Assurance of God’s Faithfulness
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
How’s it going with those new year’s resolutions? Have you kept them up? As for me, I am failing miserably, I resolved to continue learning New Testament Greek, and I have yet to pick up my textbook this year, and I’m dreading going back to it to discover how much I’ve forgotten. We can be rather optimistic about our willpower and the third week into the New Year usually tells us a lot about our actual ability to stick to plans. It’s easy to think, “I’m going to run a marathon by the end of the year”, but to actually train for that, day by day, week by week, well that takes a lot of effort and will power.
Yesterday we looked at how Paul’s grounds for joy for the Philippians is in God and in the gospel, and in this verse, verse 6, Paul encourages them that he is confident of their salvation. This verse tells us about the willpower of God in bringing about salvation in a person. And I praise God for this verse, because I know my own wandering depraved heart. I am so glad that my salvation doesn’t depend on how tight I can hold on to God, but rather on how tight God holds on to me. It doesn’t depend upon my faithfulness to God, but it depends upon God’s faithfulness to me, and that’s why we can be assured of our salvation. But I’m also aware that this verse can be abused, so let’s look closely at it.
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 1:6)
So, God begins a good work in his people, and this word ‘in’ is important, this verse isn’t talking about what God has done for them, but what he has done in them. Paul says something similar in chapter 2:12 & 13,
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you”
So, they must work out what God has worked in them. And we use this type of language when talking about how God is transforming someone, we say something like, “God has really worked in their life”, why do we say this? Because we can see the evidence of God working in them by their actions, they act differently, they are different. And as a believer looks back in their life, they can clearly see how God has worked in them, because of how much they have changed. And so, Paul says to the Philippian believers, I am confident that God will bring his good work in you to completion, because I have seen evidence of that good work in you through your long-term partnership in the gospel (Phil. 1:5).
And this should be the grounds for our assurance that God will complete the good work he began in us, because he is faithful. We don’t have assurance of salvation because we prayed a prayer once when we were 6, but our assurance is based off God’s continued work in us; convicting us of sin, guiding us into repentance, turning our gaze to Christ, teaching us to love Christ and enabling us to worship him, and strengthening us to please him and desire to please him by doing good works. These are all evidences of God working in us.
Believers, this verse should lead us to rejoice in God, because he is faithful to the end. He holds us tightly to his chest and won’t let us go. For God will keep us, and will surely continue to work in us, and because of this we must persevere in faith to the end. And in the day of Jesus Christ, his work in us will surely be complete, we will be pure and blameless (Phil. 1:10) before the righteous Judge.
So, let us live joyful and fearless lives today and tomorrow for God is faithful.
