Additional Notes §11
§11 Encouragement to Fidelity (Phil. 2:12–13)
After the Christ hymn, and reinforced by its contents, the apostolic exhortation is resumed.
2:12 / Christ’s obedience has been stressed; his obedience should be an example to his people. Paul has no misgivings about the Philippian Christians’ obedience: unlike the Corinthians in the situation reflected in 2 Corinthians 10:6, they had always shown obedience, not so much to Paul as to the Lord whose apostle he was. If it is felt to be strange that obedience should be mentioned at all in a letter from a friend to dear friends, it must be remembered that Paul was not only the Philippians’ friend; he was to them the apostle of Jesus Christ. He does not in this letter assert his apostolic authority, as he does in some others (cf. 1 Cor. 9:1, 2; 2 Cor. 3:1–3); it was not challenged at Philippi. Yet the note of apostolic authority is evident throughout the letter.
His plea to them, then, is this: continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, not only when in my presence, but now much more in my absence. Their obedience involved the continual translating into action the principles of the gospel that they had believed. The gospel brought them salvation—their own salvation, as Paul calls it emphatically, because it is God’s free gift to them. But it needs to be worked out in practical life in view of the approaching “Day of Christ,” which will complete their salvation (in this sense Paul says in Romans 13:11 that the salvation of Christians “is nearer now than when we first believed”). In this context Paul is not urging each member of the church to keep working at his or her personal salvation; he is thinking of the health and well-being of the church as a whole. Each of them, and all of them together, must pay attention to this.
The seriousness with which they should treat this matter is shown by the phrase with fear and trembling. Certainly the attitude here recommended has nothing to do with slavish terror: as Paul assures the Christians in Rome, “you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear” (Rom. 8:15). It is rather an attitude of due reverence and awe in the presence of God, a sensitivity to his will, an awareness of responsibility in view of the account to be rendered before the tribunal of Christ. In their community life they must recognize that God is present. Pagans who entered Christian meetings became quickly conscious of this. “God is really among you!” (1 Cor. 14:25). All the more certainly should Christians be conscious of it.
2:13 / While Paul was alive, and especially when he was free to visit them, he made their “salvation” his concern. But Paul would not always be around. This did not mean, however, that when he was permanently absent they would be left to their own resources. It is God, he tells them, who works in you—not only in you individually but among you collectively. By his indwelling Spirit he works in them to will and to act—both the desire to act according to his good purpose and the power to carry it out. This is part of Paul’s teaching about the Holy Spirit, even if the Spirit is not explicitly mentioned here. As he emphasizes elsewhere, the Spirit does what the law could not: the law could tell people what to do without supplying the power, or even the will, to do it; the Spirit supplies both (Rom. 8:3, 4; 2 Cor. 3:4–6). When the Spirit takes the initiative in imparting to believers the desire and the power to do the will of God, then that desire and power become theirs by his gift, and they do his will “from your heart” (Eph. 6:6).
2:12 / The apostle, like the shālîaḥ among the Jews, was a duly accredited messenger; so long as he kept within the terms of his commission, he exercised the authority of the person who sent him: “a man’s shālîaḥ is as himself” (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berakot 34b). See C. K. Barrett, “Shaliah and Apostle,” in E. Bammel, C. K. Barrett, and W. D. Davies, eds., Donum Gentilicium, pp. 88–102.
In my presence … in my absence. In the Greek text these phrases are construed with continue to work out, as is shown by the preceding negative mē, the negative proper to the imperative katergazesthe, not to the indicative hypēkousate (you … obeyed): continue to work out not only as in my presence (parousia, as in 1:26) but now much more in my absence (apousia, here only in NT). The particle “as” (hōs) preceding in my presence is omitted in B and a few other witnesses; it “lays stress on the sentiment or motive of the agent” (J. B. Lightfoot, ad loc.)—“as though my presence prompted you.” F. W. Beare (ad loc.) thinks that, in the setting, the contrast of “presence” and “absence” means “during my life” and “after my death”; this implication is included in Paul’s wording, but the sense of the wording need not be restricted to this.
Your salvation: Gk. tēn heautōn sōtērian (“your own salvation”), the reflexive pronoun of the third person being extended to do duty for the second person. On the corporate sense of salvation here see J. H. Michael, “Work out your own Salvation,” Expositor, series 9, 12 (1924), pp. 439–50.
With fear and trembling: Gk. meta phobou kai tromou, a favorite doublet in Paul’s vocabulary, it seems, referring to different kinds of fear. In 1 Cor. 2:3 it is used for the misgivings with which Paul first came to Corinth, having been expelled from one Macedonian city after another; in 2 Cor. 7:15 it is used for the trepidation with which the Corinthian Christians greeted Paul’s envoy Titus, so soon after they had been taken to task in the apostle’s severe letter; in Eph. 6:5 it is used for the sense of reverence and duty toward Christ that should motivate Christian slaves to obey their pagan masters.
There is no support in the text or context for the view of W. Schmithals (Paul and the Gnostics, p. 98) that Paul is here warning his readers against the false security of those who believe that they have already attained perfection (see further on 3:12–14).
2:13 / Who works in you: Gk. energein (twice in this verse), a verb frequently used by Paul for the effectiveness of divine power (cf. the related noun energeia, “power,” in 3:21).
To act according to his good purpose: Gk. hyper tēs eudokias, “for the good pleasure.” It is not said expressly whose “good pleasure” is meant, but it is certainly God’s (since God is the subject of the clause). The noun eudokia has been used in 1:15 for the “genuine good will” with which some preach the gospel in Rome, but the sense here is rather different (despite those who think hyper tēs eudokias means “to promote good will”). Cf. Luke 2:14, where en anthrōpois eudokias means not “among men of good will” but “among human beings who are the objects of God’s good pleasure” (saving purpose; cf. NIV). (A similar Hebrew phrase, “sons of his/thy good pleasure” (benê reṣônô/reṣônekā), occurs in Qumran literature (1QH 4.32, 33; 11.9), referring “more naturally to the will of God to confer grace on those he has chosen, than to God’s delighting in and approving of the goodness in men’s lives” (E. Vogt, “ ‘Peace among Men of God’s Good Pleasure’ Lk. 2:14,” in The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. K. Stendahl, p. 117).