Philippians 2:12-13
Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Love always includes an invitation – an invitation to be loved, to allow oneself actually to receive another’s love. That may sound strange, but keep in mind that love is never forced but instead is always given, offered as a gift that the recipient may choose to accept or not.
Which is, of course, what makes love vulnerable. We offer love with no guarantees. It can be no other way. Not for us, not for Paul, not for the Philippians, not even for God.
But when you allow yourself to be loved, when, that is, you accept the invitation, you also become vulnerable, entering into a relationship, allowing yourself to be seen. Will the person who has offered love renew or rescind that love once we allow ourselves to be seen. No matter how eagerly we may want to sink into that love, we may also worry that it will not always be there. So both lover and beloved are vulnerable.
But that’s only half the story. If vulnerability is the first half of the story of love, transformation is the second. Love does something to us, conveys worth, dignity and honor. Love transforms. And love empowers.
And this is what Paul moves to at this point in his long-distance conversation and love letter with the Philippians. He invites them to accept the invitation God makes in Jesus – the one who gives up divine status in order to be joined to them and us in human form – and to allow themselves not only to be loved but also to be transformed, to be changed, to be empowered. Paul asks, that is, that they work out their salvation – that is, live into and actualize this new relationship of love with God – with fear and trembling.
Fear and trembling. That may seem an unusual phrase to connect with the salvation granted through God’s love. But two dimensions of its meaning may help us appreciate Paul’s import. First, Paul invites the Philippians to the kind of awe and wonder that is appropriate to being loved at any time, but particularly when loved by the Creator of the cosmos. Second, though, it’s not just awe and wonder, in that precisely because it is God who is loving us, God who is inviting us, we may wonder and even worry that we are hardly up to becoming the people God calls us to be. And so we work out – that is, claim, live into, make our own, and actualize – God’s gift of salvation and new relationship with a certain fear and trembling.
But once Paul admits the scale of the adventure God invites us to, he also reminds us that precisely because it is God who is at work in us, we can have confidence and be renewed in our efforts to allow ourselves to be loved, changed, transformed, and equipped to love others, to dare great things, and to work for all that is good.
So this is invitation…and it is promise. The promise that the God who loved us from the first will bring us and all things to a good end. Cause for awe and wonder indeed!
Prayer: Dear God, help us work out and live into our salvation by your grace and your love, that we may love others and commit ourselves to all that is good. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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