THEREFORE, MY DEAR friends, 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, 13for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
14Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 16as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. 17But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. 18So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.
Original Meaning
PAUL’S PURPOSE IN these two paragraphs is to apply the story of Christ’s humble self-emptying and exaltation specifically to the Philippian situation. Thus he begins the new section with the strong conjunction “therefore” and, echoing his reference to Christ’s obedience in 2:8, refers in the first sentence of this new section to the Philippians’ obedience. The language and themes of the section also show that Paul is turning again to the themes of 1:27–30. He is concerned in both passages that the Philippians live out the implications of their initial response to the gospel, and that they do this whether Paul is among them or absent from them (1:27/2:12). Both passages express concern that the Philippians be unified (1:27/2:14), and that this unity be visible to the unbelieving world outside (1:28/2:15). The two sections also share an interest in the final day (1:28/2:16) and in the experience of suffering for the gospel, which binds the apostle to his friends and apostolic charges in Philippi (1:30/2:17). The concerns of 2:12–18, then, are woven tightly into the fabric of Paul’s larger argument that the Philippians should “conduct” themselves “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27).
The apostle expresses these concerns in three steps. (1) He encourages the Philippians, in light of Christ’s example, to continue their good record of obedience (2:12–13). (2) He then becomes more precise about the area of obedience he wants the Philippians especially to address, when he urges them to avoid “complaining” and “arguing” (2:14–16a). (3) He shows how their struggle to remain “blameless” and “pure” is bound up with his own struggle to remain faithful to his calling. In light of this calling, he encourages them to work together with him to present God with an acceptable sacrifice and to experience the joy that comes from doing so (2:16b–18).
Keep Up the Good Work (2:12–13)
Paul now begins to apply the example of Christ’s unselfish humility and obedience to the Philippian situation. His basic meaning is clear: He wants the Philippians to obey as Christ obeyed, and presumably this means to work for unity by avoiding the kind of selfish ambition that leads to dissension (2:1–4, 14). The finer details of Paul’s statement, however, are difficult to clarify. To whom does Paul expect the Philippians to render obedience? Does his command to the Philippians to work out their salvation with fear and trembling contradict his emphasis elsewhere on the believer’s justification by faith through God’s grace? Does it indeed contradict the next sentence, in which Paul says that God creates both the will and the ability of believers to accomplish his desires?
The first question is the simplest of the three to answer. Since Paul speaks of the Philippians’ obedience whether in his presence or in his absence, he is probably referring to the obedience they should give to him as the apostle who brought them the gospel and who will have to account for them to God in the Day of Christ (2:16; cf. 1:10). Paul frequently speaks of this kind of obedience in his letters and expresses concern that his congregations be obedient to the teaching he has left with them, whether he is present or absent. Thus in 1 Corinthians 4:14–21 Paul tells the Corinthians that they should imitate him and that he is sending Timothy to them to remind them of his “way of life in Christ Jesus” (4:17). The reason for this admonition and for Timothy’s impending visit appears to be that some in Corinth have become “arrogant, as if,” Paul says, “I were not coming to you” (4:18). If they do not submit to his authority, he continues, then he will appear among them with a whip rather than “with a gentle spirit” (4:21). Similarly in 2 Corinthians 10:4, Paul tells the Corinthians that he is “ready to punish every act of disobedience” (cf. 13:10).
This notion was not restricted, moreover, to Paul’s correspondence with the difficult and wayward Corinthian church. Paul tells his close friend Philemon that he has the authority to demand obedience to his request concerning the slave Onesimus, but that he appeals to him instead on the basis of love (Philem. 8–9, cf. 21–22). He also tells the Thessalonians to “take special note” of anyone who does not obey his admonitions in his letter to them (2 Thess. 3:14). In Paul’s absence, the believing community must take responsibility for enforcing obedience to instructions that can only be issued by means of letter.
This does not mean, of course, that Paul expected his churches to obey his personal wishes; rather, he expected them to obey the gospel tradition he handed on to them. He was, after all, their primary access to the teaching of Jesus. Thus the Corinthians, for example, were to obey Paul not by imitating his personal habits but by following his “way of life in Christ Jesus,” a pattern of life that Timothy could illustrate as well as Paul and that corresponded to Paul’s teaching in all the churches (1 Cor. 4:17; cf. Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 1:6). And, not surprisingly, it is as important for the Corinthians to obey Titus, who also bears the gospel tradition, as for them to obey Paul (2 Cor. 7:15). In Philippians 2:12, therefore, Paul is urging his beloved friends to be as obedient in the future to the traditions he has handed on to them as they have been in the past.
The second question is more difficult. The Philippians should pursue obedience, Paul says, by working out their “salvation with fear and trembling.” One of the most important themes in Paul’s theology is that human effort cannot even cooperate with God’s grace to yield a right standing before God on the final day. To Paul, even Abraham, popularly thought to be the most righteous of all Jews, must be considered ungodly when a right standing before God is at issue. Abraham served as Paul’s illustration of the principle that “to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). God’s people, Paul says, are not chosen because of their works but on the basis of grace, for otherwise “grace would no longer be grace” (11:6). What can Paul possibly mean, then, when he says that the Philippians should “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling”?
One popular solution to the problem is to understand “salvation” here in the weakened sense of “well-being.” Paul is then saying that the Philippians should work toward the well-being of their community. On this explanation, the phrase “fear and trembling” does not refer to an attitude toward God but to an attitude of humility toward one another. Indeed, it is often said that Paul never uses the phrase “fear and trembling” of the relationship between God and people but always of human relationships. The Philippians, then, are to overcome their social discord and so “save” their relationships with one another by adopting a respectful and humble attitude toward each other.1
This understanding of the verse fails to be convincing, however, because it assigns an unusual meaning to the term salvation and because it has missed an important nuance in Paul’s other uses of the phrase “fear and trembling.” Paul uses the term salvation eighteen times in his letters. In fifteen of those occurrences, it refers to the full-orbed concept of ultimate salvation, and in two others (2 Cor. 1:6; Phil. 1:19) the usual meaning is arguably the best one. That would leave the reference here in 2:12 as Paul’s only use of the term to mean “well-being.”2
Moreover, in the three other occurrences of the phrase “fear and trembling” in Paul’s letters, it is far from clear that a reference to God is not in view. Paul may have come to Corinth in “fear and … trembling” (1 Cor. 2:3) not because of any experience with other people but because of the awesome task of preaching Christ crucified (cf. 2 Cor. 2:16). The Corinthians received Titus “with fear and trembling” (2 Cor. 7:15) perhaps as much to indicate their fear of God in light of their past rejection of Paul, his apostle, as to show to Titus their willingness to hear him out. Slaves are to submit to their masters with fear and trembling “just as [they] would obey Christ” (Eph. 6:5). Thus, the “fear and trembling” to which Paul refers in Philippians 2:12 probably refers to an attitude that the Philippians should have toward God.
If this is so, then what does Paul mean when he says that the Philippians should work out their eternal salvation with an attitude of fear and trembling before God? We must grasp the difference between Paul’s use of the term salvation and his use of the term justification in order to understand this statement properly. The two terms are not synonymous.3 When Paul uses the term justification and its various forms (just, justify), he refers primarily to a status of innocence that God confers on the believer and to a condition of peace that God initiates with him or her. He frequently uses the verb justify, therefore, in the past tense: “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified,” he tells the Corinthians (1 Cor. 6:11), and he explains to the Romans that we have peace with God “since we have been justified through faith” (Rom. 5:1). This justification comes entirely through God’s grace and not through human effort (Rom. 4:5; 11:6), and those who have received it can rest assured that they will one day “be conformed to the likeness of [God’s] Son” and be “glorified” in eternity (Rom. 8:29–30).
The terms salvation and save have a different connotation in Paul. Although Paul can occasionally refer to salvation as a past event (Rom. 8:24; Eph. 2:5, 8; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 3:5), most of his references to it place it in the future, and he often connects salvation with the Day of the Lord (1 Cor. 5:5; cf. 3:15; Rom. 13:11; 1 Thess. 5:9). Those who have been justified can be assured that they will be saved, but their salvation awaits the final day. Romans 5:9 illustrates the difference between justification and salvation in Paul’s thinking: “Since we have been justified by [Jesus’] blood,” Paul says, “how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”
When Paul says in Philippians 2:12 that believers must “work out [their] salvation,” he does not mean that they should “work for” (JB, NJB) salvation on the final day. He means instead that they should “conduct” themselves “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27) as they await the final affirmation of their right standing before God at the day of Christ. They should busy themselves with discerning “what is best” so that they “may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ” (1:10). They are to do this “with fear and trembling,” because such seriousness is appropriate to the task of living out their commitment to the gospel in a way that demonstrates that they are genuine believers. In other words, Paul’s intention in 2:12 is not far from Peter’s in 2 Peter 1:10–11:
Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Paul perhaps recognized the danger, nevertheless, that someone would take his statement to mean that believers cooperate with God in the process of salvation and that if they did their part, God, meeting them halfway, would do his. So in verse 13 Paul explains that salvation comes entirely at God’s initiative and that God provides both the will and the ability to accomplish “his good purpose.” Paul’s emphatic way of putting this (“it is God who works in you” rather than simply “God works in you”) and his care in pointing out the divine origin of both the ability and the very will to put this ability at God’s service show how concerned he is that his statement in verse 12 not be misunderstood. Although the Philippians must work out their salvation, their salvation does not come at their own initiative. They should work out their salvation with a seriousness appropriate to those who look forward to salvation on the final day, but they should remember at all times that the whole process leading to their acquittal on that Day is theirs neither to initiate nor to complete. It is God’s from first to last (cf. 1:6).4
Redeem the Witness of Disobedient Israel (2:14–16a)
Paul follows this general admonition with a more specific command: The Philippian believers should, he says, stop complaining and arguing (v. 14), so that they may shine as beacons of light within the darkness of a world gone astray (vv. 15–16a) and so that they may join Paul on the final day in the presentation of an acceptable sacrifice to God (vv. 16b–18). Implicit in this command is the assumption that the believing community in Philippi is part of a new people of God that stands in continuity with biblical Israel and should learn from its example.
Paul begins this more specific exhortation with the command that the Philippians should do all things without “complaining or arguing.” The term that the NIV translates “complaining” (gongysmon) occurs only rarely in the New Testament, and this is its only appearance in Paul’s letters.5 It occurs frequently, however, in the narratives of the Greek Bible that describe Israel’s desert wanderings, where the Israelites “complained” against Moses and Moses made clear to them that their complaining was not as much against him as against God (Ex. 16:2–9; 17:3; Num. 11:1; cf. 14:2).
Although some scholars take the parallel too far by claiming that Paul’s use of the term means the Philippians were complaining against him or against their “overseers and deacons” (1:1), the peculiarity of the word probably means that Paul intended to echo the biblical narratives of Israel’s desert wanderings.6 If so, his point is not only that the Philippians, although they are Gentiles, constitute part of God’s people, but also that as God’s people they should learn from the mistakes of their spiritual ancestors. Israel murmured in the desert and suffered a fearful punishment. The Philippians should, in fear and trembling, not presume upon their salvation but instead take measures to quell the dissension in their midst.
In the next four verses, Paul gives two reasons why they should do this. The first reason appears in verses 15–16a. The Philippians, he says, should strive for unity in order that they might be “blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation.” Here Paul uses the language of the “Song of Moses” that stands near the end of Deuteronomy (Deut. 31:30–32:37) and describes the unfaithfulness of the wicked generation of Israelites whom God brought out of Egypt. The Greek text of Deuteronomy 32:4–5 can be translated,
God, his works are truth, and all his ways are right. He is a faithful God, and he is not unjust. Just and pure is the Lord. They sinned, they who were not his children, full of fault, a crooked and depraved generation [italics added].
The emphasized words correspond closely to Paul’s Greek in Philippians 2:15 and show that here, too, Paul believes that the Philippians stand in continuity with the ancient people of God. Paul hopes that unlike their spiritual ancestors they will prove not to be a crooked, depraved, and blemished generation, but a beacon of light for the truth of the gospel amid a faithless world, a world that can be described in terms the Song of Moses applies to disobedient Israel.7
If the Philippians succeed in fulfilling this vocation, Paul says, they will “shine like stars in the universe as [they] hold on to the word of life.”8 This is the vocation that, according to Isaiah 42:6–7 and 49:6, Israel was supposed to fulfill among the Gentiles so that the salvation of God might be brought “to the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). The Philippian believers, as part of the newly constituted people of God, have now inherited this vocation. However, they can only fulfill it if they avoid the mistakes of the past, give up their discord, and present a unified witness to the dark world around them.
Join Paul in Offering an Acceptable Sacrifice (2:16b–18)
Paul believes that the Philippians’ obedience is critical for a second reason: The acceptable nature of their sacrifice to God on the final day depends on it. He begins this thought in verse 16b with a reference to his hope that on the day of Christ he will be able to present the Philippians’ blamelessness and purity to God as his “boast.” If he is able to do this, he continues, then his apostolic efforts will not have been in vain. Paul describes these efforts with language drawn both from the athletic arena and from the Old Testament. Here and elsewhere, Paul describes his apostolic labor as a race in which he runs and which, if stumbling blocks do not intrude, will result in a prize (1 Cor. 9:24–27; 2 Tim. 4:6–8; cf. Gal. 2:2). These stumbling blocks may include Paul’s own faithlessness to his call (1 Cor. 9:24–27), hindrances placed before him by other Christians (Gal. 2:2), or, as here, the faithlessness of the churches whom God has placed in his care.
Paul enriches this metaphor with one drawn from Isaiah. In Isaiah 49:4 the Servant of the Lord expresses dismay that he appears to “have labored to no purpose,” to “have spent [his] strength in vain and for nothing”; but he also expresses his confidence that his reward is in the Lord’s hands. Later, the prophet promises that in the final day, when God creates new heavens and a new earth, his people “will not toil in vain” (Isa. 65:23).
Paul’s language, then, is indebted both to Greek and Hebrew cultural imagery of hard work, which, provided it is not frustrated along the way, ends in reward. Here he expresses the hope that the Philippians will not trip him up in his race or frustrate his labor and prevent him from presenting them before God on that final day as the product of his hard work. On that day, as now, they will be his joy and his crown (4:1).9
In verse 17a Paul switches images in order to intensify his emphasis on the necessity of the Philippians’ obedience and steadfastness. In language that probably alludes to his death (cf. 2 Tim. 4:6), he describes himself as a drink offering that may be poured out. Drink offerings were a common feature in the sacrificial systems of many ancient cultures, and often the offering was poured over a sacrifice (thus the NIV’s rendering, “on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith”). Since so much of Paul’s imagery in this passage is indebted to the Old Testament, however, he probably has in mind the custom described in such passages as Numbers 15:1–10, where drink offerings are made in addition to other offerings. So Paul views the Philippians’ continued obedience (2:12) and steadfastness amid persecution (2:15–16a) as an offering to God equivalent to the offering of his own apostolic labors—labors that may end in his death.
Even if this happens, he continues in verses 17b–18, he will rejoice. Moreover, if it happens, he expects the Philippians to join him in rejoicing. Paul’s death in prison and their steadfastness despite internal and external hardships will, after all, only mean the accomplishment of their mutual goal. Paul will be with Christ (1:21, 23), and the Philippians will be blameless and pure on the day of Christ (1:10); Paul’s apostolic labors will be vindicated, and the Philippians will give glory and praise to God (cf. 1:11).
Bridging Contexts
THE PRIMARY POINTS of this passage are relatively clear and easily applied to the contemporary church. The passage also contains several possible interpretive stumbling blocks that are more difficult to negotiate and several subsidiary points that are easy to miss. The key to applying the passage successfully to the contemporary situation lies in focusing on Paul’s major concerns in a way that is sensitive to the less important issues and wary of interpretive errors.
Primary Points. Although Paul’s difficult admonition in verses 12–13 gets most of the interpretive attention in contemporary discussions of this passage, it is actually a general admonition that he probably intended as an introduction to his specific concern in verse 14: “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” As we have already seen in our study of 1:1 (where Paul’s address emphasizes the unity of the congregation) and 1:27 (where Paul advises the Philippians to stand firm in the unity of the Spirit), the Philippian community was broken by dissension. The origin of the trouble probably lay in the dispute between Euodia and Syntyche, who (Paul wrote) should agree in the Lord (4:2). If so, their dispute was apparently no minor affair, for it posed a threat to the church serious enough that Paul not only called the primary combatants by name but asked an unnamed friend in the church to “help these women,” presumably in the task of reconciliation.
Their dispute and the church’s disunity generally also posed a serious threat to Paul’s ministry, so serious that he uses extraordinarily strong language to describe their implications. He reminds the Philippians that avoiding the selfishness that stands behind the dissension has eschatological significance. Holding fast to the very word of life is at issue, and therefore their obedience in this matter is a question both of their eternal salvation and of Paul’s ability to stand before God on the day of Christ, having completed his assigned task.
Paul reminds them further that the fulfillment of their own commission to complete the task assigned to biblical Israel is at stake. If they do not overcome their internal discord, their witness to the “crooked and depraved generation” surrounding them will be hindered, and they will fail to fulfill their calling to be “light to the Gentiles.” Their internal disunity, in other words, will tarnish their external proclamation of the gospel. Holding on to the word of life is more than simply standing firm against persecuting opponents. It is also demonstrating the validity of the gospel to people outside the faith by the way we live.
In addition to this admonition, Paul tells the Philippians both that he rejoices in the privilege of working in his apostolic vocation and that they should rejoice in the privilege of working out their salvation by working for unity and holding on to the gospel (vv. 17b–18). As we have already seen in our study of 1:18, Paul’s pervasive concern with joy and rejoicing in this letter is not a superficial claim that Christians should smile, laugh, and at all times appear contented. It is the settled sense of peace that accompanies believers in plenty and in want because they know their lives are devoted to the advancement of the gospel. This allows Paul to rejoice in the prospect of death (v. 17a) and the Philippians to rejoice despite the hard work of retaining their communal unity and the discomfort of holding on to the word of life amid the persecutions they are facing.
It is also why Paul in verse 18 can put the verb “rejoice” in the imperative mood. Smiles and laughter are largely involuntary, but the joy of which Paul speaks comes to those who have committed their lives to the advancement of the gospel and who have decided that they will live in a way, no matter how difficult, that encourages that advancement.
In 2:12–18, then, Paul makes two primary points: Working against disunity is a crucial element in working out salvation before a watching world, and the struggle to work out salvation, since it is a sacrifice to God, should be a cause for rejoicing. Amid the welter of interpretive difficulties that this passage poses, we should not lose sight of these two basic points.
Subsidiary Points. We should also not neglect two minor points this passage makes more by means of implication than by direct statement. (1) Paul’s assumption throughout this passage that the Philippians stand in continuity with biblical Israel should not go unnoticed. From the description of Philippi and of the few converts mentioned in Acts 16, it is possible to say with reasonable certainty that few or none of the Philippians were Jews. On the Sabbath, instead of following his usual custom of going to the local synagogue, Paul had to go outside the city gate to a place of prayer where he and his companions began speaking with a group of women (Acts 16:13). The only one of these women that is named, Lydia of Thyatira, is called a “worshiper of God”—a technical term for a Gentile who is interested in the Jewish God but who has not yet fully converted to Judaism. Moreover, the charges brought against Paul and Silas, landing them in prison, were that they were upsetting the city since they were Jews (16:20). Jews were apparently not welcome in Philippi, and if any were there, they must have formed a small group.
In spite of this, Paul’s allusions to the Old Testament in this passage and elsewhere in the letter show that he instructed his new converts in the Jewish Scriptures; the implication is that he considered them as the inheritors of the promises God had made to his people. Christians are thus comparable to the desert generation of Israelites and so should learn from their conduct, and they have assumed eschatological Israel’s vocation of being a light to the Gentiles. They even make sacrifices comparable to the offerings prescribed for Israel in the Mosaic law.
All of this implies an approach to the Old Testament that Christians today should not ignore. The Old Testament remains God’s eternally valid Word, but the dawn of the new covenant has radically altered its interpretation. The church is no longer a political entity like biblical Israel, and its boundaries are no longer primarily ethnic boundaries as they were prior to the coming of Jesus. Thus the sanctity of the people of God under the old covenant takes a radically different shape from the sanctity of the people of God under the new. The Mosaic law, since it was intended to govern national and ethnic Israel, is no longer valid.
Nevertheless, the pattern of the believer’s relationship with God as defined in the Old Testament remains the paradigm that God’s people under the new covenant must follow. Membership in God’s people comes at God’s initiative, and sanctity is important because it sets God’s people apart from the “crooked and depraved generation” within which they live. The element of continuity between the new people of God and the old is strong, and believers today, like the Philippians in their time, have much to learn about God’s character and his expectations for his people from the Old Testament.10
(2) A second point visible through the primary argument of 2:12–18 is that Paul presents himself as a model for the Philippians to follow here, just as he did in 1:12–26 (cf. 1:30) and just as he will do in 3:4–16 (see 3:17; cf. 4:9). Paul has asked the Philippians in humility to consider others better than themselves (2:3), to put the interests of others ahead of their own (2:4), and to follow Christ’s example of humility and obedience (2:5–12). In 2:16b–17 he speaks of his own labor on their behalf and says that he is willing (like Christ Jesus in 2:7–8) even to pour out his life to make the sacrifice of the Philippians’ faith complete. This kind of ethical teaching gives definition to the meaning of sanctity under the new covenant. The particulars of the Mosaic law are no longer valid (in 3:7–8 Paul calls them “loss” and “rubbish”). Instead, sanctity within God’s newly constituted people is to a large extent a matter of following Christ’s example and the example of others who, like Paul, understand the exemplary pattern of Christ’s life (1 Cor. 4:16–17; 11:1; Phil. 3:17; 4:9; 1 Thess. 1:6).
Interpretive Perils. Several possible pitfalls await us as we attempt to bring this passage out of Paul’s setting and into our own, and much of the danger is concentrated in verses 12–13. Because these verses state a paradox in sharp terms, it is easy to place too much emphasis on one side of the paradox at the expense of the other. If we place too much emphasis on verse 12, we may lapse into the notion that salvation is a matter of our own untainted free choice and that by our own efforts we can “work for” (JB, NJB) our salvation with fear and trembling. This was the error of Pelagius in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, and it has reemerged in various forms throughout Christian history. This view has trouble explaining the necessity for Christ’s substitutionary death and implicitly denies what Paul affirms in Romans 4:5—that even someone as “righteous” as Abraham appears wicked when standing before God.
If we place too much emphasis on verse 13, however, we stand in danger of retreating into an equally unbiblical quietism that passively awaits an infusion of divine energy before obedience can begin. Although all evangelical Christians owe a great debt to the leaders of the “Second Great Awakening” in the nineteenth century, that movement had an unfortunate spin-off. Under the influence of that event, some claimed that believers must experience a second crisis, akin to their initial conversion, in which the Holy Spirit gained control of their lives and placed them on a higher plane of obedience and Christian devotion than other believers. Any Christian who, under the influence of such thinking, is delaying obedience until he or she experiences what seems to be the Holy Spirit’s power, needs to heed the warning of verse 12. Every believer has the Spirit (Rom. 8:9), and God’s Word commands every believer to “live by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16). Anyone who claims to be a believer but is consciously not doing this should probably question the genuineness of his or her commitment to the faith (cf. 2 Cor. 13:5).
How, then, are we to respond to so tensive a statement as verses 12–13? How can we work out our own salvation if God is the one who is at work in us? The answer seems simply to be to work as hard as Paul himself did in his apostolic calling and as diligently as he expected the Philippians to work at their unity, but then, at the end of the day, to recognize humbly that any success we have at doing what God commands comes from God himself. His indwelling Spirit has reshaped our wills so that they may decide to do what he commands, and his Spirit has given us the energy and ingenuity to accomplish God’s “good purpose.” The result of this is that although at various times we may feel that we have put our noses to the grindstone and been obedient even when we did not feel like doing it, we can in the end take no credit. We can make no claim upon God; we can only say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty” (Luke 17:10).
As we bring this passage into the contemporary church, therefore, we should keep Paul’s primary emphases firmly in mind: We should strive for unity, and we should understand that doing so is necessary in order to fulfill our calling of being a light to the dark world around us. Although difficult, we should find joy in completing the task. As we keep these emphases before us, we should remember that the business of living as God wants us to live places us within a venerable tradition that stretches back to biblical Israel; but we should also remember that under the new covenant, Christ himself and the writings of the apostles and their followers set the standard for our sanctity, not the Mosaic law. As we pursue our efforts to stand blameless and pure before God on the day of Christ, we should neither passively await some humanly discernible prior movement of God’s Spirit within us, nor should we think, once we have obeyed, that God owes us something, “for it is God who works in [us] to will and to act according to his good purpose” (2:13).
Contemporary Significance
JESUS, IN ONE of his last recorded prayers, asks God to protect the unity of his disciples (John 17:11) and then expands his request to cover those who will believe through their witness:
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:20b–23).
Like Paul, Jesus in this prayer speaks of the unity of believers in the same breath with the effectiveness of the church’s testimony to the unbelieving world. The unity both here and in Philippians is, moreover, not merely abstract—a feeling of friendliness or a recognition of common beliefs—but visible. The world must be able to see it and draw conclusions from what they see (John 17:21, 23).11 The church’s unity should be just as clear as a beacon shining in the night (Phil. 2:15). Sadly, the church too often fails to show the world concrete expressions of unity and so obscures an important witness to the gospel. Among large ecclesiastical bodies the visible unity of the church is often compromised by attempts to protect the status quo. A loss of members means a loss of revenue and, unfortunately, for some church leaders, a loss of self-esteem. The result is that when members of one church leave and join another, accusations fly, and the crack in the visible unity of the church widens.
Sometimes, of course, legitimate concerns over the spiritual health of those who have left come into play. Have they left in anger, producing cracks of their own in the fellowship they have left behind? Have they left a Christian community where the apostolic gospel is preached to join a deviant group whose gospel is really no gospel at all?
Many times, however, affirmative answers to these questions are only deceptive screens to hide deeper and less acceptable reasons for resenting the loss of membership. Thus the so-called “mainline” denominations have suffered large losses of membership in recent years to groups that have broken from them, usually for theological reasons. The temptation of the older, more established churches is to enter into a sophisticated form of name-calling. The break-away churches provide easy “answers” to complex questions, it is said, and have led out of the established churches those who are not interested in theological and intellectual honesty. These churches are more homogeneous, goes the charge; they are unwilling to reach out to women, the poor, and minority groups, so that people who are attracted to them have racist tendencies and are uncompassionate about the plight of the oppressed.
The less-established churches, of course, have their own ways of widening the breech. They sometimes refer to themselves as “the continuing church,” implying that the church from which they split retains no continuity with historic Christianity.12 Those who refuse to join the splinter group are sometimes viewed as immature or uncourageous Christians, if Christians at all, because of their continued affiliation with the old group.
Real differences about what constitutes the gospel exist in both groups, but the most serious of those differences are usually held by the minority who are at the fringes of both groups (although admittedly this minority sometimes holds control of denominational offices). The central majority in both groups, even if they differ on some things, possess enough common ground on the essentials of the faith to make efforts at unity. Jesus and Paul tell us that such efforts are essential proofs of the validity of the gospel to the unbelieving world. It is fairly easy for the various splinter denominations to align themselves with Christians in other such denominations, just as it is fairly easy for the mainline churches to make common cause. Where the church really needs to work at unity, however, and where the world really needs to see it, is among believers in the splinter groups and the groups from which they have come. That would be a miracle, but one the world would recognize as lending credibility to the gospel.
The visible unity of the church does not only need to be maintained at the large, institutional level, however, but at the level of individual congregations of believers as well. Here unity is often broken by precisely the verbal kinds of activity that Paul attempts to curb at Philippi: complaining and arguing. At the bottom of this flurry of discontented words is nearly always the desire of each side in the dispute to dominate the other, to see that their concerns are addressed even if the interests of others are neglected. Usually the issue of whose concerns, if anyone’s, best advance the gospel is lost in the bitter exchanges and the backbiting, or, even worse, is used as a pious excuse to promote the selfish interests of one party over those of the other. And so the procession continues of ministers who leave their churches because their reputation has been stained by rumor, of congregations torn asunder by leaders who refuse to recognize that they could be wrong, and of church members who quietly never return because they have been shamed by rumor or by an unforgiving spirit.
What is the remedy? Paul’s solution is to issue a warning. Those who belong to God’s people demonstrate their membership by working out their salvation. Their aim should be to avoid the mistakes of the ancient Israelites, who allowed complaining to stand in the way of their inheritance and whose subsequent historical failure to be a light to the Gentiles meant that God gave this privilege to others. The Philippians should rejoice in working for the advancement of the gospel and consider the energy expended in that work to be a sacrifice to God. The warning implicit in this is that those who find themselves so out of sympathy with these goals that they place their own interest above the unity of the church, and thus the advancement of the gospel, should question whether they belong to God’s people at all. Paul would say to them what he said to another group of spiritually immature people:
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? (2 Cor. 13:5).
In addition to this strong medicine, Paul implies a remedy to any disunity based on the selfish desire to dominate others: “It is God,” he says, “who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (v. 13). Any good that we as believers accomplish is the result of God’s work in us. This is a deeply humbling truth, one that should give anyone pause who is bent on having his or her way. We do not deserve to have our own way. We deserve hell. But God in his grace has drawn us to himself by his Holy Spirit and by that same Spirit has worked within us to accomplish his good purpose. If we have grasped the truth that God justifies the impious—that Jesus came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance—then we will immediately understand how foolhardy it is to break fellowship with others for selfish reasons. “Self-justification and judging belong together,” said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “as justification by grace and serving belong together.”13
Finally, through its subtle identification of the church with eschatological Israel, this passage issues a challenge to the modern evangelical church to examine its stance on the Palestinian-Israeli question. Many evangelicals have stood with the Israelis and against the Palestinians on the question of who should have sovereignty over the Holy Land. To these Christians Jewish right to the land seems explicitly laid out in the Bible, and Jewish repossession of the land seems a confirmation of the eschatological vision of the prophets. In their euphoria over seeing prophecy supposedly come true before their very eyes, however, many American evangelicals have forgotten that Palestinian Arabs lived in the land of Israel for many centuries and were sometimes brutally treated by Jewish emigrants to Palestine after the United Nations set up an independent Jewish state in the area in 1948. Many of these mistreated Palestinians were Christians, fellow members of Christ’s body and part of the newly constituted people of God. Unfortunately, the violence has continued in the decades since 1948, and Palestinian Christians are often at a loss to understand why their believing brothers and sisters in the West seem to ignore or make excuses for Israel’s oppressive behavior.14
On the most likely reading of Romans 11:25–27, Paul continues to find a special place for ethnic Israel in God’s people at the close of the age, and certainly Romans 11:11–24 forbids any triumphalism on the part of Gentile believers over the failure of many Jews to heed the gospel. But these passages should not blind us to Paul’s assumption in many places throughout his letters that the church has fulfilled many of the prophetic descriptions of the blessings that have been promised to God’s people at the end of time. Even on the dubious thesis that the present state of Israel plays some role in the events surrounding the end of the age, Christians today should not support its policies on the notion that its government and citizens somehow constitute God’s covenant people. God’s people in the land of Israel are those who, whether Jew, Arab, or neither, believe in Messiah Jesus.