Homily 8 — Philippians 2, verses 12 to 18

“So then, my beloved, just as you 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 who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling and disputing, so that you may be blameless and harmless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life, so that I may have something to boast of in the day of Christ.” [a]

The warnings we give ought to come together with words of praise. That way they are even welcome, when we point the people we are warning to the level of zeal they have already shown themselves. That is what Paul did here. And notice how wisely he goes about it. “So then, my beloved,” he says. He did not simply say, “Obey” — not until he had first praised them with the words, “just as you have always obeyed.” That is to say: “It is not other people, but your own selves, that I tell you to take as your example.” “Not as in my presence only, but much more in my absence.” And why “much more in my absence”? “At that time you may perhaps have seemed to be doing everything out of respect for me, from a sense of shame. But that is no longer so. So if you now show plainly that you are striving more earnestly, it also becomes plain that even then it was not done out of regard for me, but for God’s sake.” Tell me, then, what do you want? “Not that you pay attention to me, but that you ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.’”

For no one who lives without fear can set any lofty or commanding example. And he did not say only “with fear,” but “and with trembling,” which is fear in its highest degree. Paul had fear like that, and that is why he said he was afraid “that after preaching to others, I myself should be rejected” (First Corinthians 9, verse 27). For if the things of this life can never be achieved without the help of fear, how much less the things of the Spirit! I would like to know: who ever learned his letters without fear? Who has become skilled in any craft without fear? But if, where the devil does not stand in the way and laziness is the only obstacle, this much fear is needed simply to master the laziness that comes naturally to us, then where there is so fierce a war and such great obstacles, how can we possibly be saved without fear?

And how can this fear be produced? If we only consider that God is present everywhere, hears everything, sees everything — not only whatever is done and said, but also everything that is in the heart and in the depths of the soul, for he “discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4, verse 12) — if we set our minds this way, we will not do or say or imagine anything evil. Tell me: if you had to stand constantly beside a ruler, wouldn’t you stand there with fear? Then how is it that you stand in God’s presence and laugh and lounge back, and feel no fear or dread? Never look down on his patient endurance; it is to bring you to repentance that he is patient. [c]

Whenever you eat, consider that God is present — for he is present. Whenever you are getting ready for sleep, or giving way to passion, or robbing someone, or living in luxury, or whatever you are doing, consider it, and you will never fall into laughter, never be inflamed with rage. If this is your constant thought, you will constantly be in “fear and trembling,” since you are standing beside the King.

The master builder, experienced as he is, completely master of his craft, still stands with “fear and trembling,” so that he does not fall off the building. You too have believed; you have done many good deeds; you have climbed high. Make yourself secure. Be afraid as you stand there, and keep a watchful eye, so that you do not fall from that height. For there are many spiritual forces of wickedness that aim to throw you down (Ephesians 6, verse 12). “Serve the Lord with fear,” he says, “and rejoice in him with trembling” (Psalm 2, verse 11). And how does rejoicing go together with “trembling”? Yet you may be sure that this is the only rejoicing. For it is when we do some good work, and do it in the way that befits those who do things “with trembling,” that we rejoice, and only then.

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” He does not say “work,” but “work out” — that is, with great earnestness, with great diligence. But since he had said “with fear and trembling,” see how he relieves their anxiety. What does he say? “It is God who works in you.” “Do not be afraid because I said ‘with fear and trembling.’ I did not say it so that you would give up in despair, or suppose that virtue is something hard to attain, but so that you would be led to pursue it and not spend yourselves on empty pursuits. If that is how things stand, God will work everything. Take courage, ‘for it is God who works in you.’” If, then, he is working, our part is to bring a mind that is always resolute, gripped tight, and never slackening. “For it is God who works in you both to will and to work.”

“If he himself works even the willing in us, why do you urge us on? If he himself works even the will, then the words you speak to us, ‘you have obeyed,’ mean nothing, for we have not ‘obeyed.’ And it means nothing for you to say ‘with fear and trembling,’ for the whole thing comes from God.” “That is not why I said to you, ‘For it is he who works in you both to will and to work.’ My purpose was to relieve your anxiety. If you are willing, then he will ‘work in you to will.’ Do not be alarmed; you are not beaten. Both the eager desire and the accomplishment are his gift. For where we have the will, from then on he will increase our will.” For instance, I want to do some good work. He has worked the good work itself, and by means of it he has also worked the will. Or else he says this out of the fullness of his reverence for God, just as when he declares that our good deeds are gifts of grace.

So just as, when he calls them gifts, he does not put us outside the bounds of free will but leaves our free will to us, so when he says “to work in us to will,” he does not take our free will away. He shows that by actually doing what is right we greatly increase our eagerness to will it. For as doing comes from doing, so not doing comes from not doing. Have you given alms? You are spurred on all the more to give. Have you refused to give? You have become all the more unwilling. Have you practiced self-control for one day? You have a spur for the next day too. Have you indulged yourself to excess? You have increased your leaning toward self-indulgence. “When a wicked man comes into the depths of evil, then he grows scornful” (Proverbs 18, verse 3). So just as when a man comes into the depths of wrongdoing he turns scornful, so when he comes into the depths of goodness he quickens his efforts. For as the one runs wild in despair, so the other, aware of how many good things he has, exerts himself all the more, afraid that he may lose the whole. [d]

“For his good pleasure,” he says — that is, “out of love,” for the sake of pleasing him, so that what is acceptable to him may come about, so that things may happen according to his will. Here he shows, and makes it a ground for confidence, that God will surely work in us. For it is his will that we live as he desires we should; and if he desires it, he himself both works in us to that end and will certainly bring it to completion. For it is his will that we live rightly. Do you see how he does not take away our free will?

“Do all things without grumbling and disputing.” When the devil finds that he has no power to draw us away from doing right, he tries to spoil our reward by other means. He seizes the chance to slip in pride or empty glory; or if none of these, then grumbling; or if not this, misgivings. Now see how Paul sweeps all of them away. Everything he said on the subject of humility, he said to overthrow pride. He spoke of empty glory in the words “not as in my presence only.” Here he speaks of “grumbling and disputing.” [e]

But why, I would like to know, when he was rooting out this evil habit among the Corinthians, did he remind them of the Israelites, while here he says nothing of the kind, but simply gives the command? Because there the damage had already been done, and so a heavier blow and a sharper rebuke were needed. Here he is giving warnings to keep it from being done. Harsh measures were not called for to keep safe those who had not yet been guilty. In the same way, when he was leading them to humility, he did not add the example in the Gospel where the proud were punished, but laid down the command as though from God’s own lips (perhaps Luke 16, verse 23, or 18, verse 14). And he speaks to them as free people, as true-born children, not as slaves. For in the practice of virtue a right-minded and noble person is moved by those who do well, but a person of bad character by those who do not — the one by the thought of honor, the other by the thought of punishment.

That is why, writing to the Hebrews, he brought forward the example of Esau, “who for a single meal sold his own birthright” (Hebrews 12, verse 16), and again, “If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him” (Hebrews 10, verse 38). And among the Corinthians there were many who had been guilty of sexual immorality. So he said, “For fear that when I come again my God may humble me before you, and I may mourn over many who have sinned before and have not repented of the impurity and sexual immorality and sensuality that they practiced” (Second Corinthians 12, verse 21).

“So that you may be blameless,” he says, “and harmless” — that is, beyond reproach, unstained. For grumbling leaves no slight stain. And what does “without disputing” mean? “Is it good, or is it not good?” Do not dispute, he says, even if it brings trouble, or toil, or anything else whatever. He did not say, “so that you may not be punished,” though punishment is in store for this fault, and he made that plain in the letter to the Corinthians. But here he said nothing of the kind. Instead he says, “so that you may be blameless and harmless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life, so that I may have something to boast of in the day of Christ.”

Do you notice that he is training them not to grumble? So grumbling is left to unprincipled and ungrateful slaves. For tell me, what kind of son grumbles at the very time he is busy with his father’s affairs and working for his own good? Consider, he says, that you are laboring for yourself, that it is for yourself you are storing up. It is for those others to grumble, when someone else profits by their labors, when others reap the fruit while they carry the burden. But the one who is gathering for himself — why should he grumble? Because his wealth does not grow? But that is not so. Why does he grumble who acts by his own free choice and not under compulsion? It is better to do nothing than to do it with grumbling, for even the thing itself is spoiled.

And don’t you notice that in our own households we are always saying this: “It would be better for these things never to be done at all than to have them done with grumbling”? We would often rather go without the service someone owes us than put up with the annoyance of his grumbling. For grumbling is unbearable, utterly unbearable; it borders on blasphemy. Otherwise, why did those men have to pay so severe a penalty? It is a proof of ingratitude. The grumbler is ungrateful to God, and whoever is ungrateful to God thereby becomes a blasphemer. And in their time, if ever, there were unbroken hardships and dangers without end. There was no pause, no letup; countless horrors pressed on them from every side. But now we have deep peace, a perfect calm. Why, then, do you grumble?

Because you are poor? Then think of Job. Or because sickness is your lot? What if you had been struck down like that, while aware of as many virtues and as high attainments as that holy man had? Think of him again: how for a long time he never stopped breeding worms, sitting on a dung heap and scraping his sores. For the account says, “After a long time had passed, his wife said to him, ‘How long will you hold out, saying, “Just a little while longer I will wait in expectation”? Speak some word against the Lord, and die’” (Job 2, verse 9, in the Greek Old Testament).

But your child has died? What if you had lost all your children, and by a cruel fate, as he did? For you know, you know well, that it is no small comfort to sit beside the sick person, to close the mouth, to shut the eyes, to stroke the beard, to hear the last words. But that righteous man was granted none of these comforts; they were all overwhelmed at once. But what am I saying? What if you yourself had been told to kill your own son and offer him up, and to see the body burned, like that blessed patriarch? What would you have felt while you built the altar, laid on the wood, and bound the child?

But are there people who abuse you? Then what would you feel if your friends, who had come to comfort you, spoke to you as Job’s did? As things are, our sins are countless and we deserve to be reproached. But in his case, a man who was true, righteous, and godly, who kept himself from every evil deed, heard his friends charge him with the very opposite of what he was. Then tell me, what if you had heard your wife crying out in reproach: “I am a wanderer and a servant, roaming from place to place and from house to house, waiting for the sun to go down so that I may rest from the troubles that surround me” (Job 2, verse 9, in the Greek Old Testament)? Why do you talk like that, foolish woman? Is your husband to blame for these things? No — the devil is.

“Speak a word against God,” she says, “and die.” And if the stricken man had cursed and died, what would you have gained? You cannot name a disease worse than his, though you name ten thousand. It was so grievous that he could no longer stay in the house under a roof; so grievous that everyone gave him up. For if his case had not been hopeless, he would never have taken his seat outside the city, more pitiful than people with leprosy. They at least are let into houses, and they gather together in company. But he spent the night in the open air, naked on a dung heap, and could not even bear a garment on his body. Why not? Perhaps because it would only have added to his pains. For he says, “I melt the clods of the earth as I scrape off my sore” (Job 7, verse 5, in the Greek Old Testament). His flesh bred sores and worms in him, and that without stopping. [k]

Do you see how every one of us feels sick just hearing about these things? But if they are unbearable to hear, is the sight of them more bearable? And if the sight of them is unbearable, how much more unbearable to go through them! Yet that righteous man did go through them — not for two or three days, but for a long time — and he did not sin, not even with his lips. What disease can you describe to me like this one, so excruciating? Was not this worse than blindness? “I look on my food,” he says, “as a stinking mass” (Job 6, verse 7). And not only this: the very things that bring others rest, night and sleep, brought him no relief, but were worse than any torture. Listen to his words: “Why do you frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions? If it is morning, I say, ‘When will it be evening?’” (Job 7, verses 14 and 4). And he did not grumble.

And that was not all. Added to it was his reputation in the eyes of the world, for people at once concluded from everything he suffered that he was guilty of endless crimes. That is the very point his friends pressed on him: “Know, then, that God demands less of you than your wrongdoings deserve” (Job 11, verse 6). That is why he himself said, “But now those younger than I laugh at me, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock” (Job 30, verse 1). Was not this worse than many deaths?

Yet though a flood like this assailed him from every side, while a fearful storm raged around him — clouds, rain, lightning, whirlwinds, and waterspouts — he himself stayed unmoved, seated, so to speak, in the middle of that awful, overwhelming surge as though in a perfect calm, and not a word of grumbling escaped him. And this was before the gift of grace, before anything had been made known about a resurrection, before anything about hell and punishment and vengeance. Yet we, who hear prophets and apostles and evangelists speaking to us, who have countless examples set before us, and have been taught the message of a resurrection, still nurse our discontent — though no one can say that such a lot as his has ever fallen to him.

For if someone has lost money, he has not also lost that great number of sons and daughters; or if he has, perhaps it was because he had sinned. But Job lost them suddenly, in the middle of his sacrifices, in the middle of the service he was offering to God. And if anyone has lost as much property at one blow — which can never happen — still he has not had the further affliction of a sore all over his body; he has not scraped away the discharge that covered him. Or if this too has been his lot, still he has not had people upbraiding and reproaching him, which more than anything wounds the heart, more than the misfortunes we suffer. For if, when we have people to cheer and comfort us in our troubles and to hold out good hopes to us, we still lose heart, think what it was to have people upbraiding him. If the words “I looked for someone to pity me, but there was no one, and for comforters, but I found none” (Psalm 69, verse 20) describe unbearable misery, how much worse to find insulters instead of comforters! “Miserable comforters are you all” (Job 16, verse 2), he says.

If we only turned these things over constantly in our minds, if we weighed them well, no trouble of this present life could ever have the power to disturb our peace, once we turned our eyes to that athlete, that soul of diamond, that spirit as impenetrable as bronze. For as though he carried a body of bronze or stone, he met everything that happened with a noble and steady spirit.

Taking these things to heart, then, let us do everything “without grumbling and disputing.” Is it some good work that lies before you, and do you grumble? Why? Are you being forced? “For I know well,” he says, “that there are many around you who drive you to grumble.” He hinted at this by saying, “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.” But this is what deserves admiration: that we let no such feeling in, even under galling provocation. For the stars too give light at night; they shine in the dark and suffer no stain on their own beauty — no, they shine all the brighter. But when daylight returns, they no longer shine in the same way. So you too appear with greater brilliance when you keep straight in the middle of the crooked. This is what deserves our admiration: being “blameless.” So that they could not plead this excuse, he set it down himself in advance. [m]

What does “holding fast the word of life” mean? That is, “destined to live, being among those who are being saved.” Notice how at once he adds the rewards that are in store. Lights — that is, the heavenly lights — keep the source of light within them, he says; so you keep the source of life. What does “the word of life” mean? Having the seed of life, that is, having pledges of life, holding life itself — “having in yourselves the seed of life”: this is what he calls “the word of life.” It follows that all the rest are dead, for by these words he implied as much; otherwise those others too would have held “the word of life.”

“So that I may have something to boast of,” he says. What does this mean? I too share in your good deeds, he says. Your virtue is so great that it not only saves you, but makes me famous as well. What a strange kind of “boasting,” blessed Paul! You are flogged, driven from place to place, insulted for our sakes. That is why he adds, “in the day of Christ, that I did not run in vain, nor labor in vain.” He means: I always have the right to boast that I did not run in vain.

“Yes, and if I am poured out as an offering.” He did not say, “and even if I die.” Nor did he when writing to Timothy, for there too he used the same expression: “For I am already being poured out as an offering” (Second Timothy 4, verse 6). He is both comforting them about his own death and teaching them to bear gladly the death that is for Christ’s sake. I have become, he says, as it were a drink offering and a sacrifice. O blessed soul! He calls his bringing them to God a sacrifice. It is far better to offer a soul than to offer oxen. “If, then, on top of this offering,” he says, “I add myself, my death, as a drink offering, I rejoice.” That is what he means when he says, “Yes, and if I am poured out as an offering on the sacrifice and service, I am glad and rejoice with you all; and in the same way you too be glad and rejoice with me.” [n]

Why do you rejoice with them? Do you see that he shows it is their duty to rejoice? On the one hand, I rejoice at being made a drink offering; on the other, I rejoice with you at having presented a sacrifice. “And in the same way you too be glad and rejoice with me” — that I am being offered up. “Rejoice with me, who am rejoicing for myself.” So the death of the righteous is no cause for tears, but for joy. If they rejoice, we should rejoice with them. For it is out of place for us to weep while they rejoice.

But someone objects: “We miss the company we were used to.” This is a mere pretext and excuse. And to see that it is, notice what he commands: “Rejoice with me, and be glad.” Do you miss the company you were used to? If you yourself were going to stay here, there would be sense in what you say. But if in a short while you will overtake the one who has departed, what company is it that you are looking for? A person misses someone’s company only when he is cut off from him forever. But if he is going the same way that you will go, what company are you longing for? Why don’t we mourn for everyone who is traveling abroad? Or rather, don’t we mourn just a little, and stop after the first or second day? If you long for the company you were used to, weep that much and no more.

“It is no evil that I suffer,” he says; “I even rejoice at going to Christ — and do you not rejoice?” “Rejoice with me.” Let us rejoice too when we see a righteous man dying, and even more when one of the desperately wicked dies. For the first is going to receive the reward of his labors, and the other has cut away something from the tally of his sins.

But someone says: “Perhaps he would have changed, if he had lived.” Yet God would never have taken him away if there had really been any prospect of change. For why would he who arranges everything for our salvation not give the chance to one who showed promise of pleasing him? If he leaves here those who never change, how much more those who would!

So let the sharpness of our grief be cut away everywhere; let the voice of lamentation cease. Let us thank God in everything that happens. Let us do all things without grumbling; let us be cheerful, and let us become pleasing to him in all things, so that we may also attain the good things to come, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom, to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, power, and honor, now and always, and forever and ever. Amen.