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Context No. 847 of 4322 · Philippians

Context · Reflection

Philippians 2:12-18: in context

12So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 14Do all things without complaining and arguing, 15that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without defect in the middle of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as lights in the world, 16holding up the word of life, that I may have something to boast in the day of Christ that I didn’t run in vain nor labor in vain. 17Yes, and if I am poured out on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. 18In the same way, you also should be glad and rejoice with me.

Paul gives the Philippians a command that has puzzled people ever since, and then immediately gives the reason that seems to cancel it out. Work out your own salvation, he says, with fear and trembling. And then: for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. The two halves are not a contradiction but a partnership. We are told to work, to put in real effort, precisely because God is the one already at work inside us; the effort is not us achieving salvation on our own, but us living out what God is producing in us. Grace does not make our striving pointless; it makes it possible.

Then Paul brings this lofty theology down to a startlingly ordinary application. Do all things, he says, without grumbling or arguing, so that you may be blameless, children of God without blemish in the middle of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. Consider what he names as the thing that makes God's children shine. Not eloquence, not miracles, not heroics. The absence of complaining. In a generation that grumbles and argues about everything, a person who simply does what is in front of them without griping stands out like a light in the dark. Grumbling, it turns out, is a quiet dimmer switch on a life; it fogs the very light that is supposed to shine. The witness Paul asks for here is the unglamorous discipline of not complaining.

Paul says that doing everything without grumbling is what makes God's children shine in a complaining world. How much of my light do I dim by grumbling, and what would it look like to simply do the next thing without complaint?

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