Work Out Your Salvation

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed¾not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence¾continue 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 purpose (Philippians 2:12-13)

Are you wide awake?  Ready for a new thought?  How about this one: Paul is not talking here about personal salvation.  Keeping this passage in the context that began in Philippians 1:27 makes it very possible that Paul is referring to the corporate salvation of the Philippian church (compare Revelation 2:4-5 where the corporate salvation of another church is definitely the issue). 

“Work out your salvation” could very well be referring to “your collective life as a body of saved people.”  If they empty themselves for each other the way Jesus emptied himself (2:5-8), then the disciples will be as one, and they will contend with power and vigor against all who oppose them (1:27-28) On the other hand, if they serve themselves instead of one another, if they grasp for their rights and their privileges, there will be conflicts and dissension.  The church will be as divided as the world, and just as lost.

Evangelical Protestantism, influenced by Western individualism, has a way of making everything seem to be an issue of personal salvation.  In such an environment it is hard for us to read “salvation” and not think it is talking about whether “I” will be lost or “I” will be saved.  But it seems more likely that Paul here is urging the church to make sure they are living out what God has put within them (namely such things as love, unselfishness, patience, kindness, grace and forgiveness).  To show those things to one another and then to the world is to work out or “express” our common salvation.  To fail to live by the Spirit, to bite and devour one another, to let wounds go unhealed, and to let walls stay between people, is to be as lost as everyone else.