Ready for a challenge to begin your week? How about this reminder?
Your words make an incredible impact on those around you.
Your Words Are Connected to Your Salvation
Again this week we turn to the Apostle Paul for weekly guidance. He writes:
12 Therefore, my beloved, 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; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. 14 Do all things without complaining and disputing, 15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. (Philippians 2:12-16)
Do not miss the connection Paul makes here. He challenges each of us to work out our own salvation – as we discussed last week – which means to live consistent with being saved. He immediately then makes a general application and a very specific one related to our words and attitude.
Generally ~ Do Everything
His initial statement covers everything. He uses a command and says “Do all things” or “Do everything.”
What does this mean? It simply says that we are to live consistent with our salvation in everything we do. No area of life goes uncovered in this command. Regardless of where you are, what you are doing, what is happening, has happened, or what you believe will happen, you and I are responsible for this command (cf., 1 Cor 10:31). This command covers all of life.
Everything.
Specifically ~ Without Complaining or Arguing
Here is where your words are connected with your salvation.
He specifically makes application to our words when he says “without complaining or arguing.”
As followers of God who are seeking to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, it should be most notable in the fact that Christians do not complain and argue together. He pushes us further when he writes, our words should be blameless, pure, and without fault. He is saying that as we speak, we should together speak in ways that reflect true change at our heart level.
What Is the Result?
The result? You become a bright light to those around you who live in a perverse and crooked generation.
For those around us who do not have a relationship with God, we become bright lights, great testimonies, and gospel-bright.
The way we do this best is to saturate ourselves with the Word of God and live in light of it as those who love Jesus and have Him as our example. We work out our salvation with respect and awe of God in Christ through the power of the Spirit as guided by the Word of God.
Now that’s a great challenge this week for each one of us in a politically-charged, pandemically-challenged world.