June 14

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. — Phil 2:12 BSB

Only God’s people, under the teaching of the Spirit, truly understand what it means to “work out their own salvation.” And everyone who does this works it out “with fear and trembling.” When a person is taught by God to see what they truly are—when they feel the deceitful heart they carry within—when the snares, temptations, and corruptions that surround them are revealed—when they know and feel how utterly ruined they are without God’s grace, then they begin to fear and tremble lest they be damned in the end. They cannot walk recklessly or carelessly without “making straight paths for their feet” and “examining themselves to see if they are in the faith.”

When a person’s deceitful heart is opened up to them—when the emptiness of a shallow profession is unmasked—when they feel how narrow the way is and how few find it—when they see how easily a person can be deceived and how surely they will be deceived unless God teaches them in a special way—when they realize how rare, sacred, and spiritual true religion is, how God alone is its author and finisher in the soul, and that a person has no more religion than God is pleased to give, nor can they work even a single grain of it into their own soul—then they stand on this solemn ground, working out what God has worked in with fear and trembling. They have fear that they might be deceived until God assures them they are not, and trembling because they know they are in the immediate presence of God, under His heart-searching eye.