God’s Word for You

Philippians 2:12 With fear and trembling

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, March 17, 2026

12 Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;

Paul turns now to the subject of obedience. Why? In a letter so filled with love, thanks, and friendship, why would he want to bring up the matter of obedience? For the same reason that a wife wants her husband to speak correctly and firmly about obedience in their marriage without being unloving. The same reason that a general establishes his authority over his troops without being overbearing. The same reason, if you will allow the comparison, that the sheep and goats in the flock want to hear the voice of their shepherd. He is in charge. When he knows his place, and they know his place, they will be comfortable and happy in their place.

Sometimes Paul’s authority was challenged, and he had to clear up and assert his position (1 Corinthians 9:1-2; 2 Corinthians 3:1-3). That hadn’t happened in Philippi. But a wife loves her husband and wants to be reassured that he has everything under control. When he says, “It’s okay, I’ve got this,” he wants her to know that she doesn’t need to worry about that. When they talk about something and he finally says, “I think that what’s best for us and for our family is this,” then she is content that she has been heard, that they have put their thoughts together, and maybe this time things will go the way that she thought they should; maybe another time they won’t. But his place and her place in the family are clear. So it is with the goats who come when their names are called. On one stormy day, during the first tornado I ever encountered close up and in person, all I had to do was open the cellar doors in the farm yard and the whole little herd came running. They knew I was looking out for them. They did not argue about it. So it is with the apostle and his people. He loves them; he knows them. He also knows the Gospel and just what they need to know about their sins and their Savior. So it is here when Paul brings up the obedience of the Philippians “in my absence.” They know that he is watching out for their souls.

What does it mean, “to work out your salvation with fear and trembling”? It cannot mean that the Philippians were not saved, and had a lot to do yet to achieve their salvation. If that were the case, he could not have called them “saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi” (1:1). He could not have thanked God “every time I remember you” (1:3). He could not have thanked God for their fellowship (1:5) because they would not yet have had any true fellowship.

The Philippians have already been converted. They are already saved, since the moment that they were each brought to faith in Christ. “Where there is a spark of longing for mercy, there is faith; for faith is nothing else than longing for mercy. A person in whom this takes place is not merely awakening in the false sense of the word, but he is converted” (C.F.W. Walther). Therefore, “working out your salvation” is the difficult, humbling, agonizing labor of sanctification. God has given a promise to those who agonize over their sins, who despair over ever overcoming their sins themselves. “No person,” Luther writes, “can thoroughly humble himself until he knows that, regardless of his own strength, counsel, striving, willing, and working, his salvation depends wholly on the good pleasure, counsel, willing, and working of another—namely, of God alone.” If he does not, if he continues to struggle and flail to try to “get it right” on his own, then he is fighting against God. But when he sees and knows in his heart that he cannot help himself over his difficulties of sin and temptation; when he expects help from no place except from God alone, then he is ready to hear the Gospel: “Your sins are forgiven. You are at peace with God.” Following this, the desire will awake in him to thank God with his life. This thanks is the life of sanctification, and it is here and only here that the already converted believer is able to cooperate with God. Prior to this he has been dead in his sins. Now he is alive, born again as Jesus teaches in John 3:3. Now he wants to do things that please God. These things are good works. Without them, faith is dead (James 2:26). God sees even the desire to do good works as a good work. But he also gives the believer the ability to do things that please him.

We do these things and desire to do them “with reverence and awe” (Malachi 2:5; Hebrews 12:28). The fear and trembling Paul talks about is both the fear that the law produces and the grateful respect that the gospel produces. God is both judge and savior.

So far, we have remembered that Paul is not talking about how we are saved (the doctrine of justification), but about our response to being saved (the doctrine of sanctification). Yet we have kept in mind that we cannot do anything to please God when left to ourselves. The Christian works with God, even cooperates with God, in this one area of his life: sanctification, the life of living out our faith.

When you think of a sin in your life that has been forgiven by God, and you want to avoid it and its temptation in the future, recognize that it is God who has produced this godly act. When you want to help someone who needs help, and you do it not to gain something but out of love for Christ, recognize that it is God who has produced this godly act. Praise him for it! It’s okay to be amazed that he has done something fine and good and godly in your own life even though you know better than anyone else does how much of a muddy mess your life truly is. Praise God for what he does!

There is more to be said about this. But since Paul adds another verse to this one that carries along his thought even further, we can be content that thus far we have understood him, and that even this is a fine thing.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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