Working Out Our Salvation In Carefulness

By: Yonas Lakew

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” -Matthew 7:21-23

Certainly, this will be a shocking statement to all who hear it, and yet it will not be without evidence to them.  Let’s take a closer look at the people’s response. In their statement, we see the great significance they had put on all the things they had done for the Lord. They emphasized that they had prophesied in His name, cast out demons in His Name, and done many mighty works in His name. They saw these deeds as a representation and evidence of them knowing God, but never considered if they truly knew Him.  They perused these acts of works instead of pursuing the gift-giver. They were so focused on what they were doing and what they wanted to gain, they didn’t have the time or the interest to ask themselves if they truly knew God or were known by Him.

If you look closer at the Lord’s response, you can see He is making it clear they never had any saving relationship with him. They thought they knew the Lord, but He tells them He never knew them. Relationship is a two-way street or else is ceases to be one. The Lord has given us all types of relationships here on earth, like marriage and friendships, that we can learn from and get a clear picture of what a relationship is. A healthy relationship is built on trust and respect, and to get there it requires taking an interest and investing ourselves to get to know the other person.  To be considerate and mindful of the other person that requires love.

When it comes to our walk with Christ, if we take the time to learn of Him, we will undoubtedly know His will. When we know His will, then we can take the next step of submitting ourselves to Him. But it always starts with love. If we have true love for Him it will drive us to know Him. He invites us to learn who He is for that very purpose. He gave us the scripture so we can come to the knowledge of Him. He says if we love Him we will do what He says. But in order for us to do that we must know what He says. We can see in the passage we are looking at these people never considered the Lord and learned of His will. They used the scripture to fulfill their own desires instead of seeing the scriptures as an opportunity to know God and to submit themselves to Him. Our God is a relational God and that’s why the world He created runs on relationships. People are engaged in all types of relationships, but the most important one is the one with their creator. God, by showing us how this world is run on relationships, is pointing us to the ultimate relationship that we must have. Before we do anything for Him first we must come to know Him.

That establishes that the people mentioned in the verse above never considered their relationship with God. The next thing we can observe is that these people did incredible things in the name of the Lord as they were resting their case on that. The things they did had great value to those who received it. But what these people failed at is having perspective regarding themselves and their souls. This should be a great reminder of what our Lord told the disciples after they experienced the power of God working through them;

“Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:20

 The people in the verse, instead of rejoicing in being built up in Christ and knowing His will and learning to walk with Him in righteousness, they were rejoicing that they had the power to do mighty works. Instead of dying to the ways of this world and demonstrating the power of God working in them to deny the desires of the flesh, they were joyfully submitting to it. They were deceived and deceived others. They were deceptively living for the world but disguising themselves as living for God as the people of God. For what benefit does a man have if he gains the world but loses his soul? You can do all these wonderful things, yet lose your soul. It’s possible for our eyes to see the power of God be displayed in such amazing fashion and yet not be touched within our souls and not experience the power of God. Our fallen condition is such that if God were to show up in front of us with all His Glory, we would deny Him still. We must consider these things in order to appreciate the mercy of God that works within the souls of people. You see, if the people in the verse above considered this truth, they would not have made the confident statement and boasted in their works. They ran after power and status, not considering their sinful flesh, and not considering the Lord’s will.  

 When we walk in the power of the flesh and live in a way of seeking after that which perishes, we demonstrate the foolishness of our own heart. We show the foolishness of the fallen nature. We put ourselves at throne of our our unrepentant heart. What we wants and what God offers us in His promises cannot be compared in value. There is no justification for the corruption that is in us. The mistake we make is we trade what is incorruptible for what is corruptible. We trade what is infinite in value for temporary satisfaction and momentary gain. In other words, we reenact the foolish exchange of Esau with Jacob, who exchanged his birthright for a meal. If the attitude of our hearts is to seek after temporary satisfaction, that shows us that we are making that same foolish exchange. We may mock and scorn Easu for that deal he made with Jacob because of his temporary hunger, but when we choose the world over Christ, our foolishness is even greater. Our big problem is that we don’t recognize ourselves as we should. In our own eyes, we see ourselves as not too bad and wise. We see ourselves as people who need a little lesson and encouragement to do what is right. The reality is we needed the Son of God to come and die in our place to take our punishment so that we can be made new. We didn’t need improvement but needed to be made new.  We didn’t just need a patch to fix up, but we needed a whole new garment. We must always keep this in mind. We must observe ourselves and our attitude towards life in order to know how much we need our Lord. In order to see that Christ is just someone we should want to have in our life, but someone we need in our life.

Why do we not see our need for Him? Why did those people in the verse above not see their need for him? The truth is that the desires of the flesh and slavery to sin completely blinded them, and it presently blinds all who still don’t have a saving relationship with the Lord.  When we walk under the power of sin, we are willing to make this unthinkable exchange with no hesitation or remorse to our own destruction. That is the sad reality of our unrepentant heart and we must be acquainted with this reality to come to salvation. If we don’t have the Spirit of God within us, we will not be careful regarding the things of God. The things of God are foolishness to all who are perishing. They don’t have the taste buds to savor the life of God. Even when God uses them mightily in these acts of great works, as we see here, they will still twist it to serve their own selfish purposes.  These mighty acts, instead of being a source for them to know the power and love of Christ it became the very reason for their fall. Our natural hearts will always continually show how much we don’t know God.

Salvation is important, and we must take it seriously. There is a question that we must reflect on: What measurement do we use to assess our standing with God?  In the verse above, the measurement they used to convince themselves and those around them was their works.They saw God work in their midst, and they assumed that He was pleased with them. What they didn’t realize is that the things God did through them did not mention anything about them, but it mentioned a lot about God and His desire for His people.

God has a great desire to heal and to do what is needed to help save His people. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even the corrupt desires of men, will in any way get in the way of that. If we take an honest look at how far the Gospel has gone, we will realize this was possible only because of God. It reached our generation and time because of God’s great desire to complete this work, not because of men’s faithfulness. If this work were left for men alone to take on, it wouldn’t have gone very far.  What makes the Gospel so powerful is that it rests in the mighty hands of our God and creator. He carries it through from generation to generation. When we slide off the rails, he corrects us. When we are lacking strength, He strengthens us. When we are afraid, He moves us to be fearless and bold. He does what is needed in time with no delay. That is the greatness of our Gospel. It rests in the hands of a mighty creator.  We have no room to boast when it comes to our salvation and the power of the Gospel.

In God’s kindness and generosity,  for our good, he shuts the mouth of any boasting from outside.  We have a kind and generous God who is gracious from one generation to the next. Even by His common grace, God lets the rain fall on both the righteous and the wicked. But we must always remember that by no means does His act of kindness demonstrate His approval or justification of the wickedness. Every sin will be punished, and justice will be served. Every wrong turn will be made right. We serve a righteous God who is a righteous Judge. Our justification is not God overlooking our sin, but God punishing our sin in Christ. He took the punishment so we don’t have to. God, in sending His Son to take the punishment on Himself, upholds His righteousness and yet at the same time extends mercy to us.  That is the only way that we can be justified, not by good works that we perform. God made a promise from the very beginning, and He fulfilled it, raising up Jesus from the dead and confirming the job was done. The word of God calls us to believe in Him and what He did. If we have faith in Him, it means we have been justified by God. We can’t give salvation any new meaning or purpose then the grace of God. It is simply God extending mercy to those without hope.

“Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” -Hebrews 12:2

The hardest thing for the natural man to accept is a free gift because pride works mightily in the heart.  The challenging thing for the natural man to do is to believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God who has demonstrated His faithfulness to countless generations. The difficult thing for the natural man to do is to trust in the trustworthy One. The point is that our unbelief is neither reasonable nor logical. Yet we find ourselves making all types of excuses to why we want to trust in our own good works instead of God’s righteous way through faith. When we try to make sense of a senseless act, it shows our insanity and lack of reason. It takes the power of the Spirit of God working in us to bring us to a reasonable conclusion. It takes the power of the resurrection to bring spiritual life to our souls to show us who we really are. Mighty work was needed for our redemption that we simply did not have in ourselves. We must remember that we will always underestimate the work of God in our flesh. 

One thing we can be sure about is that our flesh will always want to boast and make everything about us. Even when it comes to the grace of God working in us and through us. We want to tell the world, because we did this thing or that thing, God has done this great work through us. The reality is that God did what He did because He will not withhold His goodness from His people. It’s very tempting to credit ourselves and fall into error because it is so natural for us to look at ourselves first. Just because it feels natural does not make it right. Notice the world there is “feels natural, not that it is natural. This shows it comes out of the corrupt desire of the heart.  For we come naturally into the world as sinners, but that doesn’t make our position or standing right.  Pride and ego is a weaknesses to us and not a strength. Particularly in ministry, as leaders take their position and as people look to them for guidance, they can easily fall into this problem.

Yes, God’s grace is sufficient to hold leaders from falling into this error, but it works through the wisdom that the leader is given by God. It requires an active fight from the leader. That wisdom starts with the knowledge of the need for God’s grace to keep us from falling to our own selfish ambitions.  Looking at ourselves is the reason we find the world in the condition that it is. Even the design of our physical eyes demonstrates that truth by the impossibility of looking at ourselves directly. God made a way to look at ourselves and to know who we really are by the mirror of His word. Every other perception we have of ourselves will be from a self-serving bias.

God cares deeply that we don’t get carried away by this, and that’s why we see a strong emphasis in scripture on the importance of working out our salvation in the right manner. Scripture tells us how to properly look at ourselves and make that assessment accurately through the Spirit. We must make that assessment in faith, in truth, with the power of the Holy Spirit guiding us to search our hearts. Everything that is done in vain will come to light by the Word of God.  If we don’t take this seriously, we set ourselves up for the biggest shock on judgment day. To illustrate this point, here are verses that show us to test ourselves and work out our salvation.  

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” -Philippians 2:12

“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! ” -2 Corinthians 13:5

“Therefore, brothers,[a] be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” -2 Peter 1:10

In this last verse, 2 Peter 1:10, it talks about these qualities. What are the qualities, and what does it mean to never fall? In verses 5-8 of the same chapter, we get the answer.

 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,[e] and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities[f] are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” -2 Peter 1:5-8

This great list of the wonderful gifts from God, which include faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, and godliness, are all things that are produced in us but not by us. These are all things that are there to keep us humble and looking towards God. These virtues keep our eyes focused on the One who both allows us to will and to do for His good pleasure. When we see these qualities present within us, it means that God is sustaining us and working in us. That means we will never fail in this great work that God started because He is faithful to complete it. We have the power of the resurrection living within us, and that is not a light thing. Death is a powerful enemy that no man has been able to defeat except one, the Lord Jesus Christ. We have that power living in us through the Spirit of God. As mentioned earlier, we underestimate the terrible condition we are in in our neutral self but it’s worth mentioning we also underestimate the power of God working in us. God makes such wonderful promises to us. With this power, we will go on from faith to faith, power to power, and glory to glory with the abounding grace of God. Does that mean we must be perfect now? No, but we are on the path to perfection.

“Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”-Matthew 5:48

That is a great hope and promise that faith requires that we hold on to.  Sure, we deal with the great weakness that comes from the flesh right now. There are many battles and many challenges ahead of a Christian (Acts 14:22).  But we will go on to perfection, and we will go on to our reward in Christ. We have not realized and experienced the full promise of God, not yet, but it will continue to unfold right before our eyes. We must not get weary or tired to the point of complete failure. We must remember that our reward is always before us and not behind us. Our reward is in the hands of our God, where the corruption of this world can not reach it. We are partakers of divine grace for the very purpose of showing the greatness of God and His faithfulness.

“Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.” -2 Corinthians 1:21-22

This pledge of the Holy Spirit, if we have received Him, means we have been sealed for redemption. Now, working out our salvation is checking to see that the deposit has been made in our hearts. The way we go about carrying out this work determines the answer we get. Either we can create a self-affirming bias by picking and choosing which verses we will apply to ourselves, or let the Spirit Himself show us by applying the whole scripture to our lives. 

In Matthew 7:21-23, the verse we are focusing on, we see that those people who chose to affirm themselves by false assurance end up with a tragic conclusion. There are going to be many people, as the Lord tells us, who will stand before him with false assurances. So the great question we must consider is,  are we going to listen to the Spirit of God as He communicates through the Word of God? Or are we going to quince the Spirit and do it our own way? Other questions we must consider are, are we going to take those warnings we find in scripture seriously? Do we have ears to listen? The consequence of not considering this is Hell, for that means the wrath of God still abides on us.  The Lord has given us a clear warning, so on that day we have no one to blame but ourselves. The very words that Jesus spoke to us will be our judge on the last day. We will remember how we neglected to hear Him.

It’s important to state again that we must test ourselves in light of scripture.  It’s important that we follow God’s command and that we take on this task with seriousness and carefulness. He tells us to do so for our good and ultimately for His Glory. Being deceived and deceiving others is not something that will honor and glorify God. In fact, it has done great damage to those who have carelessly cared this out. There have been many who have come in the Lord’s name and have been a big stumbling block to those who looked to them.  Many so-called believers have come and have made a mockery of the faith because of their lack of seeing themselves for who they are. When the world witnesses this foolishness, they will certainly make it a great point of focus. The devil is right there to use it as a point of reference to keep people away from Christ. This fall happens because of the lack of taking this message and others like it seriously. The world is always searching for ways to justify its dark deeds, and this becomes a great tool for that.

What a tragedy that it becomes, that instead of being the reason why people praise God that a professing believer should become the reason why they blaspheme and point others away.  This happens when we try to control what God is in charge of and make it our own. This happens when we make the Gospel to advance our purposes instead of God’s glory.  When we don’t take the steps that God tells us to take, we become fools who walk their own path. When we try to run before we crawl, we become the builder who starts to build his house without first assessing the cost. We must remember that the World, being what it is, and the devil, being who he is, have teamed up in working against the perfect will of God. They have pounced as a hungry hound on every opportunity to make a mockery of following Jesus by using such people.  We have to keep in mind that we don’t bear our name, we bear the name that is above every other name. We don’t live to glorify our name but to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. If our actions prevent people from truly seeing the Glory of God in our salvation, then instead of being tools of mercy and love, we become tools for deception. We become a distraction for the fall of many.  When we emphasize the importance of testing ourselves and making it a priority, we are also ensuring that God is glorified through our lives. 

God’s glory not only shows His greatness, but it’s also the greatest good for us as individuals and the greatest good for us as a community. Although we may not see it or admit it but our lives are connected as people. What we do impacts those around us.  We humans are social, and there is no doubt about that. We do life as a community. What that means when it comes to faith is that whatever we do individually, whether good or bad,  it will have an impact on others. There is no way around that. Although we are saved individually, we are saved into a body, a community, and a family. That means just as each member of one body is purposed to serve the whole, we must remember that we have been given this brand new life in order to serve the body of Christ. Our outlook on this is also a great point of reflection regarding our salvation. That means we can’t isolate everything we do as just between God and us and not consider the effect it has on others. It is very easy to mistake the mistake and conclude by saying I came to salvation by God alone, therefore I must take this journey on my own. When we do this, we keep ourselves from experiencing the purpose of why God made us into a community of believers. He gives different gifts to different believers in order to show our unity through service. He wanted us to share the love of Christ as a community. When Jesus got on His knees and washed the disciples’ feet, he gave us a great example to follow. He showed us that as believers, we humble ourselves and serve.

When we work out our salvation, we will see the love of God in us for others. Instead of seeking of ways to gain for ourselves, we will seek for ways that we can give ourselves to service. This motive comes out of love and compassion for the family of God, which is by the grace of God. We must make certain that our knowledge and experience of God show up in a way that has a positive impact on those around us. That positive impact is to show them that God loves them. To show how generous and loving our God is through the generosity of His people. To show the standard and quality of the life of God by the way we uphold the righteousness of God through Christ. Our life must show scripture in action when it’s applied. Through the Spirit of God, we can show what real love looks like.

 The second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Working out our salvation means considering the importance of loving people and searching our hearts to see if that is a priority for us. How important is it to us that we love people? What does that look like in practice? Is our walk with Christ a series of religious activities of reading our bible, praying, and going to church without a tangible impact on how we interact with the world and the community around us? Is knowing Christ just a label that we wear because that is the environment we grew up in, or the community we are surrounded by? These are questions that we must always ask ourselves because it will show us if we are claiming to know God and yet denying His power.  For us to read the word and have fellowship with God and not come out on the other side with a great desire to love people is for us to have done everything in vain.  Here is a great verse that demonstrates this;

“ If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot[a] love God whom he has not seen.” -1 John 4:20

Connecting this back with glorifying God as the main purpose, as mentioned earlier, that means when we experience this love working in us for our brothers and neighbors, we are showing the world who God is. The world does not know God, and it does not know love. It is not difficult to observe that when we look at the world.  Making God known also means making His love known and felt by others.  If we don’t experience this love for others being built up in us through our growth in faith, what that means is we lack the power of God in us. That means our faith will be one that is void of works, and if our faith is void of works, that means we are void of faith. Faith leads us to love, and love leads others to God.

To conclude, the great shock that we see in our opening verse is not without evidence as stated. The evidence of God’s presence in our lives is in the love that we share with others. We must love  God by doing what He says. We must have love for His people, demonstrating what He says. We must have love for His Gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation. We must care about His Glory and do His will. We must live in a way that is worthy of the Gospel.

“Only let your manner of life be worthy[a] of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.” -Philippians 1:27