01 - Introduction

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Php 2:12

If there be anything excellent, it is salvation; if there be anything necessary, it is working out salvation; if there be any tool to work with, it is holy fear. "Work out your salvation with fear." The words are a grave and serious exhortation, needful, not only for those Christians who lived in the apostle’s time, but may fitly be calculated for the meridian of this age wherein we live.

I proceed now to the exhortation, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," which words do branch themselves into these three particulars:

First, the act, work out; secondly, the object, your own salvation; thirdly, the manner in which we should work it out, with fear and trembling. I shall speak principally of the first two, and draw in the other briefly in the application.