Devo Post #15

4/12/17

Phil 2:12-13

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, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

If we stop at the end of verse 12, this passage would almost point towards works-based salvation. But the addition of verse 13 shows us that in the end it is still God, and always been God, who has been working our salvation for us and in us.

Paul is talking to his beloved, which is the Philippi church, but by extension we the modern church can gain insight as well. I wonder how obedient the Philippi church was, but seeing the lavish praise Paul gives them throughout the Letter to the Philippians, it would seem this was a group of strong Christians who understand the Gospel and are living out their calling to preach the Gospel and support Paul’s missionary journeys.

What does it look like to be as obedient as the Philippi church? That is what I want to know. That is seriously the question I want answered right now. We know the American church sucks. We compromise. We push against legalism but then fall into complacency and nominalism. We don’t trust God. We don’t trust Jesus. We want to live like the world and by the world’s standards. We want comfort, riches, acceptance by culture, the american dream of having a nice car, house, and family. But God doesn’t call us to that kind of life, and I see a distinction between how Paul describes the Church of Philippi and my own churches here in the US. At the very least, we don’t send young men to give missionary funds to imprisoned missionaries in dangerous countries (I mean...when your dictator Nero likes burning Christians on posts to light his garden or send them into the gladiator ring to get eaten by lions, that’s kind of a dangerous country to be strolling into).

I know the Gospel is very important. It is the most important news of our life. We are never to move from it, but come back to this message daily, using it to empower us to get through each day with fear and trembling as Paul writes in the passage. But to know the Gospel means we have the Holy Spirit in us, and Christ watching over us from above, and God the Father providing us with gifts and calling and direction to do ministry for His glory. Mission and obedience need to naturally (or supernaturally) flow out of the evidence of the Gospel in our lives. If there isn’t...then who can say we have the Gospel at all, but are just faking it. Paul has extensively written of people who fake the Gospel. Let us not be one of those people. Let us not be one of those who come before Jesus saying we did so many things, only for Him to say to our faces “I do not know you, away from me you evildoers.” It sounds like these people weren’t doing anything out of the Gospel, but only pretending to know Jesus but still continue to work their lives exactly like everyone else. To be Christian is to be called to a radically different life from those around us. We must not love the world, for we love Jesus, and then the world will hate us (should we hate the world too? I don’t know, but we should hate evil and Satan and the forces of darkness which the world embodies).