This evening we are continuing our dive into Paul’s letter to the Christians living in Philippi. Before we get into this evening’s passage though, I want to remind us of what we read back in Philippians 1:27.
“Live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ”
I suggested when I spoke on that passage a couple of weeks ago that this is one of the controlling themes of the whole of the rest of the letter, that most of what Paul writes can be understood as an expansion of what it means to live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, what it looks like in practice. If you missed it then you can read my sermon notes on my sermon blog, accessible from All Saints Facebook page, or listen to it on our sermon podcast.
As we go through tonight’s reading, I encourage you to keep this question in mind,
“What is this teaching us about what it means to live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ?”
We begin with the first word of our reading, “therefore”. As always when we come across this word in Paul’s letters we ask the question, “what is the therefore there for?” It is a link word and we can only understand what comes next if we take a moment to glance backwards and understand that link.
I don’t intend to repeat everything we explore in Rest last week from the picking of chapter 2, just to pick up three key themes – unity, humility, and glory. Chapter 2 begins with an appeal for unity between the Christians in Philippi, a unity based on humility which is patterned on Jesus’ humility demonstrated in his leaving heaven and coming to earth, and which acknowledges the glory that Jesus was raised to once he had completed his saving work on earth.
Because you are being called to unity, because you have the example of Jesus’ humility, because you have seen Jesus’ glory, therefore this is what you should do.
Before we explore what those things are, let’s just notice the way Paul addresses the people he’s writing to, “dear friends.” This is important, it echoes the affection that Paul expressed earlier in the letter in his greeting when Paul recalled their partnership in the gospel, his thankful prayers for them, his deep love for them. It reveals the spirit that Paul is writing this letter in, that underpins the challenges and encouragements, it seems to me that this is a good worked example of what speaking the truth in love looks like.
Having noticed that, let’s look at the next part of the verse, which is the beginning of the outworking of that “therefore”
“as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
For me this instruction provokes three questions.
“who is being obeyed?”
“what does it mean to work out our salvation?”
“why with fear and trembling?”
Let’s take each of these in turn.
“Who is being obeyed?”
The two main options are Paul and Jesus. It is true that in his letters Paul does issue instructions to the churches he is writing to and encourages them to follow his example. It might also be that the reference to Paul’s absence and presence suggests that Paul is referring to obedience to him. A bit like those Youtube videos showing dogs that are left by their owners with a tasty titbit in front of them, to see how long they will maintain the obedience not to eat it with the owner absent. But I’m not sure that’s it.
Given the “therefore” that has come from a place of an encouragement to humility and of pointing to Jesus, it seems more likely that the obedience that Paul is talking about is obedience to Jesus, and particularly his commands to love each other and to serve each other. If this is the case then what has Paul’s absence or presence got to do with anything? I wonder if that is more to do with the support and encouragement that Paul could give them in following these commands when he was living among them, contrasted with them having continued to obey those commands even when he wasn’t there physically to help them do so.
“What does it mean to work out your salvation?”
The first thing to note is that it does not say “work for your salvation.” Paul is abundantly clear throughout his teaching that our rescue from sin, shame, and death – our salvation, is entirely the work of Jesus, that is a free gift of grace to us, that we receive by faith and not be anything we have done or could do. We do not work for our salvation.
However, we are called to “work out our salvation.”
The first sense of this is that we are to work out what the salvation we have received means for our everyday life, this leads directly to the second sense which is that we then work it out – we apply it. That is why it is linked to obedience. Our salvation is not a tick box thing that gives us a ticket to heaven but has no impact on our lives. It changes everything. It changes the way we think, the way we relate to people, how we speak, what we do. Not all
these changes happen immediately, it is an ongoing process, that’s why it takes work. To think about what difference it should make, and then to put it into action. In a moment we’ll come back to this, but first a comment on, “your”.
When we hear the instruction, “work out your salvation,” do we hear it primarily as an individual instruction or as a corporate one? Is this a task for us alone or together?
My suspicion is that as children of the western enlightenment, with its promotion of individuality, that our default position is to hear this as an individual instruction. It is something that I need to do. And there is a sense that this is true, we each known and loved by God for who we are, as individuals, as people in our own right, and we do have to work out what that means for us, each one of us, in our own lives. However, it is also important to recall that this was written to a group of Christians, with an emphasis on unity in communal life, underpinned by humility. It seems to me that this puts a significant weight on the community aspect of this instruction.
There are two ways that this works out in practice. Firstly – work this stuff out together. In congregations, in small groups, in prayer triplets, with friends, with husbands and wives. Talk about it, think about it, pray about it, work it out together. Secondly – part of living it out is in the way that you live in the community that you have been placed in, in the body that you are part of. We can’t follow Jesus’ command and example serving others, preferring others, loving others, if we don’t have any “others” around us.
“with fear and trembling”
I find this really strange. Aren’t we continually being told not to fear? As John writes in his first letter.
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
How are we meant to hold these things together?
Paul does use this phrase in a couple of other places, but never to describe our relationship with God.
In 1 Corinthians Paul describes how he first preached in Corinth in “weakness with great fear and trembling.”
in 2 Corinthians he talks about how Titus’ affection for the Christians in Corinth was deepened because they received him with obedience and “fear and trembling.”
Apart from the link to obedience which is also there in Philippians, this doesn’t seem to me to be much help for us in understanding it.
There is, perhaps, a clue if we continue on a bit into the next verse, which begins, “for it is God who works in you…”
This suggests that the “fear and trembling” are related to the presence of God at work in our lives. But does the presence of God really make us tremble with fear? Should it?
One commentator suggests:
“This expression was a stock phrase that may well have meant something far less forceful than the individual words might indicate.”
This seems to me to be a reasonable suggestion – that Paul is using a well worn cliché that communicates a right sense of awe and reverence for God’s presence, but which has lost the sharp edges of the individual words, smoothed away by repeated usage.
His point is that this matters, it’s something that we need to take seriously, in the light of God’s presence, and in the shadow of the cross.
And what is it that God is doing?
“God who works in you to will and act in order to fulfil his good purpose.”
In English there is a repetition of the root word “work”. A moment ago we were thinking about how we are to work out our salvation – work out what it means, and work it out by putting it into practice. Now we find God working in us so that our wills and actions are in line with God’s purpose. In the Greek these are two different words, which emphasise that it is God’s energy at work in us that enables us to do the working out – to think and to act in line with God’s will.
We’re going to look at the next two verses in two layers. The first layer is its surface meaning, which we can read straight out of the text, which we can grasp even if we’d never read the Old Testament, which was the case for most of the Christians in Philippi. Then we’ll look at a second layer, which adds some greater depth if we do have have a background knowledge of the Old Testament.
The first layer first then.
To begin with we have a warning against grumbling and arguing, which is straightforward, and entirely in line with what Paul has been saying about unity and humility. It’s an everyday application. Working well together will help them become “pure and blameless”. It seems to me that these echo the concepts of will and actions that we’ve already touched on a couple of times. Purity in this context is to do with an undiluted will and purpose focussed on God and God’s purposes. To be blameless is to nothing wrong, to do everything right and well.
As we work together to live like this, so we shine like stars. To shine is both to stand out against the darkness and also to illuminate it. That is what the people of God are to be. A contrast to the world around us and a light that shows others a different way to live, the way of Jesus.
As I said that’s all fairly straightforward application, that is easy to understand if not necessarily easy to put into practice.
This is Dive, though, so we are going to dive into the second layer. This is opened up by the quote from Deuteronomy 32:5 in v 15
“so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation’”
but if we look back at Deuteronomy we discover that the full quote is this:
“They are corrupt and not his children;
to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation.
Is this the way you repay the Lord,
you foolish and unwise people?
Is he not your Father, your Creator,
who made you and formed you?”
With our minds taken back to the Old Testament we remember that in Genesis 17:1, when God renewed the covenant with Abraham, he is commanded by God to walk before him, “pure and blameless.” We might also recall that one of the recurring themes of the Exodus through the desert, following the escape from Egypt, was one of the people arguing and grumbling against God and against Moses.
This link to the Old Testament is also reinforced by the phrase,
“shine among them like stars in the sky”
which draws on Daniel 12:3
“Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”
So, in this second layer, drawing on the history of people of God in the Old Testament, Paul is saying:
Don’t be like the people of Israel, complaining against God and arguing with each other until they ended up warped and crooked, but fulfil the covenant command that they were given to walk before God, pure and blameless, so that you can fulfil the destiny of the people of God, to shine as stars in the world, bringing light and blessing to the whole of creation.
Verse 17 might seem to draw on Old Testament imagery as well, with its reference to drink offerings and sacrifices. However, it doesn’t seem to link particularly well to any of the specific sacrificial practices described in the Old Testament, so may just be a reference to general sacrificial practices in the Greek and Roman world, practices that would have been very familiar in a Roman colony like Philippi. There are a number of suggestions about Paul is getting at with this metaphor, and the one that seems most likely to me is that Paul is emphasising the experience of suffering that he and the Philippians share, despite their geographical separation. Paul is imprisoned and they are experiencing opposition from the culture around them.
Despite these different but related sufferings, Paul encourages them to share in his gladness and joy. This isn’t about being happy or pleased that things are difficult and painful, but looking beyond those things to see that those sufferings are a sign that Jesus is at work and the Kingdom is moving forward, and so choosing to rejoice in that.
Verses 19-30 read a bit like Paul is winding up the letter. In fact, some commentators suggest that this is actually the end of the letter and the rest is a bit of a cut and shut job with either another letter or fragments of other letters, but other commentators argue, convincingly it seems to me, that there are too many common themes binding the two “halves” of the letter together for this to be the case. So why does Paul put this here?
It seems to me that this section, what we know as chapter 2, is a multi-pronged argument for humility and unity.
1-4 – Be united
5-11 – be humble like Jesus
12-18 – reflections on the practical outworking of this
19-27 – two examples of people you know, Timothy and Epaphroditus, who are great role models in their different ways for what I’m talking about, who have modelled their lives on Jesus in his humility and servant ministry.
Look at Timothy – like Jesus he doesn’t look to his own interests, he shows genuine concern for others. He’s served in the work (didn’t we come across that word before?) of the gospel. This is what I want you lot to be like.
Look at Epaphroditus – a brother, co-worker, soldier – he’s been ill, but his distress was because his friends might be worried about him – he thinks of others before himself. He risked his life for the work (there’s that word again) of Christ. Be like him, honour him and those like him.
We’ve covered quite a lot of ground tonight, but what does this all mean for us? What does it have to say to us about we are to “Live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ?”
It may be that as we have gone through, there have been things that have caught your attention, that the Holy Spirit has drawn your mind to, and that is great, I encourage you to continue to reflect on them, and see what God is leading you into. However, there are three things that I would draw out particularly as I draw to a close.
We are to work out our salvation – as God works in us.
We are to work it out together.
We are to work it out, not just for our own sake but for the sake of the world that we are sent to.