Christians are often asked: "why go to your Church? why be baptized? Why can't one simply be a good person?" The detailed argument of the questioners, the "disputers" in New Testament terminology, comes down to this: since in the parable of the Last Judgment the Lord promises a better lot to those from the nations, that is, from among unbelievers, who do good to their neighbors, the Church is not needed.
In today's apostolic reading, the apostle Paul gives us a remarkable indication of how the life of a Christian differs from the life of "simply a good person." Calling his readers in Philippi to work out, with fear and trembling, their salvation, the Greek word here can literally be translated as "work out, develop, produce," the apostle says as a self-evident fact: "for God is at work in you." "God works in you both to will and to act according to His good pleasure." God, the apostle writes, έστιν ό ένεργων, is the One who acts in you, the One by whose energy both your will and your action are accomplished in you, according to His good intention. A Christian is an ordinary person, often even a weak one, but he is open to the action of God's grace, which produces in him both the good will and the action itself: the doing of good.
The difference, then, is that a simply good person has hope for a reward in the future, while a Christian already lives and acts together with God and under His rule.
