Work Out Your Salvation (Wednesday, Week 31, Year 2)

The Letter of St Paul to the Philippians has been described as a “Letter from a Friend to Friends” because of its warm and “very friendly” tone. There is no other letter amongst St Paul’s corpus of writings explicitly described as such. This may help us reflect a bit on friendship and then take into account that there is an understanding of friendship that we need to change for our growth: that notion of friendship that condones vices and paints and explains the truth away. We are used to regarding as “true friends” those who tell us what we want to hear, those who condone and don’t rebuke us for our excesses; those who say that we are doing well when it is very clear to us that we are not doing well; those who are not courageous enough to tell us the truth; and so on. These are categories of those we regard as true friends.

Writing to those he specially described as friends, St Paul never explained anything away: he told them nothing but the truth. In the letter to the Ephesians (2:8) and Romans (10:9) when he was trying to establish the supremacy of faith over works of law, he told his audience that they can be saved through their faith in Jesus. But he did not say that salvation will come through a passive kind of faith which is no faith. Faith must be active: it must be expressed in and by good works. From the time of Protestant Reformation up till now, many people still understand salvation by faith as “a mere or ordinary expression of belief” and that is all. At least, we know people like Martin Luther, the first person to break away from Christianity, who understood St Paul’s teaching as such. But then, St Paul in today’s portion of his letter to the Philippians (cf. Phil. 2:12-18), laid the truth very bare to them that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, corroborating St James’ teaching in James 2:14-17 that “faith, mere faith, without good works is dead and ineffective”.

In the Gospel reading (cf. Luke 14:25-33), Jesus turned to the multitude that has been following him, and told them nothing but the truth. In clear terms, he said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, brothers and sisters, and sisters, children, wife and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” These are bitter truths that should not be understood as they appear. By saying that we should hate our family members, friends and even our own life, Christ is saying that his own wishes and desires should come first before our own wishes or desires and those of our friends and family members. It is really difficult and may appear to be ridiculous to embrace such a philosophy of life. But that is one of the ways that we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

Salvation can only be earned by dints of hard work and faith, not just got by mere wishful thinking and belief that it would be ours without any efforts on our part to make it a reality. The effort we make to make salvation a reality in our lives must surely involve our coming into confrontation with values and individuals whose desires and attitudes are at variance with the goal we aim to achieve.