NOTES for Php 2:12-30
12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. |
13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. |
14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings: |
15 That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; |
16 Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. |
17 Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all. |
18 For the same cause also do ye joy, and rejoice with me. |
19 But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I also may be of good comfort, when I know your state. |
20 For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state. |
21 For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's. |
22 But ye know the proof of him, that, as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel. |
23 Him therefore I hope to send presently, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me. |
24 But I trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly. |
25 Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellowsoldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants. |
26 For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. |
27 For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. |
28 I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. |
29 Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation: |
30 Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me. |
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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.
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