How to Work Out Your Salvation

Dr. Spencer R. Fusselman

Life is undeniably a struggle, a series of storms that tempt us to believe our spiritual survival depends entirely on our own strength. In these moments of "warfare," the Apostle Paul’s command in Philippians 2:12, "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," can sound like an impossible, crushing burden. This verse has often been misinterpreted as a call to a works-based righteousness, suggesting that our effort completes what Christ’s grace merely started. This interpretation, however, is a profound misunderstanding of one of the most encouraging truths in Scripture. The passage, far from promoting works-righteousness, presents a divine paradox: our strenuous, human effort in sanctification is the result and evidence of God’s sovereign, internal work, not a contribution to it.

The command to "work out" our salvation is not a command to earn it. As the 19th-century preacher Charles Spurgeon noted, this exhortation is "beyond all question addressed to those who are already saved". The Greek verb katergazomai ("work out") carries the sense of bringing to completion or fulfillment. Theologian N.T. Wright clarifies this perfectly: "‘working out your salvation’ isn’t earning salvation, it’s figuring out what this business of being saved means in practice”. This is a call to sanctification—the command to take the internal, invisible reality of the salvation we possess and make it an external, observable fact through sustained effort and obedience. This is the same principle the Apostle Peter commands in 2 Peter 1:5-8: "But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge... For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful...".  

This work is to be done "with fear and trembling". Again, this phrase is easily mistaken for a cowering terror of a God waiting to strike us down. But this is not the fear of a slave before a tyrant; it is the "reverential awe" and "holy concern" of a child before a holy Father. John MacArthur defines it not as "a fear of being doomed to eternal torment... It is rather a reverential fear, a holy concern to give God the honor He deserves and avoid the chastening of His displeasure". It is, as R.C. Sproul taught, a labor of "care and of concern and of diligence that we take very seriously". This is the proper posture of any person who truly understands their own spiritual weakness and the holiness of God. It is the same posture described in Psalm 2:11: "Serve the LORD with fear, And rejoice with trembling", and in Isaiah 66:2: "...But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, And who trembles at My word".  

The great resolution to this apparent paradox—our work, our fear—is found in the very next word: "for". This word introduces the power and the guarantee: "...for it is God who works in you..." (Philippians 2:13). We are not commanded to work and then God will help. We are commanded to work because God is already working. John MacArthur states this explicitly: "Work out your salvation precisely because it is God working in you". This single verse dismantles the false extremes of Quietism ("Let go and let God") and Pietism (all human striving), by establishing that our labor is the fruit of His labor. This is Paul's consistent theology, as he writes in 1 Corinthians 15:10: "...but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me".  

Verse 13 proceeds to define the comprehensive nature of God's work. He is the one "who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure". God does not merely give us a push and hope we choose correctly. He is the one who initiates the entire process. He works in us "to will" (Greek: thema), which, as MacArthur notes, means He provides the "desire" itself. He then "works" (Greek: energon) in us, providing the "ability" or "energy" to carry out that desire. This is the divine dynamic. Our sanctification is not a product of human effort causing holiness, but of God’s internal work producing human effort. As Hebrews 13:20-21 beautifully states, it is the "God of peace... [who] make[s] you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight...".  

This truth is the believer's anchor in the storm. Life is a "struggle," as D.A. Carson notes, but "it’s precisely God working in us that empowers us, and compels us, and activates us, and motivates us, and strengthens us, in order to keep struggling". This is not a call to passivity. As R.C. Sproul affirms, "We work because God works in us to work". Our effort is not independent of God; it is the very evidence of His presence. This is our confidence: the Christian life is not a human-powered struggle to reach God, but a God-powered struggle that forges us into the image of Christ. The one who began the work is the one who sustains it. As Paul writes elsewhere, "being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).  

Therefore, we do not face the storms of life with a grim resignation to our own limited strength. We face them with a holy "fear and trembling," not because we are afraid of failing, but because we are in awe of the limitless divine power at work within us. We work out of His power, not for it.

Recalibrate Your "Fear": Actively reject the notion that "fear and trembling" means a cowering terror of judgment. Instead, begin to practice "reverential awe". When you face a struggle or temptation, your first posture should be one of "self-distrust" —a profound awareness of your own weakness—coupled with an equally profound reverence for the holiness and power of the God who lives in you.  

Identify His "Will": Learn to recognize the "will" (or desire) that God is working in you. When you feel a holy longing to pray, to serve, to flee sin, or to speak truth, do not dismiss it as your own fleeting idea. Recognize it as the first evidence of God’s power, the "Spirit of your Father who speaks in you" (Matthew 10:20, NKJV). This is God "compelling" and "activating" you.  

Act on His "Work": Once you have identified that God-given "will," act on it with diligence, trusting that He who supplied the desire will also supply the energy ("to work") to accomplish it. This is how we "keep struggling". We are not called to "wait and see what God does". We are called to step out in obedience, confident that the very power that "begun a good work" in us is the same power that "will complete it".