the Jewish leaders because he healed on the Sabbath said, “My Father is always working, and I too am working” (John 5:17).  God almighty, who dwells within you is always working - he never takes a day off.  He doesn’t need to give less attention to you because someone else needs more.  He isn’t frustrated, thinking, “I am so tired of working on you!”  No, we are his “workmanship” or handiwork.  He loves working on you and he won’t be done until you are perfect… at the coming of Christ.

Look at what he is doing.  Almighty God, the Holy Spirit works in you “to will”.  Have you ever heard someone say, “The Holy Spirit is a gentleman and he will never circumvent your will.”  Well, I am so glad that isn’t true.  If it were, you and I would still be dead in our sins.  He didn’t ask me for permission to raise me from the dead - he just did it.  And I am forever grateful.  It is true that the Holy Spirit won’t make us do things we don’t want to do.  He does something better.  He changes our hearts so that we want to.  He makes us willing.  He changes our desires, our delights, our wants, our treasures.  He works in you “to will.”

There’s more.  Almighty God is at work in you not only to make you willing but also “to work”.  He is at work in you to work.  He is at work in you giving you divine energy.  The Greek word “work” is “Energeo” - where we get our word energy.  God produces not only new desires, but strength, energy, power to live out what he works in us.  God the Holy Spirit is working in us new desires and mighty energy.  Wow!  If we believe this… there will be explosive change in our lives…  Let’s believe it!

Notice the reason why God is working in his people.  It is ultimately "for his good pleasure".  It is for his delight, what pleases him.  Every Christian wants to please God. What a good deal! God is working in you so that you please him; so he might say, “I love that!”

How does the Holy Spirit do this? Does he slip something in our coffee?  Does he sprinkle some magical dust on us while sleeping? Well, what is the main purpose for which the Holy Spirit has come?  In his final discourse with his disciples, Jesus tells us plainly:

When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” (John 15:26)

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:14-15)

He wants to drive us to Christ!  His agenda is witnessing to and glorifying Jesus!  Notice the word, “therefore”.  Whenever there is a “therefore” we should ask, what is it there for?  A therefore always points us back to what just precedes it.  It points us back to verses 5-11 which many scholars consider to be one of the early hymns of the New Testament church with a high Christology.  It is one of the most Christ-centered passages in all the bible.

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

Here we see the incarnation, perfect life, atoning death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of the Jesus Christ in universal Lordship!

The Holy Spirit wants to take this truth [right now] and drive it deeper into your heart, so that the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ reshapes and reforms your heart.  He wants to present Christ and his magnificent work on your behalf to you, so your desires are changed and you discover fresh power to live the new life. You see, God’s grace is more than just pardon for your sins, but is the very fuel you need to live a new life in the power of the Holy Spirit from the inside out. “It is God who works in you…”

Work Out Your Salvation

Just as God continually works in, you and I are to continually, strenuously work out what he works in.  And it is work - it does take effort.  Grace-based effort, but still effort.  It is a work of faith, trusting God’s work.  Paul expresses this dynamic in two other places:

By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Colossians 1:29)

So we work out in faith... and with fear in trembling. Paul’s choice of words is interesting, but really gets to the heart of this command.  Why does it not say, “with ease and unconcern”?  Why fear and trembling?  The reason is not a threat but a promise (explain).  Philips: “With a proper sense of awe and responsibility”.  That hits the right note, I think. Awe at almighty God working in me by his Spirit pointing me to Christ and all he is and has done. Responsibility at how I should now live “worthy of calling I have received in Christ”.  JC Ryle, a 19th Century Anglican Bishop in England said,

"If there is anything which a man ought to do thoroughly, authentically, truly, honestly, and with all of his heart, it is the business of his soul. If there is any work which he ought never to slight, and do in a careless fashion, it is the great work of "working out his own salvation”. Believer in Christ, remember this! Whatever you do in religion, do it well. Be authentic. Be thorough. Be honest. Be true."

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who works in you to will and work for his good pleasure.”  God works.  You work.  His work decisive, ours dependent. You work out because he is at work in you.  Do you see this? Jonathan Edwards, connects these verses in a very helpful way:

“In efficacious grace we are not merely passive, nor yet does God do some, and we do the rest.  But God does all, and we do all.  God produces all, and we act all.  For that is what he produces, that is, our own acts. God is the only proper author and fountain; we only are the proper actors.”

God produces miracles in us.  And we act the miracle. God the Holy Spirit drives the grace of God through Christ deeper and deeper into our hearts, willing and working in us things like humility and joyful gratitude.  And we act it out!  I tell you, God producing true humility in an arrogant, proud man is a miracle akin to a blind man seeing.  God working joyful gratitude in a woman who is a grumbler and complainer is akin to causing a lame woman to leap for joy.  I would love to see the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk [HERE]!  But I long more and would rejoice more to see Christ formed in you; to see you complete in Christ.  

Corrie Ten Boom and her family helped to hide Jews in Nazi occupied Holland.  They were caught and put in a concentration camp where Corrie’s sister Betsie died.  After the war, Corrie went through Europe, even Germany speaking about the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ.  Listen to her recount a significant story of working out what God worked in.

It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. “When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”

The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.

And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.

It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”

And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.

“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”

And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

For I had to do it [forgive him]–I knew that.

“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply [the rest].”  And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.  

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

What an amazing story!  The inner deliberation, knowing unforgiveness wasn’t an option, crying to Jesus for help.  She thrust her hand out.  God was at work in her to will and work.  She acted the miracle.  God produced.  She acted.

The same God is at work in you to will and work for his good pleasure.  Let’s pray.

Benediction:

20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20-21)