Work Out Your Salvation

May 22

“Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness,” I Corinthians 10:1-5.

Some people espouse the doctrine of ‘once saved, always saved.’ They are convinced that in having placed their lives at the feet of Jesus, in having baptized into the household of faith in infancy, that they are eternally secure.

This passage in I Corinthians 10:1-5 seems to dispute that concept. Here it gives a litany of the credentials possessed by our forefathers in the faith but goes on to say that their credentials availed them nothing.

They saw miracles—they followed the cloud through the wilderness. When Pharaoh’s army pursued them, they went through the Red Sea on dry ground while their oppressors were swallowed into the waters.

When they hungered in the desert, they were supplied with manna from heaven. When they tired of the manna, the Lord sent quail that they might have meat. When they thirsted, Moses struck the rock and waters of refreshing gushed forth. (See Exodus 3-15).

Miriam’s song in Exodus 15:1-4 tell of the joy the people felt because of the Lord’s exploits in their behalf, “I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously! He has cast the horses of Pharaoh and their riders into the sea! The Lord is my strength and my song and He is my salvation. He is my God and I will worship Him…He is a Man of war…”

Yet these same people wandered in the desert for forty years because they did not cling to their faith in the One who had delivered them. Though they had followed the Spiritual Rock that was Christ, though He had led them to freedom, they went back into the place of their spiritual bondage.

Like them, many of us have seen our need for a Savior. Like them, we have followed our spiritual Rock. But like them, we have turned back from our pursuit of the Holy One whose is the “only name given under heaven whereby men might be saved,” Acts 4:12.

Unless we desire to perish like them in the spiritual desert we have created for ourselves by our recalcitrance, we must avoid returning to our spiritual wasteland. We must, "work out our salvation with fear and trembling," as Paul tells the Philippians in 4:12.

We must allow the light of Jesus’ love to draw us close to His heart and we must follow in the path He walks with us, the path that leads out of darkness into light; out of bondage into freedom; out of death into life eternal.