The following sermon is from the Westminster Pulpit, extending the worship ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We are a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Please contact us for permission before reproducing this message in any format. Turn with me to the book of Philippians chapter 2. We're taking a one-week break from our study in the Gospel of John until Dr. Rogers is back, looking at a very key text, a classic text, Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13. Short but very, very profound. Listen as I read God's holy and inspired and inerrant word. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. May God bless the reading and hearing of his word to our understanding, to the glory of his name. Our denomination's General Assembly is being held in a little over a week in Houston. Some of the pastors and elders from our congregation will be attending. I noticed this week that as part of the many seminars that are available to attend, there is one seminar series on issues related to grace and sanctification, asking such questions as, is it possible to strive for holiness in the Christian life without promoting legalism? Or another question, can a gospel of unconditional grace call redeemed sinners to pursue practical obedience to Christ? And another, what is the grace of sanctification? And another, is the believer active in sanctification, and if so, in what way? Now maybe those questions and answers are very clear to you, but they're not clear to everyone. In fact, just the fact that these seminars are being offered shows that there is a degree of confusion in evangelicalism and even in the PCA about such things. And there are different degrees of emphasis on this. It is an intramural debate in many ways, but still it's a question that our denomination faces. Kevin DeYoung recently wrote a book on this subject titled, The Hole in Our Holiness, in which he questions whether there has come to be in our churches somewhat of a hole in our presentation of gospel truth. He says, to quote him, passionate exhortation to pursue gospel-driven holiness is barely heard in most of our churches. He says, to quote him with a longer quote, he states, Among conservative Christians, there is sometimes the mistaken notion that if we are truly gospel-centered, we won't talk about rules or imperatives or moral exertion. We are so eager not to confuse indicatives, what God has done, and imperatives, what we should do, that we get leery of letting biblical commands lead uncomfortably to conviction of sin. We're scared of words like diligence, effort, and duty. Pastors don't know how to preach the good news in their sermons and still strongly exhort churchgoers to cleanse themselves from every defilement of body and spirit. That last phrase is a quote from 2 Corinthians 7. So, it's in light of this that I want us to seek to rightly interpret Philippians 2, 12 and 13. This is a classic text on sanctification. Sanctification, if you don't know, means the Christian's growth in becoming more like Jesus Christ. Or we could describe it in terms of the change that God is progressively bringing about as he transforms the life of a believer throughout his or her walk with God. We know that in this life, our sanctification is always imperfect and flawed. Yes, we are given the righteousness of Christ once for all by his great redemption on the cross. And as we enter into that salvation by his grace through faith, we receive that, but then there is a growing in Christ after we've received new life. What can we say about the outworking of that new life we have in Jesus Christ? And certainly, Scripture has much to say about this subject, and I can't by any means in-depth survey it in our hour together, but let's look at the broad outlines of some clear scriptural themes from Philippians 2. We'll see three main points. First, work out your salvation by striving to obey. Secondly, our obedience must be God-centered. And finally, the power for a new obedience comes only from God. First of all, then, work out your salvation by striving to obey. In other words, Christians are called to work out their salvation by wholeheartedly, diligently, giving all effort to walk in obedience to the will of God as He has revealed it in His Word. Verse 12 begins with that word, therefore. Verses 12 and 13 flow out of and are connected to verses 1 through 11, which is that glorious passage about Jesus Christ humbling himself for our sake, even to the point of death on a cross, and now being exalted above all. Wonderful picture of Christ's work of redemption. And no wonder Paul then moves from what Christ has done into our response to that, those who belong to Christ, who have trusted in him. And we learn from this connection that sanctification must always be grace-based. Our sanctification, we might say, always flows out of our justification. And so, we might just want to stop at this very first point and say, if you have not come to trust in Jesus Christ, If you have not given him your life, turned from your sin and repented and looked to him and his cross to save you from your sins, then all your obedience is useless and vain before God. It might have relative human value, it may be relatively good in human terms, but essentially, it's what Isaiah 54 speaks about when it says, all our righteousness is as filthy rags. It doesn't attain anything for us before God. All I am going to say this morning about pursuing practical holiness of life springs only from a new heart that Jesus Christ gives us in the new birth. So, if you were here this morning and you know, you know deep down that you have not given your life to Christ, You know you have not humbled yourself before him and turned to him and received his forgiveness, then that is your only hope, to go to Christ alone. But if you have come to Christ, then know that God calls you to a new grace-driven, Spirit-empowered, faith-fueled obedience unto God in your walk with him. And that call to obedience is a call to passionately pursue holiness of heart and life to the glory of God. Look at verse 12, "'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.'" These Philippians had recently come to know Christ. They had heard the gospel, they had received Christ, and they were growing in the fruit of that new life. Paul is encouraging them, he's calling them to rejoice. This epistle burst with that kind of rejoicing in Christ. And here, the apostle encourages them to keep obeying as well, to strive to obey. And he highlights this fact not only in my presence, it's much easier when the apostle's there with the young fledgling church, but he says also in my absence. He realizes it's harder then. It reminds me of a reaction my grandchildren had last year. And I was surprised at how they kept coming back to this. I told them somehow we talked about Christmas and gifts and told them about when I was four or five and I made my way into my parents' room and found one of my gifts and unwrapped it quietly. I think my mom was in another part of the house and got out the horse with armor on it and played with it some and then put it back in the box and wrapped it up and everything. My grandchildren heard this story and all last year, granddad, tell us about how you found your Christmas gift. Somehow they, I think they liked the idea. Granddad must have been bad when he did that. You know, they just, tell us about that again. It transfixed them. Well, we understand that and we have some sense that Paul is saying this new obedience that flows out of regeneration, out of a new heart and new life in Christ, this new obedience doesn't depend on whether the Apostle Paul is physically present with them or not. That might make it a little easier, but Paul calls them. to seek to obey God, that is, to do His will whether He's there or not. He calls it, work out your salvation. Working out our salvation is just another way of saying, where Scripture says elsewhere, walk worthy of the calling by which you have been called in Christ. It's not speaking of obedience to merit salvation or to earn salvation somehow, but obedience as the fruit of Christ's work in us. The New Testament speaks about this in dozens of different ways. To take just two, 2 Timothy 1.8, there Paul says, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who saved us, there's the first part, who saved us and called us to a holy calling. Or take the familiar Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, by grace you have been saved through faith and that not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by work so that no one can boast. But then there's verse 10, for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. our sanctification, our good works, our holy calling, obedience to that flows out of what Jesus Christ has done. And notice that we see from Philippians 2.12 that this call to obedience implies active, not passive involvement by the believer. Yes, we are always to remain centered on Jesus Christ alone, trusting Him, loving our Lord, treasuring Christ with all of our heart and soul and strength and mind. That's a given. But this faith in Christ does not contradict effort in holiness. No, it fuels and it empowers such effort. The New Testament is filled with imperatives. You can't read through it and not see this. Yes, the greatest is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That is the primary work of God we've already seen in the Gospel of John. But then, as Christians, there are many commands, there are many imperatives for us. Rejoice, pray, lay aside the sin which clings so closely, love one another, be humble, be gentle, put away falsehood, abstain from sexual immorality, don't get drunk, run the race, Labor, endure, persevere, fight the fight of faith. The list goes on. Yes, all of these must be animated by continued trust and faith in Jesus Christ. They must be carried out by the power of the Spirit, but do we hear what the New Testament is saying? And it's summarized in verse 12. The believer is active in this warfare with sin. The believer is called to strive for obedience as we work out our salvation in Christ. Think of an illustration from marriage. We had a beautiful wedding here yesterday, and the bride and the groom were in their glory and saying their vows. It's a wonderful thing to get to participate in that. And think if a young couple like that asks you, well, can you give me some advice about how to cultivate a God-glorifying marriage? What would you have to say to them? Certainly, you'd probably say something like, well, it's only through Jesus Christ that you will have the kind of self-sacrificial love that you're required to give. And you want to maybe encourage them that God will be at work sustaining them and the hardships, the suffering that will inevitably come. for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, you know, those kind of things. And that the Lord is their great strength and joy and hope. But they might ask, well, okay, good. We think we understand that. So, do we need to try to work at this at all? Can we just sit back and expect God to just carry us along? And I'm, you know, certainly exaggerating here. Or will this Christ-like sacrifice and love and service just naturally flow from us? And that'll be good. Would you say, yeah, that's it. You don't have to work at all. It's gonna be fine. No. Obviously, that's not what we'd tell them. We'd say, yes, you've gotta work at it. And sometimes that will be easy and joyful and sometimes not so easy. But sometimes, we might say, often you're gonna feel your sinful self pulling you the wrong way. And you're going to be called to love when you don't feel like it, and to forgive each other when you are tempted to want to seek revenge, and to really be patient with one another, and to humble yourself, especially because you're going to tend to think that you're more right than your spouse is, and you're going to have to guard yourself against temptations to sin that attack marriage. You could go on and on like this. In other words, you would be saying marriage calls for a very active love. and work and effort and the cultivation of a good relationship to the glory of God. It's not opposed to trusting Jesus Christ, but that's going to be the fruit of trusting Christ. And so I ask, could it be that some of you have become passive in your walk with Jesus Christ? Passivity is never taught in Scripture. Whenever I see passivity in my life, I know it's more a matter of my laziness than any godliness. Yes, we're called to rest in Jesus Christ. We've sang that beautiful hymn, Jesus, I am resting, resting. Faith acts in justification in rest, resting in Christ alone. That's always the case. But faith acts in sanctification in working and in seeking to obey the will of God. That's part of it as well. God calls us to strive to obey in the Christian life. Secondly, this obedience must be God-centered. The new obedience that Christ produces in the believer is a God-centered obedience. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That's a verse that often confuses folks. What is Paul speaking about? He's not talking about fearing other people, worrying about what they think. In fact, the Bible says that's the fear of man, and that's a sin. It brings a snare. He's not talking about a cringing dread of God, fear of ultimate condemnation, fear of wrath and hell. No, because for those in Christ, there is no condemnation, Romans 8.1. No, he's speaking about a mindset of living before God. Obeying God and his will out of an awareness of God's gracious presence in our lives. The God who loved us in Christ and who saved us by his grace, who is now at work to make you more like Christ. And so, it's fear and trembling in a good God-centered way. We might describe it as awe and watchfulness as in the presence of God. It includes the ideas of trust and dependence and humility and love for God and desire for God. We find this in Scripture again and again. 2 Corinthians 7.1 says, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. That's not talking about the imputed righteousness and holiness of Christ. It's talking about practical holiness, perfecting that kind of holiness, practical holiness with this reverential awe and a sense of the presence of God in your life. Ephesians 5.21, submit to one another in the fear of God. Your translation might say in reverence for God. 1 Peter 1.17, since you call on a father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. The same sense. Again and again, Scripture speaks of this. We think of this being an example of this would be Joseph. Do you remember when he was in Potiphar's household and Potiphar's wife threw herself at him when everyone was gone? And Joseph tried to flee and she grabbed his coat and she held his coat and he got out of his coat and ran. And that was his undoing because she lied about him then. But at one point he says, how then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? That's that sense of reverential awe, fear and trembling in a good sense before God. The new obedience that Jesus produces in our lives is an obedience that is God-centered. It's an obedience that is characterized by a right fear and trembling, and it keeps us from a wrong kind of obedience that's only external. Think with me just about one or two kinds of that wrong obedience. One is obedience that's merely moralistic, moralism. What do we mean by moralistic obedience? That's obedience that tries to merit salvation, that makes God into kind of a heavenly dues collector. You pay your dues when you go to church or do some religious act, and it really empties Christianity of the gospel. It happened again and again in church history. It happened in the early 1700s before the Great Awakening when Christianity had largely in England and Scotland and America become moralistic. It happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And whenever that happens, the word of God loses its power and the gospel is eclipsed and the cross is emptied of its power and the awfulness of sin and the powerlessness of humans to save themselves becomes replaced with a gospel of, I'm okay and you're okay and everybody's okay. Another wrong kind of obedience is legalistic. Maybe you were raised in a legalistic church. Legalism in its most severe form is moralism, but there are lesser forms of legalism that Christians can fall into and we sometimes do. But in its less extreme forms, it means reducing the scriptural call of holiness, which goes deep and goes to the heart, reducing the standard of scription to some easy list of do's and don'ts, or relatively easy list of do's and don'ts. So maybe you think of the list as don't drink, don't smoke, don't dance, don't go to the movies. That's pretty much outdated now and colleges that used to hold to those lists don't tend to do that anymore. Maybe it had to do with a certain length of hair or certain ways you have to dress or how often you have to be at church, all kinds of things like that. And so you may be wary of any emphasis on holiness because you think legalism when you think that way. But this verse is telling us that true growth in holiness is never to be legalistic. No, it's intensely God-centered. It doesn't mean just outwardly keeping certain rules while inwardly or secretly you are free to sin all you like. No, may that never be the case. Gospel obedience flows out of a heart that loves Jesus and trusts Jesus and realizes the exceeding sinfulness of sin and longs for Christ's power more and more to change us from the inside out. And obedience out of a right desire to please your holy God who is also your father. I recently heard a pastor tell about a young man, a college student, who was raised in the church, who professed faith in Christ, who had been well taught. This young man was in college, and he came home on a college break, and it became clear that he was experiencing a crisis of faith. He was ready to cast off his faith. He wasn't sure whether he was becoming an atheist or an agnostic. And he went to see the pastor. I don't know if he was forced by his parents to go in to see the pastor or not, but he sat down with him and the pastor began to talk with him and at one point asked him, may I ask you a very personal question? And the young man said, sure. He said to him, are you sleeping with your girlfriend? And the young man's jaw just dropped. And he said, are you reading my mind somehow? And they went on to talk about this. And the pastor said, it's very typical, not always, but it's very typical that a crisis of faith often comes out of a life of habitually walking in gross, scandalous sin. And why is that? Because a genuine believer is going to be miserable in a pattern of living that is prohibited by God. And you cannot have joy in that pathway like the unbeliever does. And the Holy Spirit does not let a believer remain comfortable in sin. You see, even in that case, that young man still had a right and biblical sense that his life was being lived before God. And he couldn't escape that. And it was causing a crisis in his heart. And he was to the point of casting aside the Word of God in order not to have this miserable state of his soul. You see, as believers, we cannot just continue in known sin and maintain our joy and our peace in Christ. Yes, we know that It's ultimately God who keeps us. Praise be to God. He keeps us to the end, but he keeps us by sustaining our faith in Christ through the normal means of grace, the Word of God and prayer, and regularly worshiping and actively hearing the Word of God preached as we're doing right now, and the fellowship of believers, and the sacraments, and receiving them in faith in Christ, and as a result, God is at work so that our obedience is more and more in fear and trembling. It's an obedience that is God-centered and God-glorifying from the inside out. But third, the power for a new obedience comes only from God. We turn to verse 13, the power for a new obedience comes only from God. This beautiful verse, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. The connection between verses 12 and 13 is this, the reason we are able to more and more work out our salvation is because God is at work within us. God is the agent of our sanctification. What great encouragement that is. In other words, the power and the motivation and the incentive that we each have in our striving to will and to do, as it says here, comes from what God has already done for us in Christ and what he continues to do for us because of our union with Jesus Christ. Paul can later say in Philippians 4, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. That's the same idea. Or he can say it this way in 1 Corinthians 15.10. I like this way he says, he says, but 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 the other apostles. Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Isn't that interesting? Paul can say, I worked harder than all the other apostles, but he basically says, but it was all because of God's grace. He doesn't see a contradiction between his hard work as an apostle and the fact that it was all because of God working in him and through him at the same time. Notice back in Philippians 2, notice what God is working in us, this little phrase, to will and to work for his good pleasure. Why is it that Christian obedience is so difficult? Why is it that we get so easily stuck? Why is it that it is always a war against remaining sin? Why doesn't Scripture just say, okay, you've come to Christ, stop sinning? Of course, it does say that in some ways, but it says a lot more than that. Why is that? It's much more comprehensive. It's because Scripture knows it's not just about doing or working, it's about willing. It's about desires within, desires that so often go wrong. It's about what we really love. what we treasure, and the fact that Jesus Christ is building and producing in all those who belong to him new affections, we would say, a new love for him and his kingdom and his will, instead of our old set of affections and desires for all the sins of this world, all the things that would please us in this life. Jesus has done this radically and definitively in the new birth in which we're made alive in Christ, but now he's working in us to continue to grow in us this Christ-like, God-glorifying, willing, and doing. It's like the story of the ugly duckling. Don't we all love that story? I guess they still read that story to kids. The baby duck seemed different from all the other baby ducklings. And he was hassled because of that and kind of sad and didn't understand what was happening in his life. And the reason in the story is that because you find out eventually he's really a swan and not a duck. And the key point at the end of the story is when one day he finally looks in the water and sees his reflection, he's grown up almost now, and he's thunderstruck by the reality, oh, he's a swan. Now it all makes sense. Christians are swans, we might say. They're swans by the power of our union with Christ. We died with Christ, we were raised with Christ, we are united to Christ and indwelt by Christ, and we are no longer compelled to act like a duck. There is a new power to be Christ-like. And I don't mean to give the impression from this illustration that sanctification is easy. Sanctification is a lifelong fight of faith in the same direction. It is a very long slog, and Scripture uses imagery of warring with sin, running the race, putting to death remaining sin. In fact, One of the common characteristics of maturity in Christ, if you've walked with Christ for any length of time, you'll know what I mean by this, is that you become more and more aware of your lack of growth in certain areas of your life. And it grieves you, and you mourn about that, and you wish you could change faster. And you realize more and more your complete dependence on Jesus Christ. And you come to understand that there's no silver bullet in sanctification, there's no golden key. There's no three easy steps. And so this truth becomes very dear. God is at work within us to will and to do. What a grand and glorious incentive, not just to sit back and be passive, no, but to strive to pursue holiness by his power at work within us. I hope that this week you will be encouraged. to put to death sin in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit because of what Jesus Christ has done. I hope that you will give yourself to God's appointed means of grace with an expectation that God promises to be at work even when the going seems very slow. And don't be discouraged in the struggle. Nothing is wrong. Nothing, of course, except our remaining sin, but this is how it is for every Christian. Your Lord and Savior will continue his good work. You work out because he has already worked in and continues to work in that you will and do according to his good pleasure. And if you know, if you've heard me, what I've said, and you know that you are playing games with God, maybe you've heard these truths preached, maybe you've heard the gospel a lot, And you're conforming outwardly in certain ways, but really inwardly loving the ways of sin and hardening your heart against the Lord. My prayer is that you cast yourself on Jesus Christ. whether you've initially done that and come to faith or whether you've backslid and become cold in your walk with him, that you cast yourself anew on Jesus Christ and look to him alone to save you from your sin and to forgive you and give you a new life and that he would begin or begin anew or begin for the thousandth time his work of making you new within. Jesus Christ is at work to the glory of his name, and he never stops doing that for those who belong to him. Let us pray. Father, thank you for the assurance that our hope is built on Jesus Christ, our solid rock. Thank you that he ever continues that great work From beginning to end, help us to joyfully and willingly cooperate, even in our weakness, even in our weak faith. May we seek you this week to strive more and more for an obedience that genuinely pleases you, and we offer it to you through Jesus Christ alone. Amen.