“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”
Tagged: Christian
The passage
Paul urges the Philippians, as they have always obeyed, to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. The reason follows in the next breath: for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. The command and the comfort are one sentence apart.
Where it stands
Philippians 2:12 comes immediately after the letter's great Christ hymn, the pattern of the Son who humbled himself to the cross. The working out of salvation is the congregation's answer to that pattern.
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Aid to the Church in Need launched its report Persecuted and Forgotten? on October 27, 2026. It finds that persecution of Christians worsened in more than half the countries surveyed over two years, and improved in none.