Work Out, God Works In

The Christ-hymn is finished (L11, L12). Now Paul turns from the mind of Christ to the living it out, and the first thing he says is one of the most easily misread commands in the New Testament: "work out your own salvation." People have stumbled over it for centuries, thinking it teaches salvation by effort. It does not. Read the whole sentence, and you find two halves that only stand together. Paul hands you the most strenuous command in the letter, and in the same breath the secret that makes obedience possible at all.

1. "Work out" — not "work for"

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (2:12). Two words Paul does not say, and we must hear the silence. He does not say work for your salvation. And he does not say figure out your salvation. Salvation is already God's finished work; you do not earn it and you do not design it. Murray is careful here: "You've been saved without works. Now work on moral and spiritual progress. We are passive in getting salvation from sin but not in growing in salvation from sin" (Murray, "A Workout That Works Out," on 2:12–13).

Then what does work out mean? Rogers draws out the image embedded in the Greek: it is the language of mining. "Work out has the idea of working a mine, like a gold mine... The Greek word literally has the idea of mining a mine. I must mine that which is mine. God has worked it into me. Now I must work it out" ("Trust and Obey," on 2:12). The gold is already in the mine. Your work is to dig it out and live it. The effort is real, the sweat is real, but you are drawing on a deposit God already made.

2. "For it is God who works in you"

Now the second half, the one that keeps the first half from crushing you. "For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (2:13). The word works here is energeō, the root of our word energy. Behind your working out is God's working in. And notice how much of you he works in: not just your doing ("to work"), but your willing ("to will"). He changes the want itself.

This is the great relief of 2:12–13. You are not grinding out obedience alone, on willpower. Murray: "God doesn't force us to go against our wills, but his force changes our wills. His work in gives us the will and the ability to work out." Rogers, in his homely way, pictures it as power steering: "The power steering is there; but you've got to move the wheel. When you move the wheel, the power steering takes over. My responsibility in the Christian life is my response to His ability." You move the wheel; God supplies the strength. Neither half works alone.

3. The diagnostic buried in 2:13

There is a searching test hidden in this verse, and both Rogers and Murray press it. "It is God who works in you both to will and to work." So, do you will to obey God? A genuine desire to do God's will is itself a sign that God is at work in you, because the desire is his gift. Rogers says it bluntly: "If you don't will to do the will of God, God won't work in you. He has to work on you in order to get you saved." Murray agrees: the fact that you want to obey is evidence you are his.

So 2:13 is not only a promise; it is a comfort and a check. If the desire to obey is there, even weakly, even flickering, that desire is God's fingerprint on your will. Do not despise it; it is him working. And if the desire is cold, the answer is not to manufacture zeal, but to ask the working God to work the willing in you. The same God who works the doing works the wanting.

From here Paul moves from that we obey to how we obey. The next verses add the spirit in which all this working-out is to happen, without grumbling or disputing, and the effect it has on a dark world. The God who works in you is working toward a shine.