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, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13

Outside of a cult here and a splinter group there, you don’t much hear anyone talking about salvation being by works. So let’s agree on that — we’re not saved by works.

Then what in the world was Paul talking about when he said we need to “work out our salvation”? There are a couple of important points that will help us understand this passage.

• First, who was Paul writing to? He was writing to Christians — a body of believers in Philippi who were already saved! (Philippians 1:1). Thus, this was not a group of unbelievers he was writing to who needed to go from a state of being unsaved to a state of being saved. He was not urging them to “come to Christ”; they were already there!
• Second, let’s see Who it is that Paul says is doing the work: “…for it is God who works in you…”. So if God is the One doing the work, what is there left for me to “work out”?

Clearly Paul does not mean that there can be anything we can do as a meritorious act that will contribute to our salvation. The work of salvation was accomplished by Christ on the cross (John 19:30). The debt for our guilt of sin has been paid.

Therefore, we are not to work our our salvation from the guilt of sin; we are to work out our salvation from the power of sin. In a different letter, Paul wrote

¹¹In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires…¹⁴For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:11-14)

As a member of the body of Christ, sin does not “reign in [our] mortal body”, but that does not mean we do not sin. This is how we are to “work out our salvation” — we are to think as Paul thought and to work as Paul worked:

¹²Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

You work each day so that sin has less and less “reign” in your life. You “press on toward the goal”. You let the Holy Spirit continue the work in you that Christ started. You work out your salvation from the power of sin by giving sin less and less control over your life, as you allow the Spirit more and more control.