Labor To Enter His Rest
Updated: Sep 12, 2022
One way to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" is to cease relying on works to attain it. (Phil. 2:12)
I hear people warn that unless we subscribe to their personal convictions (which, thanks to the internet, are more like charismatic superstitions, than actual biblical instruction), Jesus will say to us, "Depart from me. I never knew you." (Matthew 7:22)
The undertow of the serpent's twist on scripture is subtle, but it's enough to poison the gospel that saves us. "Doctrines of demons" seduce us by appealing to our flesh through the desire to be special. 🐍 "Here... You can know something that others don't." 🍎 (See 2 Tim. 3:6 and consider the internet.)
Jesus warns us over and over and OVER again to watch for thieves who come to rob us of the simplicity of the gospel and the liberty it brings. There's bondage in "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." 💻👩💻🤳📱
Life and God's power to transform our desire for sin into adoring God and his righteousness is in .... the pure Word of God. 📖 Jesus, alone. "You have no need that anyone should teach you, for you have the Holy Spirit". (Peter)
The people that God is telling to depart from him in Matthew 7 are those who put their hope in their own obedience. But, our works are "filthy rags" next to God's holiness. Our hope must be in Christ's finished work -- in HIS perfect obedience, or we aren't saved by faith. (Isaiah 64:6)
Legalistic Pharisees are who Jesus is condemning -- those who are proud of their own works and seek to rob others of freedom in Christ, because they themselves are still in captivity, having not fully realized Jesus.
Looking down on others with a suspicious and condemning eye is a sign that we are more in love with our devotion to Jesus than we are with Jesus.
God did not say to work FOR salvation "with fear and trembling". But, to "work it out". We "work out" our salvation the way we work out anything -- by seeking to understand it -- who it is -- that we believe in. By rending our hearts, not our garments. (Joel 2:23)
Check out Hebrews 10:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%2010&version=NIV
God Bless You!