Philippians 2:2-14 - Work Out Your Salvation
Tom Shrader examines Philippians 2:12-13, explaining how Christians are called to 'work out' their salvation with fear and trembling while recognizing it is God who provides both the desire and ability to live for Him. He distinguishes between working 'for' salvation versus working 'out' salvation, emphasizing that believers are saved by grace through faith alone, but then live transformed lives as the fruit of that salvation.
“What makes me a Christian is what I believe and I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for the sin of his people and the way that that's appropriated to me or you is there's this point in time where we come to the realization of that we accept that and at that moment I can know that I'm saved.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Philippians
Recorded: October 20, 2016
Duration: 38 min
Themes: salvation, grace, faith, humility, obedience, transformation, fear, trembling, new believer, struggling with works, questioning salvation, seeking assurance, christian maturity, spiritual discipline, pastor, bible teacher
Scripture: Philippians 2:12-13, Philippians 2:5-11, Philippians 1:27, Philippians 1:6, 1 John 2:6, Ephesians 2:8-10, Romans 5:6-8, Romans 8, Psalm 111, Proverbs 1:7
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual growth, soteriology, salvation doctrine, grace alone, sola gratia, christian living, biblical obedience
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, open them to the book of Philippians in the second chapter. We've gone to a new system on Sunday, so when I was teaching on Sunday there's a prescribed assigned amount of scripture to cover and I've never been particularly good at that. I kind of tend to get into something and away we go. Yesterday my plan was to start in Philippians chapter 2 verse 12 and I had really prepared, I thought pretty well through verse 17 and I wasn't sure how much time I had but if I didn't have enough I was in a position to work through the majority of the rest of the chapter. What happened is I got into Philippians chapter 2 verse 12 and verse 13 and I started and when I looked down the clock said 7:40. I'd gone 40 minutes and I just I'm not sure what happened. It was one of those amazing moments so I was telling Sandy when I got home I said here's what happened today. I don't know if I can duplicate that tomorrow and I have to because we have to stay on the same pace. Then she asked what perhaps was the most important question: she said was it any good? I said I was more concerned about the timing than the quality so hopefully it was good.
The Challenge of Teaching the Same Content
It is somewhat repetitive and elementary. A gentleman by the name of Tim Maughan took my teaching responsibilities at Gilbert and I was walking through the other day and we were talking and he said did you ever have speaker's block, the equivalent I guess of a writer's block where you have those moments and you're not really sure. I said there were always two things that got me. One was when I felt like I was saying the same thing over and over and over again and that happens a lot especially in the course of teaching a book. The second is when I see something and it gets me all excited—this doesn't happen often—but I'll see a passage or something and I will tell you Philippians chapter 2 verse 5 through 11 is that section.
I said it's when I see something gets me all excited and then I present it and I seem to be the only excited person in the room. Well that was last week here. I just think there's this marvelous—it'll happen in a sentence, it happens rarely—but it'll happen in a sentence so when I read the sentence that when Paul was writing the book of Philippians he got to chapter 2 verse 3, "do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit but with humility of mind," when Paul is writing that sentence there was not a word in the Greek for humility nor was there a Latin word. When I read that my mind just starts to race to go this is how counterintuitive humility is. The Romans, the Greeks saw it as a characteristic that at best was a weakness and I would argue that if it's not the key ingredient it's one of the ingredients to the Christian life. It's intertwined and inseparable from love, it's to not seek its own. So I present it and it falls flat, and so I said those would be the two moments.
Working Through the Text
I got into this so let's read Philippians chapter 2 verse 12 and 13. "So then my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work within you both to will and to work for His good pleasure."
As I read through that, this would be the way I do a lesson. I would read through those verses and I would make observations quickly and see what is it that strikes me. Let me just—I don't know that this is helpful but it'll give you an insight to how my mind works. When I read this I read "so then," so the minute I read that I know there's a connection. I know I can't separate whatever this is from what happened or Paul wrote before it. Whatever he wrote before it's going to be connected. Then I see "my beloved," so often and I've made this mistake for years, I'll see a phrase like "my beloved" and I'll skip it, it's like you gotta say it.
Then I see two giant points. He says whether I'm there or not there I want you to work out your salvation in fear and trembling. That would be a giant bucket point for me because there's a phrase in there that's potentially problematic that I think demands attention and that's "work out." Then verse 13 introduces a whole new paradox that's not limited to this verse but we see it really throughout scripture because he says it's God who's at work in you and what God's doing is giving you the will or the desire and at the same time He's giving you the power to do these things. If I say for example who wrote the book of Philippians, on one hand you might say Paul and you would obviously be right, but on the other hand it's God who writes it as He moves Paul, and Paul is that kind of thing that we see.
A Personal Example of Theological Complexity
Years ago I am—I think politically fairly conservative, probably theologically fairly conservative—and I would fall into a camp that would embrace the traditional doctrines of the faith especially as it relates to soteriology or salvation. The problem with guys like me is they generally aren't much fun and they generally are not hip and cool. I would be the exception—that's my point here, I'm the exception of that group—but that's the problem with guys like me. They deal with these nuances of stuff that I don't have either the capacity to deal with or the interest.
One night I'm invited to go to this small pastors gathering of guys who are theologically like-minded and we get in there and we start talking about God's love and that's a big deal, that's a good thing. Then one of them couldn't let it go so he said really can we even love God or is it God who puts in us the desire to love Him and therefore we don't really love Him but it's Him who's loving Him too. I said I gotta go to the bathroom. I started to gather my stuff together. They said you need to take your stuff to go to the bathroom? I said I'm going to the bathroom on the way to the car because I'm—
So we're done with this. This is a giant circular—we're not going to solve anything. I'm already frustrated, my cheeks are red, I'm out of here. Well, I want you to feel my pain. So is it me living the Christian life, or is it God who's doing that?
He's in essence calling me to reconcile these two what almost seems to be contradictions. He's calling me to do it, and yet He's saying you can't do it—it's me who does it. Apart from me you can't do anything. So Paul's dealing with that or giving us in a sense an answer to that—certainly information that's important in verse 13. We'll work our way through it.
The Call to Obedience
So he said "so then"—he's drawing us to a conclusion. He's taking that preceding statement which is about Christ and His humility, and he's saying now I want to apply that to you. He's saying the essence of a Christian life is obedience. First John 2:6: "The one who says he abides in Christ ought himself to walk in the same manner as Christ walked." When he talks about walk in chapter 1 verse 27, he's talking about our lifestyle. This is how I want you to live—that there is a hallmark of the Christian life that is obedience that affects the way that we behave.
And then he says, "So then, my beloved..."
The Deep Desire to Be Loved
I graduated high school in 1968 and we were in Davenport, Iowa. You did not have the communications you have now, and so you were pretty isolated. You know what was going on in Davenport, yes, and we could get WLS on the radio so you got a glimmer of what's going on in Chicago, which really honestly wasn't radically different than Davenport—they just had better food. You had no idea what was going on in terms of communications like you have with internet and stuff.
At the time there was a little button that one of our jewelry stores in town was passing out. At the time I thought it was isolated to Davenport, but I've subsequently learned that it was really all over the country. It was a little button—it was a red button, white lettering—and it simply said "I am loved." It became kind of this fad, was a cool thing, so you would see these all over town. This jeweler was very happy as free advertising. "I am loved."
You're 1967, I'm 17 years old, you're not thinking about the deep implications of that. My mindset is as deep as the song that says "Hello I love you won't you tell me your name." I mean, that's about how deep my idea of concept of love was. We had to read Shakespeare—I had no idea. To this day, people keep telling me how to read Shakespeare, and I never... it just seems like a lot of work, and there's all these different things.
Well, here's what I've discovered, now that I'm a little older, is that one of the deep desires that every person in this world has is to be loved and to be known, and then to reciprocate that—to find somebody to love and to know. And Paul, in this phrase, reminds us and provides us extraordinary, I think, courage and comfort in letting you know that you are loved.
All the Way Love
This morning on the radio, Mitzi Gaynor is hosting Seriously Sinatra on Sirius Radio, and so Mitzi is talking about how much she admired Frank Sinatra, how they were working together on a movie called Joker's Wild, when she had an opportunity to audition for South Pacific. She tells the story of how Sinatra freed her up to get that role. And she said, "Let me play you a song from that movie," and it's "All the Way." "When somebody loves you, it's no good unless they love you all the way, through good and lean years, all the in-between years, come what may."
I'm thinking of that this morning in the context of Good Friday and in the context of life. You want that kind of incredible, perfect, unconditional love.
Sandy's alarm goes off every day, 4:55. It's an obnoxious alarm, but it wakes me up, and then we'll wait there till about five, and then at five she'll go, "I gotta go," and then so she's gone swimming. Here was the dialogue this morning. So the alarm went off, and I lay there, and she said, "I love you," which is really sweet. And I said, "Really? Still? Through the night, nothing changed it?" And she said, "Yes, nothing through it. In fact," she said, "I think I love you more today than I did yesterday." I said, "Wow, that's incredible." And I said, "Is that because I'm lovable?" This is the dialogue this morning—we're not awake yet. And she said, "No, I've made a choice to love you, sometimes in spite of you." And I said, "Well, you better get up."
That's this Good Friday—that's the love you have. You're never going to find that.
The Cruise Experience
The cruise that we were on—I think one of the things that it did, and I'm still debriefing it—I think one of the things it did is it really drove us together. It's very interesting, because I've always had this theory that when you get married, you shouldn't take the honeymoon then, you should take the honeymoon after six or seven or eight months. To take two people that, in theory, haven't been living together, and put them on this ship, intimately, in a room the size of this table, for two weeks, I'm not sure it's very smart. Because she's got a lot of little quirkiness.
And so what this cruise, I think, did is it drove us—I'm almost embarrassed to talk about it, because my fear is she's probably home packing and cleaning out the house right now. But my fear to talk about it is that somehow it won't live up to this, but it drove us to a whole new level of relationship.
You know, we're like five days into this, and she said, "What's your takeaway from the first five days?" I said, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know I was supposed to have a... I didn't know there was a test. I didn't know when we got to Honolulu, there's a test on this thing. Now, what do you see, what do you sense?" And I said, "I mean, I need more time to think about it." But what it did is it drove us together, and it took the relationship to a whole new depth.
You ask me what it is, and I don't think I can tell you. But that very conversation this morning, when her first words out of the...
mouth, out of her mouth in the morning, her first words are, "I love you, and I love you more than I did yesterday." That's a pretty good way to start the day. Now, it's only going to go south from there, I know it. Here's why I hesitate, because some of you have been married like forever, and you're going, "Well, this'll wear off." I know that. I mean, that's why I even hate to say it, but I don't know.
Now I'm really digressing, but even then, I find myself going, does this wear off? Could this be the exception? Because I was telling Terry this morning about the cruise. We're still docked, or just pulling away in San Diego. And the guy next to me, and clearly this was a Christmas gift or birthday gift, and he's going, "Rhonda, this is your dad. Rhonda, Rhonda, I want you to know we're... hang on, I'm talking to Rhonda, shut the hell up. Rhonda, you can still see downtown San Diego." And I'm thinking, well, this is going to be a long day. We're not even to the Dell yet. I said, get him a lifeboat to the Dell. Let him stay there for two weeks. But I'm saying, does it have to get like that? I don't know.
The Depth of Christ's Love
But you're loved, and you are loved all the way, not by a person. I don't question Sandy's sincerity when she says that, but I know there's things that I can do or will do that'll present a crack in that. You know what I'm saying? But the person that loves you all the way is Jesus.
So last year was one of those moments, and it's happened to me. It was a Good Friday breakfast, and they had music. They had a quartet singing. And one of my pet peeves, and maybe you see it in your churches, singers want to teach. I try to tell the guys, you're singing, just sing. I'm so tired of singers who want to talk. No guy teaching wants to sing. And so she's between songs and feels compelled to share the moment on top of the moment that we just heard, and everybody's looking at their clock.
She said, "If Jesus was walking the earth and you were the only person alive, He would have died for you." Well, I don't know if that's right. I mean, how would you say that? I don't know that. If I was the only person alive, I would have had to give birth to Him, so that would have been a challenge. That would have made that virgin birth look like nothing. But let's play this out.
A Revolutionary Perspective on Christ's Sacrifice
So hang in there with me for a second. If I were the only person alive and Jesus were to die for me, I think this is huge, by the way, then I would have had to been the one to shove the thorns in His head and to nail Him to the cross and to shove the spear in His side. Now Jesus dying for me takes on a whole new dimension. And that's the picture.
That's Romans 5, verses 6, 8, and 10. Why we were yet sinners, why we were enemies of God, why we were helpless, Christ died for us. That's the picture of love. When somebody loves you, it's no good unless they love you all the way. Well, the problem with that is the only person who can love you all the way is Jesus. But He does.
And Paul drops this in this almost impossible discussion of telling you how to live, to live in an entirely counter-human instinct way. And he says, listen, you're loved. How could you possibly turn your back on Him? Yet I do it every day when I sin.
The Reality of Our Frustration and God's Grace
I'm so frustrated with the world. I'm so frustrated with everything in the world. I'm so frustrated with the economic situation. I'm frustrated with what I perceive to be the lack of civility. I'm so frustrated. And then I start to laugh because I can only imagine how, if He gets frustrated, how frustrated God would be with me.
I'm frustrated with the sin I see in the world and the sin that frustrates me most in the world is my sin. I find myself in the middle of this going, "Tom, honestly, you're going to do this again? How many times? How many times are you going to do this?" And then the thought will come in, "and you think He's going to forgive you for this?" And the answer is yes, because He died.
That's the Good Friday. When He died, He paid the price for my sin and I am forgiven. That's how deeply you're loved. And to keep that in the forefront of your mind is to me an extraordinarily powerful idea.
Paul's Heart for Obedience
Now he says, whether I'm with you or apart, I am so grateful that you have obeyed. Not obeyed me, but obeyed God. And again, it's the idea, and I wrote in my notes, just imagine Paul's scenario. So here's my little phone, and already, let's see, 35 minutes ago, that little man sent me, which would be Yale, sent me a play dice. So we'll play Yahtzee all day, and I tell you this every week. 35 minutes ago, he sent me a note that said, "it's your move." So we have this constant communication.
Paul didn't have this. Paul's in Rome, in prison. We're going to see next week, there's some information going back and forth. But he didn't know that. He said, listen, whether I'm there or not, I love you so deeply. I've taught you, I've spent time with you. I've been intertwined with you. I want you to continue to obey.
Working Out Your Salvation
And now verse 12, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. So let's do it backwards, and then say what he's not saying. He's saying, I want you to work out your salvation in fear and trembling. It's the idea of a reverential awe. Psalm 111, in Proverbs chapter one, verse seven, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It's a holy concern for God and who He is and His understanding of us but our understanding of who we are and who He is.
And he says now work out your salvation. And I may be hypersensitive to this but I'm certainly sensitive to it. I was born and raised and this is not, I found myself yesterday apologizing like 88 times to the Catholics that were in the room. So I'm not trying to beat up the Catholic faith at all. I'm just trying to share with you my experience. So I'm raised Catholic grade school, high school, college. There were three of us that kind of hung around together. One of them was just made a bishop of one of the diocese
A Conversation About Faith
Recently, I was in Washington DC meeting with one of my friends from seminary - we have three guys in our group. One's a priest in the Midwest, the other's a Monsignor, and then I'm the loser of the group. So I'm meeting with one of the guys and he says, "Tom, what are you up to?" I said, "Well, what are you doing?" He said, "Well, you know, teaching Bible studies." They said, "That's really good. You know, our church - the parish I'm in - we don't have enough of those. We need good Bible teachers like you."
I said, "Well, I would agree with that, but I'm not really doing it through a parish." He said, "Where are you doing this?" I said, "Well, I started a church." He said, "I never read anywhere 'You are Tom, and upon Tom I'll build this church.'" I said, "Yeah, I know, I know that. I'm a little awkward here." He said, "Well, tell me about it." I thought, "Okay," so I just laid out for him my testimony. He said, "Tom, that's what we were always taught." I said, "You know, with all due respect, and this is totally possible, but if we were, I never heard it. I always heard that Jesus died for me." Same words, but a different dictionary.
The Classic Passage on Salvation
Turn to the left maybe three or four pages to Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8, 9, and 10 - the classic passage. Let me read Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of your own; it's a gift of God." What saved me? What got me into that position where I can say heaven is in my future? What did that? That's grace. It's grace that's a gift from God.
Look at verse 9 - this is a stake in the heart of all religion: "It's not a result of works so that no one could boast." This guy would say I falsely believed? I don't think so. But I operated on the assumption that somehow God kept track of all the good I did and the bad I did. When I got to the pearly gates, Saint Peter was going to punch in my name and my social security number because I assumed God would use those, and then He would either go up or down based on whether my good stack was higher than my bad stack.
Now somehow, if the bad stack was higher but it was close enough - a margin of error, I'm not sure what that is - I got a purgatory moment. Well, by about the junior year of college, I had a pretty big bad stack, and I kind of assumed that no matter what I did, I couldn't get the good stack to kind of sniff the bad stack. So I said, "Let's just see how big we can get the bad stack" - you know, Hall of Fame or whatever.
Understanding True Salvation
When my father died, they had a mass for my dad, and there were people - and I would come back and go, "This is how I know you're not teaching salvation by grace" - there were people who were offering sacrifices of the mass for my dad. Well, here's the reality: when my dad died, he's either in heaven or hell right there, based on what he did with Christ. No one is benefiting from that. It's not to minimize it, but it's to say, "Listen, he's either saved or lost based on grace."
I try to do this for reaction, but what separates biblical Christianity from everything else is that we are Christians based on what we believe, not how we behave. What makes me a Christian is what I believe, and I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for the sin of His people. The way that's appropriated to me or you is there's this point in time where we come to the realization of that, we accept that, and at that moment I can know that I'm saved.
I said yesterday, I was teaching this - I know for many of you this is like "ho-hum, get on to the heavy stuff" - this is pretty heavy, by the way. If you remember the first time you ever heard it, you remember the depth and the weight of it. But I said, "Even if this is for one guy, it's worth it."
A Personal Encounter
When I was done, there's a guy who looked very troubled - he had a very stressed look on his face as I'm teaching. When I was all done, he was hanging around and hanging around, and he said, "How can you know this? How can I know that I'm saved?"
So I said, "Wow, let's go through this." I took him through this. I said, "Listen, there's this moment - it can be right now - where you pray." The terms we use, and I don't like them, are "to receive Christ." It's acknowledging that Jesus is who He said He was. At that moment, how do I know? The way I know is God promises that it's true. Now my certainty of that is going to grow as I grow with Him. I begin to see my life change, and many of you in the room can give testimony to that.
It may be a life that was totally screwed up, and you quit doing that, quit doing that, quit doing that. It may be that you continued to do the same things, but you did them for the right reason.
Tommy's Story
Tommy Woods - many of you know Tommy. Tommy and I, God saved us at essentially the same time, and we're having our one-year anniversary. We're down at Chub's having a great cheeseburger, and we're talking back and forth. I say, "You know, Tommy, my life has radically changed. Not much changed with you." That sounds harsh - I didn't mean it as a criticism. I just meant like, "You're the world's greatest guy, and you've always been the world's greatest guy, and everybody loves you. You had gray hair when you were 12, and everybody - I mean, you're just great."
He said, "But no, things have radically changed. Although I'm doing the same things I used to do, I'm doing them now for the right reason. I'm a good dad now, not so people will say 'you're a good dad,' but because I love Christ, and that's how Christ empowers me to live."
Work Out Your Salvation
When He says "work out your salvation," look at what He's not saying. He's not saying work for your salvation, or work toward salvation, or work at your salvation. Are there works that are at play here? Yes. So let's stay in Ephesians 2 again, verse 8: "I'm saved by grace through faith; that's not of yourself; it's not a result of works so that no one should boast." The works in verse 9 contribute absolutely nothing to the topic, which is the topic of salvation.
So I'm not asking you, by the way, if you agree with this - I'm just asking, do you understand what I'm saying?
See what that says? Is it clear? You can sort it out later. But do you see that he's saying these works, these acts of being good so God will save me, deliver me, rescue me—these acts of being good are of no value. But once God has saved me, verse 10 says I'm created for His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for what? For good works.
So my life is transformed as I work out my salvation, if you will, as I do the things that result from God changing my heart. When I say I'm a Christian, it's not based on what I do but what I believe—that's what makes me a Christian. Now because I'm a follower of Christ, I'm going to live in a certain way that will be characterized not necessarily by one particular activity. There are certain things that Christians do, but we need to be honest—not all of them do it, not all of them do it to the same degree.
Some of you are prayer warriors. You pray and pray and pray and pray and pray. Others of you pray, but it's not a warrior deal. Some of you are students—you can't wait to get in and tear this apart. Others of you go, "Yeah, that's the Bible, the Word of God, and I get this, but man, I want to get on to living. What difference does it make? How does this apply in our life?"
Living from a Biblical Worldview
Because now as a follower of Christ, I begin to bring that view into everything. We had a long discussion yesterday on immigration and had to argue the issue exclusively from a biblical perspective, void of politics. We arrived at perhaps a different conclusion than we would if I was meeting with a convention at CPAC or in whatever the Democratic liberal socialist wing counterpart would be.
I meet all these people who say, "Bible! The Bible's the Word of God! The Bible's the Word of God!" And we come to something like immigration, and they argue it entirely from either a constitutional perspective or a political perspective and go, "Well, the Bible has no relevance in that." All of a sudden the Bible begins to change everything, and now I want you to see things this way and how you live. Not to say you'll end up at the same place, but I ought to be able to explain it and let those things motivate me in how I live—how I treat Sandy, how I respond to Sandy, how I deal with everything. Work out your salvation.
So that's what he's saying: do it with fear and trembling, with awe of God and who He is.
God's Work Within Us
Now he gives us the motive. Back to Philippians 2, he gives us the motive here in verse 13: "For it's God who's at work in you, and He's giving you the ability to will and to do this work." What work? Well, the Ephesians 2:10 work. He's giving the ability to do that work for His pleasure. This is all about God working in you.
Remember back in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6? "He who began the good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus." There are all sorts of theological discussions, debates, arguments that we have. One of them centers around this idea of a grace-based life and salvation and the change that does or doesn't take place in your life, and then the idea of can you lose your salvation.
I get discussions about the extent of atonement. I know I lose some of you right here, but we'll be back in 30 seconds. I get the discussions about the extent of the atonement, and I don't get this discussion. I do not get the people—of whom there are many, and they're theologians—who somehow suggest you can lose your salvation.
The Security of Our Salvation
Philippians chapter 1, verse 6: "He who began the good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus." He's the one who began the work. "All that the Father's given Me will come to Me. No one can snatch them out of My hands." Here's what He's saying: God is the one who's doing this work in your life. It's the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit in you. The terms that Paul uses in Ephesians chapter 1—He has sealed you. It's the guarantee.
So if I'm a Christian today, this is a huge statement, bold statement, a statement you couldn't make if you were a religious person, but you can as a Christian: If I'm a Christian today, I'm as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. Why? Because He's the one who initiated it—I didn't.
That's Romans chapter 8, when Paul asks the question, "What can separate us from the love of Christ?" He's not talking there about my love for Him, because that wanes, that moves. There are moments when I feel this union with Him and communion with Him that's so vibrant and so real, it's as though Jesus is walking right here. And there are other moments that don't feel like that. This security that I have is not based on my feeling.
Faith Over Feelings
So when the question comes, "How can you know that?" Well, I know it because God said if I come in repentance and faith, He'll save me, and that's how I know it. I don't judge it by how I feel.
I was watching some YouTube stuff the other night, and there was a clip from Margaret Thatcher. I think it was from Iron Lady, the movie where Meryl Streep was amazing. She's at the doctor, and the doctor's talking about how do you feel, and she just said, "That's the problem—everybody's worried about how they feel. Why don't you ask me what I think? Why don't you ask me what I'm thinking about this?"
Well, my relationship with Christ—sometimes it doesn't feel like much. Part of it is I know me well enough to know I wouldn't have saved me. I mean, I don't know how many spots you got up there, but you kind of wasted one on me, really. How do I know it? I know it based on what He says.
We had a great moment the other day. I was talking to somebody—and it has to be kind of around here—but I was talking to somebody who's involved...
A Different Demeanor
When Susan was in hospice, the hospice workers noticed something distinctive about our family. They told us it was interesting that whenever they dealt with someone from Redemption Church, there was always a different demeanor. I can tell you what the difference is—the doctrine is real.
I can speak to this firsthand. I spent eight days in hospice watching Susan die, experiencing all these difficult emotions. During that time, we found ourselves having opportunities to talk to other people whose lives were falling apart. These people would often say, "Well, I know they're going to a better place." I don't want to be harsh, but how do you know that? When you push them on it, all they can say is, "I know they're going to a better place." It's like theological justification by death—everybody who dies goes to heaven, except maybe your ex-wife or ex-husband.
They might dress it up by asking, "How would a loving God send anybody to hell?" But here's the truth: that desire in you is not based on your self-determination. It's God who's at work in you, putting this desire to live this way, to love Him, to care for Him. As Jesus says, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments."
God's Work Within You
Let me wrap this up and pick it up next week, because this connects directly to what happens in verse 14. Here's what Paul is saying: Because you have this model in Christ, think like Him. You are loved. You've obeyed me in the past—whether I'm there or not doesn't matter. You work out the things that are a result of God's loving you, and you do them with reverence and awe.
What a friend we have in Jesus—we have a friend in Jesus, and yet at the same time, He's my Lord and Master. There's an awe involved. Even then, I want you to understand, it's God that's putting that in you—that drawing close with Him, that feeding of your spirit. How does that happen? Paul will talk later about getting to know Him, about loving Him, about spending time with Him.
That conscience, that sense in you that's beginning to see things differently and respond differently—that's God's work in you. When you ask how you can know this, I know it based on the Word of God. Over a period of time, I begin to experience that change.
A Changed Appetite
I'd been a believer since maybe October of 1980, so I'd been a believer maybe seven months. It was a Monday night, and Susan and I, along with Larry and Sue, were down at Mary Coyle's eating ice cream. All of a sudden, it occurred to me that it was Monday night and the Cowboys were playing the Redskins. This would have been an occasion to start drinking about Friday night to get ready for Monday Night Football, and here I was at Mary Coyle's eating ice cream, almost oblivious to the fact that the Redskins and Cowboys were playing.
That's not to say you come to Christ and give up Monday Night Football. It's simply to say my whole appetite had changed, and it wasn't something I said I was going to do. It's something that God did—that's verse 13. God was just changing my appetite.
Next Week's Challenge
Here you go, verse 14—this probably doesn't apply to you: "Do all things without grumbling." Elbow each other and show up next week. Bring those friends, and we'll talk about it there. We'll pick up right there next week. Have a great Easter.