Work Out Your Salvation

May 16

Isaiah 1:4-17

“Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel; they have turned away backward…Unless the LORD of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom; we would have been made like Gomorrah.

“Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah: To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, who has required this from your hand, to trample My courts?

“Bring no more futile sacrifices; incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you.

“Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.”


The Lord our God has sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die for the sins of all mankind, John 3:16. The Lord’s propitiatory death in our behalf completely paid the price for all our sin (see Hebrews 12:24 and I John 1:7); the cleansing flood of Calvary has washed away every sin of every man who ever bowed his knee before the Christ.

But the Word also tells us that we must, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Philippians 2:12. That is not to say that we must earn our salvation or that we must pay for our salvation. No. It tells us that we must establish our salvation within ourselves.

Jesus made it clear in Matthew 12:44 and Luke 11:25 that merely sweeping our souls clean of sin is not enough, for the enemy, who “comes to steal, kill and destroy,” John 10:10, will not relinquish his hold over us just because we plunge ourselves into the cleansing flood. The evil one will endeavor with all the allurements that he has—“the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life,” I John 2:16—to draw man back into the sinking sand of sin.

To counter the effort of old slewfoot and his minions, the born-again believer must indeed, “work out his salvation with fear and trembling,” Philippians 2:12. If a man will do that, if he will esteem his salvation of such worth that he will not take it for granted but strive to make it everything the Holy One desires that it be, then that man will be “more than a conqueror,” Romans 8:37, and he will walk in power over sin on earth and he will walk the streets of gold in Heaven.