If you started this challenge on Monday, you made it to the weekend! Congrats! This is an accomplishment that I hope encourages you to continue.

Today, I want to give you some recent insights into the verse above (please, do not just accept my words as true but challenge it to the entirety of scripture!) and provide some guidelines that will help you gauge where you are in the process of sanctification (which Paul talks about here when he uses the phrase ” work out your salvation”).

Sanctification is the process we go through to look more like Christ. Now, when Jesus was crucified and raised again, He saved us from the power of sin and death. In the moment of our salvation, this accomplishment of Jesus’ is ours – we are freed from sin, or as Paul says in Romans, “dead to sin.” At the same time, sanctification is a process, we still struggle against our fleshly desires while we live this current life. 

Sanctification is often a “three-steps forward, two-steps-back deal.” We now have the ability to obey and hate sin, but at the same time wrestle with sinful desires and even fail (or often fail) in choosing to do what is right. However, the believer will indeed begin to look more like Christ over time, and we will live more righteously. 

There is more to this topic, but I believe this is the foundational understanding we need to continue today.

Here are two pitfalls of sanctification you may find yourself in:

• Obsession with Performance

As David Nasser mentions, it is very easy to fall into the trap of simply setting up a list of don’ts. If this is your foundation and focus when it comes to living the Christian life, you will quickly begin to compare your walk with others. If you live this way and succeed in following your rules then you will begin to judge others for not keeping them. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with discipline, the Christian should live a disciplined life, but if your drive to succeed in discipline is to merely check off a list of don’ts, you are missing the whole point!

The foundation of the Christian life is not about our ability to perform well but to love and respect Jesus above all things. Obsession with performance has to do with a drive to achieve status, but Jesus’ death on the cross has already proclaimed us to be saints, loved by God. There is no longer a need to earn status and we should be content living under God. 

Where am I getting all of this? 

I believe we see this point in Paul’s words in Philippians chapter 2. 

In the verse above, Paul asks believers to work out their salvation, or persevere in sanctification, with fear and trembling.

Paul does not say this in the sense that we should live this life afraid of losing our salvation at any moment or flinching at every turn waiting for God to strike us down for the times we fail. He says this to encourage believers to continue their sanctification in and through the mindset that God is great and worthy of the utmost respect or reverence. 

(Now I will add that fear, even the kind that causes us to become weak in the knees, is a part of relating to God. We see this with John in Revelation, Paul in Acts, and Isaiah in the temple.) 

There is never a time when we reach God’s level of glory and we should not seek any higher status except the one Christ has already placed us in – we are sons of God and servants of God.

I am just following Paul’s train of thought when I say this. Verses 12-16 are the conclusion to the statements Paul makes in verses 1-11 (notice the therefore in verse 12, that word prompts us to look above – “what is that therefore there for?”)

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being in the likeness of man… God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name above every name.” (Philippians 2:5-9)

Jesus did not live this life consumed with status, but He revered The Father and sought to do His will in humble service to Him.

Quickly, I want to add if you fail at keeping the rules but are consumed with the obsession of keeping them you will also fall into a pit of despair and self-loathing… 

Paul offers the remedy to this in verse 13. 

Your sanctification is directly influenced by God Himself. 

The Holy Spirit brings about the change we need. Every good thing we do is enabled by the Spirit. So even if you have been trying really hard to do better and yet you have failed over and over, do not give up but revere God and trust He is molding you at His pace, and God is not slow in accomplishing His will. 

Your accomplishment of following this program for 6 days was granted by God! (This does not mean we should sit around and wait on change, because you love God with action.)

• Self-absorption

The second trap you may fall into is very similar to the first but still requires a second section. Do not view your sanctification as only your ability to love God through not doing the things He hates… again I know that sounds similar to the above section. 

You must also come to realize that Jesus did not only refuse sins but also dedicated His life to loving others. 

Loving God should lead us to love others above ourselves. 

I would like to type more on this, but God’s word is simply better than anything I could say:

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4)

Sanctification is the process of looking more like Jesus and Jesus loved people so well and so actively.

I think a fitting challenge after all of this reflection would be to do this:

Look for somebody to love today. 

Maybe somebody needs a meal. Maybe somebody needs a friend to hang out with today because they have no one. Maybe they just need to hear a kind and encouraging word today. 

It really doesn’t take much to make somebody’s day. 

Pray and ask God what you can do.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Have you found yourself in one of these traps? Am I understanding Philippians 2 correctly? I would like to read your comments below if you have the time to type them.