Work Out Your Own Salvation With Fear and Trembling

Work Out Your Own Salvation With Fear and Trembling

It does not sound “evangelical” to work out your own salvation, and then with fear and trembling! Therefore you do not hear the average preacher speak about or exhort to it. The reason is that they do not know God; neither do they know the grace that is in Christ Jesus, nor understand the consequences of sin.

“Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.” 1 Cor. 15:34. “He who sins is of the devil . . . .” Here we can see that those who practice sin do not know God; neither do they know that they are of the devil. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 3:4-10. We can see that those who continue to sin do not know the grace that is in Christ Jesus. If they had known it, they would have been set free from sin. The gospel is: to be set free from sin. The reason that we can work out our own salvation is that we are under grace. “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” We are under grace as long as God is working. Then we have the possibility both to will and to do. After that, we can work in the grace in which we stand.

And then we receive this exhortation: “Do all things without murmuring and disputing.” It is amazing that we should need such an exhortation when God is working. The reason is that God’s work goes against our human reasoning, our lusts, and our desires. Then the question is whether one has come to faith. You cannot believe God and at the same time love your lusts. In that case you know neither God nor the Son who was manifested to take away our sins. In other words, we can do everything God is working in us in the grace in which we stand without murmuring and disputing. Then we will be “blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.”

This salvation was one of the first things to which Peter exhorted on the day of Pentecost. “Be saved from this perverse generation.” In other words, be “blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.” This grace came over them on the day of Pentecost, and all those who walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh are still in that grace. However, being obedient and working out our own salvation are not canceled out because we have grace; on the contrary, it is made possible precisely because of the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Think of the thousands of people who have experienced the atonement in Jesus Christ and who have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, and yet they have received all this grace in vain. 1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 6:1. They have been led astray by a false grace—by a grace without truth. John 1:14-17; Jude 3-4. Jude also reminds us of Israel who left Egypt, of the angels who did not keep their proper domain, and of Sodom and Gomorrah. They all despised the grace that was over them.

These thousands have not become God’s children who are without fault. They do not appear as lights in the world. They have not learned to know God’s grace in truth. Col. 1:6. Those who learn to know the true grace that leads to obedience and work will experience what Paul writes: “For if by one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.” Rom. 5:17.