HAVE
YOU EVER NOTICED THAT WE HUMANS often tend to be creatures of extremes? One
example of this in biblical matters is the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit. Another example, of course, is the
doctrine of election and its many related topics. One
extreme is Arminianism (if not Semi-Pelagianism or even
full-blown Pelagianism), which all see man’s will as
either unfallen, or at least not
totally marred, by the fall
and therefore cooperating with God in salvation. The
other extreme is the equally unbiblical Hyper-Calvinism,
which insists that the process is so much “of God” that
Christians shouldn’t even
evangelize.
This month’s
TOTT addresses still another example and the
Scripture texts used to support each. The two extremes
are Quietism and Pietism. The debate is
actually an old one, dating back centuries. How exactly
do we live the Christian life? Is it by God’s power or
our effort? Is it by passive trust in God
or by active obedience to God? Or is it rather a combination of both?
Let’s first look at each of these and then try to find
the balance in Scripture.
Quietism
The most
famous axiom in Quietism, one that sums it up nicely,
is, “Let go and let God.” Another is, “I can’t; God
can.” Also dubbed the “deeper life,” or “higher life,”
movement, Quietism teaches that Christian living is
simply a passive submission to God, who will live life
totally for us. Popularized by the old Quakers, other
advocates included the Keswicks and the extremely
troubling Charles Finney. The most famous teacher of all
was Quaker Hannah Whitall Smith, whose book, The
Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, has become one of the main treatises on this
teaching. In it she writes:
To state it in
brief, I would just say that man’s part is to trust and
God’s part is to work. . . . Plainly the believer can do
nothing but trust; while the Lord, in whom he trusts,
actually does the work intrusted to Him. . . . We do not do
anything, but He does it. . . . clay is put into the
potter’s hands, and then lies passive there, submitting
itself to all the turnings and overturnings of the
potter’s hands upon it. There is really nothing else to
be said about the clay’s part. . . . What can be said
about man’s part in this great work but that he must
continually surrender himself and continually trust? But
when we come to God’s side of the question, what is
there that may not be said as to the manifold and
wonderful ways in which He accomplishes the work
intrusted to Him? It is here that the growing comes in.
The lump of clay would never grow into a beautiful
vessel if it stayed in the clay-pit for thousands of
years. But once put into the hands of a skilful potter,
and, under his fashioning, it grows rapidly into a
vessel to his honor. And so the soul, abandoned to the
working of the Heavenly Potter, is changed rapidly from
glory to glory into the image of the Lord by His
Spirit.[i]
Now, while God is
indeed the Potter and we are the clay (Rom.
9:21)—although that image actually refers specifically
to election, not sanctification—and while Galatians
2:20—another favorite verse of the quietist—declares
“yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,” Quietism takes it
to the extreme. It maintains that the Christian is to
put forth no effort whatsoever in holy living, that God
does it all. For the quietist, in fact, it is futile and
even unspiritual to fight against sin or discipline
oneself to produce good works because it “gets in God’s
way.”
As is true of
Smith’s book, a simple Internet “Google” search on “let
go and let God” (with the quotation marks) exposes a
serious deficiency of this teaching. A random reading of
a few dozen of the 159,000 hits I received, for example,
quickly demonstrated that such teaching is based mostly
on anecdotes and feelings. One finds a lot of personal
experience, poetry, and just downright mysticism, but
Scripture exposition is virtually nonexistent.
The simple
fact is that the Christian life is not solely
about “letting go and letting God.” It is not a life in
which only God is working. Paul wrote, for
example, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the
high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). Paul
had not put himself in neutral and was not casually
living the Christian life. Rather he was “pressing”
toward the heavenly goal. While the Christian life is
certainly a life a of dependency, it is not a
life of passivity.
“Press” is
dioko, to chase, to pursue eagerly, to try to
obtain. It’s also in the present tense, showing
continuous action. The Greeks used this word to speak of
a hunter earnestly pursuing his prey, an attacker
pursing the enemy, and an athlete endeavoring to reach
the finish line. Using the same word, Paul also wrote
that we are to “fight the good fight of faith” and
“follow [dioko] after
righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience,
meekness” (1 Tim. 6:11–12). All this obviously indicates
significant effort.
Even more
graphically, in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27 Paul pictures the
Christian life by comparing it with the Isthmian games,
which were actually held in Corinth, so his readers
immediately understood what he was saying. Contestants
in the games had to prove rigorous training for ten
months and spent the last month of training in Corinth
itself, where they underwent supervised workouts in the
gymnasium and athletic fields every
day.
The
Christian, therefore, is not a spectator at “the
games,” but rather a participant. He isn’t to sit on the sidelines eating popcorn
watching the Holy Spirit do all the work. The Christian
life is a life of commitment, discipline, and struggle.
We’re in a no holds barred war. That is why Paul wrote
that the Christian is to put on the spiritual armor of
God to prepare for battle (Eph. 6:12–20; cf. 1 Tim.
6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7). No general fights the war by himself
for his men; he leads and guides them as they fight. So,
while Queitism flows from the purest of motives, it is
not based upon sound biblical exposition and “comparing
Scripture with Scripture.”[ii]
Pietism
Like the other
side of a coin, Pietism could not be more opposite to
Quietism. Pietism is a life of all out effort, giving
100 percent exertion during every waking moment. It is
the life of self-discipline, strict obedience, study,
and service. The key to the pietist is found in verses
such as, “Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness
of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear
of God” (2 Cor. 7:1), and, “Even so faith, if it hath
not works, is dead, being alone” (Jas.
2:17).
Reacting
against the dead orthodoxy of many Protestant churches,
Pietism arose in Germany late in the 17th
Century. Credited as the “Father of Pietism,” Philipp
Jakob Spener (1635–1705) became convinced (and rightly
so) of the need for moral and religious reform within
German Lutheranism and so wrote Pia desideria
(Pious Wishes) in 1675.
Various strains of Pietism developed over the years in
other countries, and the movement dramatically effected
several groups, such as the Mennonites, as well as John
Wesley and therefore Methodism and the Holiness
movement.
Like Quietism,
Pietism has several praiseworthy aspects, but its
inherent danger is the extreme that it usually goes to,
namely, legalism. What frequently occurs is that certain
practices are arbitrarily chosen as being unholy.
Historically, for example, pietists dogmatically
declared that card playing, the theater, “worldly”
literature, certain kinds of dress, and other practices
were unholy. Such teaching still exists today among some
groups. The Amish took this so far, of course, that
electricity, automobiles, and other modern conveniences
and dress are “not plain” and therefore forbidden.
Now, we do
not criticize the motives here. On the contrary. To be a
Christian clearly implies and demands a changed
life—each of us is a “new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17). But
to create our own list of things that are either
spiritual or unspiritual, when Scripture simply does not
address those things, is a form of legalism. Sadly,
byproducts of Pietism are self-righteousness, pride,
inconsistency, and even hypocrisy. All this results
because spiritual living is divorced from
spiritual power, self-effort replaces Spirit
control, and personal preference trumps divine
precept.
Finding the
Balance
Warren Wiersbe
offers this practical illustration of these “competing”
views:
What quarterback
would say to his team, “OK, men, just let go and let the
coach do it all!” On the other hand, no quarterback
would say, “Listen to me and forget what the coach
says!” Both extremes are wrong.[iii]
It is in our
text, therefore, that we discover Paul’s answer to this
dilemma: Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always
obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in
my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to
will and to do of his good
pleasure.
At first
reading, that doesn’t look like a resolution to the
problem at all. In fact, it strikes us as a staggering
contradiction! Paul first commands that we are to
work and then says that is God doing the work. First he’s a pietist and then a
quietist! How does that help the issue? That is
precisely why these verses have often been a
battleground.
Significantly,
however, note that Paul does not go on and try to
rationally harmonize the two extremes. Why? Because no
one can. He simply states that both are true. Let’s
examine the wonderful paradox of this verse, which is,
as Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it, “one of the most perfect
summaries of the Christian life to be found
anywhere,”[iv] and then see how
they work together.
Recognizing
Our Effort
Our effort
in Christian living is stated in the words work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling. As most commentators point out, the first
thing to note here is that the verse does not say to work for
salvation, but to work out
salvation. Salvation does not come by works, rather
works (obedience) are the evidence of
salvation.
Work out
translates a single Greek word,
katergazomai, to work out,
accomplish, or carry out a task until it is finished.
Greek authority Kenneth Wuest well
illustrates:
We say, “The
student worked out a problem in arithmetic.” That is, he
carried the problem to its ultimate conclusion. This is
the way it is used here. The Philippians are exhorted to
carry their salvation to its ultimate conclusion,
namely, Christlikeness.[v]
Intensifying
this basic idea is the fact that the verb is in the
present tense, indicating continuous action, and the
imperative mood, indicating a command. We could
therefore expand the translation to read “continually
keep on carrying out the task of completing your
salvation until it’s finished.” Again, this is not
working for but working out salvation. It is a command to diligent effort in
obedient living that results from conversion and God’s
empowering as He works in us, which, as we will see in
our next section, is the very point Paul goes on to add
in verse 13.
Paul elsewhere
repeatedly makes the point of our effort in Christian
living. In addition to the verses cited earlier, he
wrote to the Corinthians, “Let us cleanse ourselves from
all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). He commanded
the Ephesians to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith
ye are called” (Eph. 4:1) and goes on to list the
attributes of such a calling (vs. 2–3). For the
Colossians he even provided a list of negative traits to
avoid and positive ones to cultivate as they labored
(Col. 3:5–17).
What does
Paul then mean when he adds that this labor is with
fear and trembling? While the “let
go and let God” mentality would have us sit back, kick
off our shoes, and forget about our cares, Paul says
something quite the contrary. Puritan
Charles Bridges perfectly defines the “fear of the Lord”
when he writes: “It is that
affectionate reverence by which the child of God bends
himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law. His
wrath is so bitter, and His love so sweet; that hence
springs an earnest desire to please Him, and—because of
the danger of coming short from his own weakness and
temptations—a holy watchfulness and fear,
‘that he might not sin
against Him.’”[vi]
The
phrase fear and trembling appears,
for example in Ephesians 6:5, describing how the slave
(or employee) is to obey his master. This attitude is
not cowering in fear, but rather a respect for another’s
position and authority. Deeper, however, is the thought
of our fear of neglecting our responsibility and in so
doing disobeying the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 2:3, Paul
writes that he came to the Corinthians in fear and
trembling. This was a fear of failing both the
Corinthians and the Lord. Likewise, then, to work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling means we
labor with the attitude that we do not want to fail our
Lord.
Realizing
God’s Empowering
So, does all the
labor Paul speaks of flow from self-effort? Do we in our
own strength and will power just grit our teeth and
“keep on keepin’ on”? No, for Paul goes on to add, For
it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of
his good pleasure.
Worketh is
the Greek, energeo
(English “energy” and
“energize”) and means “to be at work, to effect
something.” It’s extremely significant, as one Greek
authority tells us, that the noun
energeia, “energy, active
power, operation”) “in the [Septuagint] (as in the NT)
is used almost exclusively for the work of divine or
demonic powers.”[vii] In
Ephesians 1:19, for example, it’s God’s power that is
“working” (energeia) in us, while in 2:2, Satan
is said to be working (energeo).
Another
authority agrees, adding that this usage is predominant
in the entire word group: “Only in Philippians 2:13 does
the active energein [present active participle of
energeo] refer to human
activity,”[viii] but we note
that even then it’s still God Who is working. So why is it that we can work,
why is it that we have the strength to labor and be
victorious? Because God first is at work. Let us briefly
note four principles.
First, the Person of the work again
is God, not us. “The divine activity is literally an
in-working (ho energon),” writes pastor and commentator Robert
Gromacki. “The literal translation of this participle is
‘the one who enrgizes.’ God’s inner work deals with
character, and man’s outer work manifests his
conduct.”[ix]
Second, the place of the work is found in
the words in you. God is at work in every aspect of our
being. Third, the purpose of all this work
is both to will and do what He purposes. Here is God’s
sovereignty in action. Fourth, the point
of this work, the ultimate reason for it all, is God’s
good pleasure. As Paul declares in
Ephesians 1, everything—election, predestination, redemption, sealing,
and all else—is “to the praise of the glory of His
grace.”
Reconciling
the Enigma
While these
two truths might be viewed as
rationally contradictory, they are
spiritually complementary. As
Kenneth Wuest well puts it: “In verse twelve, we have
human responsibility, in verse thirteen, divine
enablement, a perfect balance which must be kept if the
Christian life is to be lived at its best. It is not a
‘let go and let God’ affair. It is a ‘take hold with
God’ business.”
To put it
another way, this is not a passive deference
rather a positive dependence.
It is a mutual cooperation of Holy Spirit power enabling
the Christian to labor victoriously. I am always blessed
when I read Lehman Strauss. He offers an illustration
here that wonderfully pictures how these two principles
complement each other:
When I visited the
West Indies in 1956, I witnessed American aluminum
manufactures removing millions of tons of bauxite from
the hills of Jamaica. The rich ore was already there.
God had worked it in by some catastrophic movement of
nature or through some aging process. Man had only to
operate and exploit in order to get the greatest worth
out of that which already was his possession. As I
watched I observed the process to be anything but simple
and easy. It was a costly project. But be certain, the
effort was sure to pay off in large dividends. Such, it
seems to me, is the idea in the Holy Spirit’s words,
“work our your own salvation.” It is my possession by
gift of divine grace, but as Guy H. King has said: “I am
to mine what is already mine,” endeavoring to work out
that precious nugget of humility.[x]
Neither is
our text an isolated one. Paul wrote to the troubled
Corinthian church: “But by the grace of God I am what I
am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in
vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet
not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor.
15:10). He likewise wrote the Colossian believers:
“Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his
working, which worketh in me mightily” (Col. 1:29). Even
in Galatians 2:20, he makes it clear that it is
both, “I live . . . yet not I.” In all these
instances, believers are striving while God is
strengthening.
In closing, Martyn
Lloyd-Jones well sums up this issue when he
writes:
. . . desires for
a fuller and better and more perfect Christian life are
not self-generated or self-produced. When you have a
desire to do something good, or a desire to pray, it is
God who energizes it in your will, God working in us
both to will and to do. He is the energy and power also
in our breathing, in our ability to live this life. . .
. The initiative is His from beginning to end. It is God
who began [it], it is He who keeps it going, and it is
He who is making it perfect.
And yet you and I
are told to work it out, we are told to do something. Is
this a contradiction? I suggest that it is not and we
can put it like this. God carries on this work within us
by placing these desires and powers in us. In other
words, God is perfecting us, He is bringing His great
purpose to pass in our Christian life, not by action
upon us in a passive state or condition, but by
controlling our will, our desires, our thoughts and
aspiration, and everything. It is God who starts and He
makes us do it. I do not say that God forces our will.
Rather, God does something more gracious: He persuades
our will, and gives us holy desires, so that we will
those things, and our desire and ambition is to work it
out because it is “God which worketh in
us.”[xi]
Amen!
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
