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Working it out


This post was published on Tuesday 30 July 2024.

Alec Motyer puts it succinctly in his comments on Philippians 2.12-13:

.. we become in experience what we are by grace, unremittingly living the life of obedience to which the saved are called.

Alec Motyer, Philippians (BST), 133

It is hard to maintain the right theological balance between the indicative (describing what is the case) and the imperative (commading what should be). This is especially true in the area of salvation, seen in the Paul vs James / faith vs works debates; are we saved only by what Jesus has done, or do we need to add our own works to his?

Reformed theology insists that salvation is entirely and only the work of God. He alone has done what we could never do, and offers new life as a gift. This robust insistence (along with the pithy Latin phrase sola gratia) has led to the charge of antinomianism, effectively that it means we can do what we like because of grace. Ironically this is what people accused Paul of as well (Romans 6.1) – to which he replied with his famous, ‘By no means!’ (Romans 6.2) – so there is more going on here.

This is what Motyer captures so well with the phrase highlighted in bold: ‘we become in experience what we are by grace’. I find the addition of ‘experience’ and ‘grace’ much more helpful than the shortened ‘become what you are’ that was thrown around so often when I was training.

With the Reformation sola gratia we must insist that salvation is a work of God’s grace alone, that we can neither do nor add anything to our salvation, which is fully and entirely the gift of God from beginning to end.

But we must also insist on Paul’s ‘by no means’, and remember that God’s gift comes with a call – a command – to obedience. The gift of salvation is new creation, bringing a new identity (adopted as a child of God) and way of life (living as a child of God). Along with the salvation won through Christ, our loving Father sends his Spirit to mark and seal that salvation in us, to enable us to live out that new life in obedience.

This is how we live as the people God made us to be – and this is how ‘we become in experience what we are by grace.’ Thank you Alec Motyer for such a rich description of the life to which God’s children are called.