Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
It’s the season of Easter and in this season we commemorate the death, burial and resurrection of Christ because this is the essence of our faith. The faith centers the redemption of man who couldn’t save himself. Another man had to die for men so that all men didn’t have to pay for their sins. And what was that payment? Death. Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now the man who could die for all men had to be without sin to qualify in order to be the sacrifice for all men. This explains why God couldn’t just erase the sin issue from the garden of Eden. There had to be a series of events leading to the birth of that Man.
This redemption exemplifies what used to happen in those days of slavery. In the slave market, someone could buy a slave from their slave masters so that they could be free from that master. However freedom from one master meant allegiance to the next master who bought them from that slave market. In Exodus 21:2, for instance the law said: “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.” So the one who buys the slave will have the slave serve him.
This is the same thing that happened with Christ buying us from the slave market of the devil. All men became slaves to the devil through the first man’s sin and disobedience. This made Satan the god of this world – 2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. Christ bought us back with the payment method being His blood. This means we now have to serve a new Master and do His bidding. So we move from one slave master to another.
The difference is that this time around this slavery is no more bondage but freedom.
John 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
We can now live free from the bondage of sin and doing the enemy’s bidding to doing what the Lord has always had in mind for us from creation. Romans 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Key phrase is ‘walk in newness of life‘. It is this walking in newness of life that the Bible means when ‘working out your salvation’ is mentioned. Note that you are not working for your salvation because Christ already did that. This work you’re doing is to affirm and enforce, in your own life, what He did. It’s just like someone handing me a check with an amount of money and I have to do the work of going to cash that check so that I can actually have the money in my account. I already have that money but I can’t do much with it if it’s not translated into my account.
So when the Bible says work out your salvation, it means use the power given to you (the Holy Spirit) to live like Christ so you can see and do what He saw and did. The next verse of the opening scripture said; for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. So God works in us by His Spirit to do the things He wills.
In addition to celebrating the Easter festivities, make a decision to live for your new Master in every sense of the Word.
The Word In Clarity 