Many of us are products of the so-called Protestant work ethic which puts a high premium on productivity and personal initiative. It’s an oversimplification, I know, but we learned that if you need or want something, the best method for getting it is to work for it.
This overall philosophy of work and its rewards still holds true today, although it’s not as widely embraced as it once was. This “work ethic” long ago filtered its way into the spiritual realm, prompting many seekers to wonder if they’ve done enough, if they’re good enough, to earn God’s favor.
However, working, we might even call it performing, to gain God’s approval runs counter to New Testament teachings. Many passages affirm the concept of grace – the Lord’s undeserved, unmerited favor – but the first one I always think off is Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Yes, the Lord wants and expects us to do good works, but not to receive salvation. Our works should be motivated by the reality and recognition that we have received salvation – we respond out of love and gratitude for what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us. As Titus 3:5 asserts, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
When we read in Philippians 2:12, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” it’s not a command to work for God’s acceptance but an admonition to work out what God has already put into us. The next verse clarifies, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” What a blessing and a privilege it is to be used by the Lord to accomplish His perfect plan.
So, we can rest in the knowledge that if we’re His children, there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more – and nothing we can do to make Him love us less. We can point to one passage that actually seems to instruct followers of Christ to do nothing.
Those verses are Philippians 2:3-4, in which we’re told, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
Okay, this passage isn’t directing us to literally do nothing, to sit idly on a stump. It’s more about the motivation behind whatever we’re doing and the spirit in which we’re doing it. In our actions, words and thoughts, God desires for us to put Him and others first.
This can be challenging in our contemporary society that often promotes self above all things. Even some of the popular Christian praise songs these days seem more about “me” and “I” than they are about the God of all creation and Jesus Christ, His Son. We could say they’re more about “me-ology” than theology.
What if we started each day and reminded ourselves repeatedly during the course of each day to “do nothing” – to check ourselves by evaluating whether we’re acting out of “selfishness or empty conceit,” or “in humility regarding others as more important that ourselves,” as another translation expresses Philippians 2:3?
Humility might seem like a vanishing virtue in today’s world when pride is placed on a pedestal. But imagine the difference we could make by consciously seeking to “look not only to [our] own interests, but also to the interests of others,” as the following verse admonishes.
Such a radical approach to life and the personal encounters we have each day, even more than the best conceived evangelistic strategies, could enable us to fit the description of being “blameless and pure children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe” (Philippians 2:15). Wouldn’t that be worth a try?
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