“Who is responsible?” is a question debated wherever you turn today. A woman treasurer of a large Episcopal diocese embezzled $200,000, then explained she was forced to steal because she wasn’t paid enough. A man in the process of burglarizing a school accidentally fell through the roof and sued the school, claiming his injuries were the school’s fault. From petty thieves to national leaders, the answer to the question “Who is responsible?” is often an unequivocal, “not me!!”
Accepting responsibility comes easily to me. I have a high achieving, “I’ll succeed somehow” spirit running through my veins. For years I approached my Christian life as I approached everything else—if I just try a little harder, I’m sure I can please Jesus just as I usually please others when I do my best.
Becoming a pastor only intensified the responsibility. Now I was responsible for the spiritual welfare of hundreds of others.! It took years and years battered by the discouragement of seeing people dead in their tracks spiritually to realize that I can’t convince, cajole, or “make” people grow. It’s like dieting: If people don’t want to, it won’t happen. Stimulating spiritual hunger is God’s work. The Bible calls this grace. We’re not only saved by grace—we grow by grace too.
If I struggle at one extreme, others without my over-achiever tendencies may be at the other extreme. Doesn’t growing spiritually happen naturally, like ice cream sliding down our throats on a hot day, if we just have good intentions? Haven’t we left behind the days where people “worked hard” at their religion—following some legalistic “do’s and don’ts” to earn God’s smile?
It’s a paradox. The Bible puts it this way: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work within you.” (Phil 2:12-13) Often with paradox we’re quick to take the sword of reason and slice it down the middle, succumbing to what author Stephen Collins calls “the tyranny of the OR.” Either we work or God works; either I am responsible or God is responsible.
But what if God and us are both at work, both responsible?
The statement “God is at work within you” is the foundation on which Paul builds the command: “work out your own salvation.”
My son Nathan and I were reminiscing took our first backpacking trip together when he was 7 years old. With some other sons and Dads from our church, we hiked up about 2000 vertical feet into California’s High Sierras in just four miles, quite an achievement for a second grader.
Nathan carried his school backpack with a few clothes and a copy of James and the Giant Peach. As he hiked up the mountain, I puffed along behind him with our sleeping bags, our tent, our food, and all the rest of our gear. Yet the answer to the question “Who is responsible” for our equipment was, “both of us.”
Paul can command us to be responsible with a little “r” to “work out our salvation,” all because our heavenly Father coming behind us is responsible with a capital “R,” “God is at work within you.”
I like how Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in his modern paraphrase, The Message: “Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God.” This is our small “r” responsibility.
Here is God’s large “R” responsibility: “That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.”
Question: Where have you seen this paradox happening in your own life? Please share it in a comment below.
I feel like I have to struggle so hard to maintain my faith, especially for about the last ten years. And yet, it is in times that I stop struggling and just try to be what God wants me to be in my present circumstances that I experience God the most. It’s like trying to swim against the current vs. riding a boogie board!
My paradox for today is how to be a beggar looking for bread….and behaving like the daughter of a King !!!
I have seen it most often in doing something because of my love for God and then seeing what he gives me in return is a love foe His people.