Overwhelmed
So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Philippians 2:12-13 NASB
Work out your salvation – If you’re saved by grace through the faithfulness of Yeshua the Messiah, then what is there left to do? If Paul wrote, “Work out your sanctification” or “work on holiness,” I might be able to comprehend him. But he says that sōtēría (salvation) still needs to be accomplished. It requires katergázomai (overcoming, working out, endurance). What is this? Just another requirement? Another way to slip in “be a good boy” theology? If it is, it’s “bait and switch” theology. That would be bad enough, but if Paul’s statement is true, it’s also overwhelming. I get the “fear and trembling” part. I feel that nearly every day. But I just can’t live in a faith world where everything hangs on my latest effort. I’ll fail no matter how hard I work at it. Is this really what Paul is saying?
It would be much more comfortable to believe that my salvation is secure, that there’s nothing I can do to erase God’s gift of grace. At least that’s what I want to believe. But these days I’m not so sure about this view of salvation, and that increases my “fear and trembling” quotient quite a bit. Sometimes it helps to read about the struggles of biblical characters. They seem to go through the same things I experience—and God still stuck with them. But it doesn’t reduce my personal fear and trembling. Perhaps I need to remember Heschel’s remark:
“Spiritually we cannot live by merely reiterating borrowed or inherited knowledge. Inquire of your soul what does it know, what does it take for granted. It will tell you only no-thing is taken for granted; each thing is a surprise, being is unbelievable.”[1]
No-thing can be taken for granted. Frankly, that’s scary. Most of my faith is borrowed. It comes from my own culture, my own family, my own interpretation of my journey through the lens of my training. “Knowledge, therefore, is a set of reminiscences, and, our perception being always incomplete and full of omissions, a subsequent combination of random memories. We rarely discover, we remember before we think; we see the present in the light of what we already know. We constantly compare instead of penetrate, and are never entirely unprejudiced. Memory is often a hindrance to creative experience.”[2] That’s an apt description of paradigm blindness. As Bob Gorelik says to groups we take to Israel, “The greatest obstacle to learning is what you think you already know,” and I’ve spent a great deal of my life collecting things I know. What I’ve forgotten is that the most important part of life is what I don’t know; actually, what I can’t know given my current paradigm blindness.
“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”[3]
Maybe I need a different view of Paul’s “fear and trembling.” God is faithful. The issue for me isn’t about God wavering in His concern about me. The issue is my lack of amazement that He cares at all. Maybe working out my salvation has nothing to do with God’s choice. It has everything to do with my letting go of what I think I know, of risking not having the answer so that I can apprehend the amazement of His care. Maybe working it out isn’t collecting more good deeds or more theological concepts at all. Maybe it’s learning how to let go of what I think I know so that I can feel what I don’t know.
Topical Index: work out, salvation, fear and trembling, paradigm, amazement, Philippians 2:12-13
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 12.
[2] Ibid., p. 6
[3] Ibid., p. 7.
