Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed … continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good pleasure

When we gave ourselves to Jesus he didn’t just give us a thing, salvation, redemption, even righteousness.  Yes, he gave us all these things, but we received so great a salvation.  It is great not just because of its expanse, it is so great because he gave us HIMSELF.

Work out … what He works IN.

We cannot work IN our salvaton, it comes by grace through faith along, it is not of ourselves. (Eph 2:8-9) It is by faith from first to last. (Romans 1:17)

I can’t earn it, and I can’t keep it.  It is worked in me by Christ and kept in me by Christ.  But he is IN me, in the person of the Holy Spirit.  W.A. Criswell says “the only real possession we have is our salvation because every other possession we have will wear out, decay, be destroyed, die.”

I have said it this way, “there is no shelf life for our salvation.”

But since God has worked salvation IN us, we have to die to self, deny self to let that salvation, that righteousness get OUT.  We have to remove the covering and let that shine, we are the light of the world, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.  I have likened it to the spider who builds a web, line by line, section by section, minute by minute, and then sets himself up in the center as if to say “How about that?”  For the spider to NOT weave a web would go against his will which is the will of God who created him.  So, it is God who works in us to will and to do his good pleasure.  So, work out your salvation.

Work out what he worked in.

When we received Christ, we became a new creation, the old has passed, al things are made new.  So, now I want to follow, I want to obey, I want to love, I want to serve.  To NOT do any of those things goes against my WILL, given to me by God in Christ Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  

When I do not love, serve, obey, follow, it is not a reflection of my will, it is a perversion of the will because I want to Go with God.  That’s why we feel conviction, because it really isn’t what we want.  

O. Chambers said “In the reginerated man the source of will is the Almighty … you have to work out with concentration and care what God works in.”  He goes on to comment on this passage, “… you do not bring an opposed will to God’s will, God’s will IS your will, and your natural choices are along the line of God’s will, and the life is as natural as breathing.”  WOW!  Yes it is true.  What we want, as a Christian, is to do the will of God.  We want to breathe out what he breathed in.  But oh sometimes we are like obstinant children holding our breath aren’t we?  But God, like a loving parent, doesn’t concern himself too much about that because he knows he has made us to breathe and eventually we have to breathe out.  

So, keep on working out what God is breathing in.  I need not create breath.  I need not create oxygen.  God is creator of the oxygen, and God has breathed it into me.  I simply must breath out.  Live naturally the nature he has placed within me.