Work for Salvation

“So then… work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12)

Here’s an interesting scripture… we’re supposed to work out our own salvation. Wait a minute, I thought the work was God’s and salvation was given as a free gift (grace) with no strings attached?

First of all the free gift of grace is Jesus Christ (Titus 2:11). We have the spiritual responsibility of becoming Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:13). That responsibility requires some work on our part.

So specifically what work is described in Phil. 2? We are to imitate the servitude of Jesus. Jesus served the world and we must be like him. We must serve each other. It starts by developing the attitude that everyone else is better than we are. It’s easy to do things for people that we respect and admire. When we have the attitude that we’re better than everyone else and our things are more important than the things of others, then we tend to just serve ourselves. We’ve got to work out of that kind of selfish living.

“… not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others” (Phil.2:4)

So then we accept the free gift of Jesus Christ who pays the price for our sins and we work to become like him. We work to become servants. We work for our salvation because Heaven will only be populated with servants.