Work Out Your Own Salvation?




 

Work Out Your Own Salvation?


The outcome is not determined by what you do, do not do, have done, nor are going to do. It is determined by what Christ has ALREADY DONE. He said, “IT IS FINISHED”!


It always bothered me that Philippians 2:12 says to “ work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”  It made me think that my salvation – healing, deliverance, wholeness, to get on well – was mainly the result of my performance in life and my ability to work on it.



BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT THE WORD MEANS!



The word translated to “work out” literally means “to engage with, in order to do”. 


It is a word meant to draw a picture in a person’s mind of something already in motion and functioning, you merely come alongside and engage in and cooperate with that motion… like gears.

So… when it states to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling", it would literally say…

 “Since Christ began this work in you and will also complete it… agree and engage with joy and expectancy with what HE is already working in your life!”

 

Ephesians 2:10  For we are HIS WORKMANSHIP, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

 

Philippians 1:6  Being confident of this very thing, that HE which hath begun a good work in you WILL PERFORM IT until the day of Jesus Christ:

 

Christ truly believes that He did “predestinate you to be conformed” into His likeness and image. (Rom 8:29-30).

 

HE BELIEVES THIS STUFF!!!

 

Phil 2:13  then makes a lot more sense when it says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

 

We simply engage WITH HIM… what He has begun… what HE is doing…

 

…and

 

HE WILL COMPLETE IT!

 

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