Only 13 percent of Americans see all Ten Commandments as binding on us today. Ninety-one percent lie regularly---at home and at work. In answer to the question, “Whom have you regularly lied to?” the statistics included 86 percent to parents and 75 percent to friends. A third of AIDS carriers admit to not having told their lovers. Most workers admit to goofing off for an average of seven hours---almost one whole day---a week, and half admit that they regularly call in sick when they are perfectly well.
The survey also posed the question, “What are you willing to do for $10 million?” Twenty-five percent would abandon their families, 23 percent would become a prostitute for a week, and 7 percent would kill a stranger. Think of it! In a gathering of 100 Americans, there are seven who would consider killing you if the price was right. In 1,000 there are seventy (R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, Wheaton. Illinois: Crossway, 1991, 119).
Obviously, the command by God “Be you holy” (1 Peter 1:16) is rampantly disobeyed.
Holiness or sanctification, however, is not optional for the believer with God. If this divine requirement has sunk in, you might be asking, “I have this besetting sin that binds me like a cable, how can I break its hold on my life?” “How can I get rid of the bitterness in my life for my parents?” “How can I stop offending people with my selfish rudeness?” “How can I get victory over internet pornography?” “How can I exorcise the critical spirit that drives me to gossip about people?” “How can I obey God’s command to be holy?” “How can I live a holy life?”
“Is it all up to me? Or is it all up to God?” There are two extreme beliefs among Christians
1. One view says it is all up to me.
I must discipline myself to live the holy life. I must basically in my own strength live the holy life. It is all up to me. This view is called Extreme Pietism. Paul will address this view in Philippians 2:13.
2. The other view says the holy life is all up to God.
I am passive in the Christian life. This view is called Quietism. I am responsible only to be quiet and totally surrendered to God. This movement is also called the Higher Life Movement or the Victorious Life Movement because it teaches believers to live on a higher plane of continuous victory over any known sin or even temptation to sin. It is also known as the Keswick Movement because this movement spread to Keswick, England (See Let Go and Let God? A Survey and Analysis of Keswick Theology by Andrew David Naselli).
Here are two major doctrines of Quietism (the holy life is all up to God)
A. A second blessing is needed after salvation.
This second conversion, which some call it, is based on a crisis experience of total surrender or second work of grace. Once you have this experience you will practically be sin-free and temptation-free. Salvation or regeneration is not enough. The second work of grace is needed because the first work of grace in salvation is insufficient. God did not equip you with all you need in justification to live a Christian life.
The inception of the higher life movement is often identified with the publication of William Edwin Boardman’s book, The Higher Christian Life (1858). The book argued that Christ was to be received for sanctification sometime after justification.
B. All that is necessary is faith. Any effort or striving will only hinder your sanctified living.
Charles G. Trumbull writes, “the secret of complete victory is faith: simply believing that Jesus has done and is doing all.” Effort on the part of a Christian, Trumbull suggests, only hinders spiritual growth (Charles G. Trumbull, Victory in Christ, Fort Washington: Christian Literature Crusade, 1959, 84, 48).
The believer must be quiet or passive and “Let go and let God” do it all. Once he has experienced his second work of grace the believer can live the higher life, the victorious life, which is a life without any known sin.
John Wesley wrote of a woman who had attained perfection in her Christian life: “I believe that she received the great promise of God, entire sanctification, fifteen or sixteen years ago and that she never lost it” (John Wesley. Journal and Diaries VI [vol. 23 of The Works of John Wesley; ed. Ward W. Reginald and Richard P. Heitzenrater; Nashville: Abingdon, 1995], 109).
The Reformed Camp agrees with the Arminians in objecting to saying we cooperate with God in sanctification. An example is John Murray: “Perfectionists are right when they insist that this victory is not achieved by us nor by working or striving or laboring.” Murray also agrees that the Perfectionists are right in believing that victory over sin is not a process but one act: “They are correct in maintaining that it is a momentary act realized by faith” (Redemption Accomplished and Applied, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955,143).
The Perfectionists believe this crisis experience is the second work of grace and sanctification after salvation whereas Murray believes this single act of sanctification happens by faith at justification. This is what Ryrie calls Positional Sanctification (Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology, 442).
Listen to the Scriptures that teach that you and I must put forth the effort to live a holy life: 1 Timothy 1:18, “war a good warfare;” 2 Peter 1:10, “Give diligence to make your calling and election sure;” Colossians 1:29, “Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working;” Hebrew 12:14, “Pursue holiness;” Hebrew 6:12, “Be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises;” 1 Corinthians 9:25, “Know you not that they who run in a race run all, but one receives the prize? So run, that you may obtain,” and 2 Timothy 2:22, “Flee youthful lust but follow righteousness, faith, love, and peace.”
When it comes to living holy, God-pleasing lives, the Scripture teaches both/and not either/or. I have my role and God has His role.
Paul in Philippians 2:12, and 13 mentions both roles.
1. Here is My Role in My Sanctification (Philippians 2:12) refutes Quietism (the holy life is all up to God)
Paul in Philippians 2:12 answers the false view of sanctification that says sanctification is all up to God. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
A. We are not to work for our salvation as individuals
Paul writes to people who are already believers in 1:1. Paul was saved out of works righteousness as he testifies in 3:4-9.
Paul is not talking about past salvation or past deliverance of the individual from sin in this context. He is talking about present salvation or present deliverance from sin or sanctification that will lead to unity in the church. Paul uses all plurals in this verse. He has been exhorting believers to be humble, not proud in 2:1-4. Paul presented Christ as the perfect example of humility in 2:5-11.
B. We are to work at our sanctification as a church
Now Paul is exhorting believers to work out their salvation in holy living to have unity in the church. In 2:14, Paul will give more specific instructions: “Do all things without murmurings and disputing.”
Sanctification takes “work.” That is why Paul commands, “Work out.” Sounds like Paul has been to the gym. Did you know that the word “gym” is in the Bible? Go to 1 Timothy 4:7: “Exercise yourself unto godliness.” Godliness requires effort, not passivity. The word “exercise” in Greek is the word from which we get our English word “gym [γυμνάζω, gymnazo].” To be godly we must “work out.”
Paul’s famous salvation by grace through faith and not of works passage in Ephesians 2:8-10, mentions “works” twice. The unsaved sinner is not saved by “works” but by grace through faith in Ephesians 2:8. The saved sinner, however, is saved “unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).
Human works do not save us but we are saved to produce works that God enables us to do. God has given us two powerful means of grace to accomplish these works: God’s Word and prayer. Each of these means of God’s grace is said to give us divine energy.
1) In God’s gym, we work out with God’s Word
Here are two verses that describe God’s Word as a means of grace: 1 Thessalonians 2.13: “For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe” and Acts 20.32: “So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”
2) In God’s gym, we work out with Prayer
God is omnipotent and God has ordained that it is prayer that unleashes His power as Paul instructs in Ephesians 3:20: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.”
2. Here is God’s Role in My Sanctification refutes Extreme Pietism (the holy life is all up to me)
Paul in Philippians 2:13 answers the second false view of sanctification, extreme pietism, which teaches that holiness is all up to me. Paul wrote: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Paul asked the Galatians believers a question that we all need to answer, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3). The Judaizers were saying, “You live the Christian life by observing rules.” You measure your spirituality by rules. Even more tragically, you measure and judge others’ spirituality by your rules. This is legalism. This is external Christianity. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were extreme pietists. Jesus warned other believers about the Pharisees, “Except your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees you shall in no way enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
Later this attitude was expressed in the monastic movement where the spiritually elite separated themselves from ordinary Christians and took monastic vows of poverty and celibacy to live a more holy life. Their rules were stricter than the Bible.
To be spiritual these Christians gave up what the Word of God never taught them to give up.
Martin Luther wrote, “If you obey the gospel, you ought to regard celibacy as a matter of free choice: if you do not hold it as a matter of free choice, you are not obeying the gospel… A vow of chastity, therefore, is diametrically opposed to the gospel” (Martin Luther, The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows from 55-Volume American Edition Luther’s Works on CD-ROM, Fortress Press, Concordia Publishing: Minneapolis, 2001, Vol. 44, page 262).
They emphasize such passages as ‘Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God; (2 Cor. 7:1) and ‘Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself (James 2:17).
Paul in Philippians 2:12 gives the balance to Quietism’s passivity with the command to “work out your own salvation.” Now in Philippians 2:13, Paul stresses God’s role in our sanctification: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” The God who commands us to obey Him gives us both the desire to obey and the ability to obey.
God began to energize us at salvation according to 1:3-6: “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Charles Spurgeon accomplished almost superhuman amounts of work as a pastor. Here is his description of the workload:
"No one living knows the toil and care I have to bear…
1) I have to look after the Orphanage
2) have charge of a church with four thousand members
3) sometimes there are marriages and burials to be undertaken
4) there is the weekly sermon to be revised
5) The Sword and the Trowel to be edited
6) besides all that, a weekly average of five hundred letters to be answered.
This, however, is only half my duty, for there are innumerable churches established by friends, with the affairs of which I am closely connected, to say nothing of the cases of difficulty which are constantly being referred to me" (C. H. Spurgeon: Autobiography, vol. 2, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1973, 192).
John Piper in a sermon on Charles Spurgeon (click to open) marveled at the indefatigable pastor: At his 50th birthday, a list of 66 organizations was read that he founded and conducted. Lord Shaftesbury was there and said, "This list of associations, instituted by his genius, and superintended by his care, were more than enough to occupy the minds and hearts of fifty ordinary men."
He typically read six substantial books a week and could remember what he read and where to find it. He produced more than 140 books of his own—books like The Treasury of David, which was twenty years in the making, and Morning and Evening, and Commenting on Commentaries, and John Ploughman's Talk, and Our Own Hymnbook. Spurgeon wrote three books a year.
He often worked 18 hours a day. The missionary David Livingstone, asked him once, "How do you manage to do two men's work in a single day? Spurgeon replied, "You have forgotten there are two of us." I think he meant the presence of Christ's energizing power that we read about in Colossians 1:29. Paul says, "I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me." "There are two of us."
Just as Spurgeon recognized that there were two doing his work, so are there two of us to live a holy life. “For it is God who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”
1 Corinthians 15:10 is another example: “I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
Paul in Galatians 2:20 pounds home the same truth: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”