"With Fear and Trembling"

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Anyone who has had experience of church life will understand why the Apostle Paul spends so much space in his letters urging Christians to get along with each other. Paul had frequent problems with human relations in his churches, even in his especially beloved Philippian congregation. The vast majority of the congregation loved and supported him, but that very fact aroused a few, maybe only one or two, to a discontent and hostility that I can only attribute to envy. So in our passage for today, Paul pleads with the Philippians to behave as Christians, and quotes at length one of the hymns they were accustomed to sing, to support this appeal. (I might say here that I am eagerly looking forward to Joseph Hansen’s ministry here because I know it will greatly enhance our hymnody and hymns have been central to the proclamation of the faith from the time of the NT).

The hymn is the wonderful and well-known paean of praise to the humility of God in becoming incarnate as Jesus Christ. According to the hymn, which occurs in verses 6-11, not only did God become human but He also allowed himself to be humiliated to death. He “…emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (2:7-8). This passage is central to the Christian understanding of God expressed as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, according to which each person of the Trinity empties himself to make room for the other, and in this way constitutes one being in three persons. In Greek the word for “emptying” is “kenosis” and so the divine move into humanness is called “the kenosis of God in Christ.” This movement into humanness is merely one instance of the constant self-emptying among the persons of the Godhead. In the case of the incarnation God empties Himself, not of course of His divinity, but of His power as our creator to force us to obey Him. Instead of using violence to force us, or sending yet more laws and commands to threaten and cajole us to “shape up or else,” God comes alongside of us at every level of our misery and need, to succor and transform. He goes all the way to hell to meet us there, so that we no longer need to fight the losing battle to ascend to heaven.

I wonder what the details were of the hassles that embroiled the Philippian congregation, whether they have changed over the centuries or remain the same old human thing. I suspect the latter. Could they have been blaming each other as we often do for not living up to each other’s expectations. How often have I caught myself expecting the other to live according to my expectations, and assuming that the way he leads his life is deficient, that is, not trusting him to work out his own salvation. “He cannot be a good Christian because he does not conduct his life in the way that I think he should.” (Surely one of the most repulsive of our “Christian” behaviors is this minding of other people’s business). There is a hint in the text that this might be the problem: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves (2:3).” Selfishness is precisely the determination to have it my way and conceit is the idea that I know best. To this Paul answers that we should count others better than ourselves. What else might this mean than that we should assume that the other knows better than we do how to conduct his own Christian life?

Then Paul introduces this great hymn to the divine humility. It is remarkable that he does not introduce it to teach us the doctrine of the Trinity but to show us how to behave. It is assumed that we know the nature of God but need to be encouraged to live according to what we know of God.  In the introduction to the hymn he makes clear that he intends it as a moral example. “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive in love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…(2:1-5).” In this context the “interests of others” are primarily that they be allowed to work out their own salvation and not be badgered into conformity with my idea of what that salvation should be.

We shall return to the hymn later. At this point I want to focus on our text and especially the Apostle’s instruction to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Several times Paul states emphatically that we are not answerable to one another but only to Christ. We have recently meditated at length on the ethical sections of Romans where that point is central (cf. “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls ” – Romans 14:4). It is in this spirit that Paul instructs us to work out our own, not somebody else’s, salvation; but he warns that this is dangerous, something to be done with “fear and trembling.” This fear is the healthy fear that comes with huge responsibility; when our salvation is at stake fear and trembling are appropriate in case we mess it up and finally lose the eternal presence of Christ.

I think, however, that the main emphasis here is on the individual and personal responsibility for one’s salvation. “Work out your own salvation,” Paul says, “not only in my presence, but much more in my absence…” “In my absence,” says the Apostle. Why?  Well his style of ministry as an apostle meant that he was often absent, because his service was to the whole church and the whole world. Why should he emphasize this? Could it be that some were blaming him for not being present enough with the congregation? “You are responsible for your own relationship with Christ,” he says, “if you neglect that personal effort the presence of the Apostle will not do you much good. No one, not even an apostle, can do for you what you have to do for yourself.”

The paradox of this approach is that it says we have to have an individual faith in order to share a common faith. Paul argues that only when we have a living individual faith can we share a living communal faith. Work out your individual salvation that you may be  “...of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (2:2). We all know what we call “needy people” who depend too much on the group or on other people. Churches seem to attract them. They make unreasonable demands of the clergy and try to blackmail them into giving them attention. They give off accusatory vibes and are often heard to whine. By Paul’s analysis they are those who have little spiritual substance in themselves because they are not at work on their own salvation but try to suck spiritual energy from others. So the first paradox in our passage is that we must be robust individuals in faith in order to draw the greatest benefits from the shared faith of the group.

The second paradox – and now we return to the hymn - is that God achieves His glorious saving success by emptying himself and accepting abject humiliation. Succeed by failing! By accepting humiliation unto death, God exalted Himself above every other power in the human world, winning a “name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2:9-10). For God the way to success in the human world leads through humiliation. Is it the same for us? Is God showing us a new way to peace and reconciliation, a truer strategy for co-existence, in this hymn to the kenosis? Paul seems to think so. He recommends to the tempestuous Philippians something he calls “the mind of Christ” and the content of this mind is the act of putting aside one’s power and submitting to insults, expulsion and death.

At this point I remember how wonderful a thing it is not to be God, because I cannot do what God has done, I do not have the humility for that. I have to bear slander and humiliation as part of this job but I do not do it well. So I am glad that in an important sense I do not have to earn my salvation, merely, “work it out,” and that means, position myself at the points where the divine grace is most likely and most effectively to play upon me and teach me the beginning of the kenotic way of self-emptying, of making room for God and for the other in my heart.