Many Christians think that once we’re saved – once we’re born again – the best thing we can do now is to live a life according to the Bible, be good people, help others get saved, and wait to go into heaven.
But the Bible clearly says that YES, we are saved once we believe into the Lord, but we also need to continue to “work out our own salvation” after we have been saved!
We have the “eternal salvation” – we will never perish, rather we will live and reign forever with God; BUT we need a daily salvation, a salvation that saves us in His life from anything of the fall, anything of ourselves, until we are being made just like Him!
This daily salvation results from taking the very Christ whom we live, experience, and enjoy as our inward as well as our outward pattern. Here is what Paul says in Phil. 2:12-13,
12. So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but now much rather in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
13. For it is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure.
Our salvation is a wonderful Person, the Lord Jesus Christ – not the historical distant Christ, but the personal present and practical Christ that we can experience, enter into, and become!
Just like Noah “worked out his own salvation” in the Old Testament, even though he walked with God – he worked on the ark and then entered into the ark, and this was his salvation! It is the same with us, today we need to work together with God on Christ, to gain Him, obtain Him, and eventually enter into Him!
In this way we are being saved from this crooked and perverted generation, and we are built up as God’s testimony on the earth! Yes, we are eternally saved and we will never lose our salvation; but still, every day, we need to work on Christ!
We need to build the ark – build up Christ as our salvation every day! God’s salvation is not that simple – it comprises everything God is and He has in store for us. It has a long span and it covers not only our life but also eternity! Today we are in this “passage of salvation”, working out our own salvation with fear and trembling, by our constant and absolute obedience to the Lord in His Word.
May we really see this and daily cooperate with God to work out our own salvation – build up Christ! The very Christ we are building today will become our future salvation in which we will enter! One day under God’s sovereignity you will enter into the very Christ whom you have built up!
The more we enjoy the Lord daily by spending time with the Lord in His Word, the more we exercise our spirit both personally and together with the saints, the more we are in the practices of life to breathe God in, the more we are working out our own salvation – and Christ is built up in our experience!
This Christ is a corporate Christ, so it’s not just about ourselves – it is in the Body of Christ! This Christ is being built into us, and we are being built into Him; Christ becomes built in our experience. This is our salvation, and for this we need to cooperate with God to work on daily!
[enjoyment from, The Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity, by Witness Lee]
Lord, today WE NEED SAVED! We just want to cooperate with You, Lord! Thank You for working in us both the willing and the working. Lord, may we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling! May Christ be built in our experience, until He becomes the ark in which we enter to be fully saved! Thank You Lord for the privilege of working together with You to build up the ark!
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