Sunday Devotional: Philippians 1:6

Being convinced of this very thing, that the one who began a good work in you will finish [it] until the day of Christ Jesus.

I hate starting something and not finishing it. If I begin reading a book, I will find the time to get through it. In fact, there’s a book I’m working on right now that I started back in April. It’s a good book, but it’s about 650 pages long and rather scholarly. There are a lot of other books I need to read this year too. So I’ve been picking at it over the last six months, though I have now resolved to finish it soon. I had hoped that would be before the end of this month, and while I’ve made good progress, I’m thinking it’ll be early next month before I’m done with it. But I’m determined to finish it. I’m sure many of you are the same way, frustrated at projects you took up and, due to some distraction, or simply life happening, put down never to come back to them. Or perhaps you told someone you would do something, with the best of intentions, and failed to follow through. We kick ourselves in these situations, especially when time passes and the thing is left undone.

Thankfully, the Lord is not like that with anything, and especially not when it comes to His dealings with His people, as Paul reminds the church at Philippi in this verse. In the introductory lines of this letter, Paul expresses his joy that the Christians in Philippi “participate” in the gospel. That is, that they have been saved by the gracious work of Christ on the cross, and the Lord is growing them in the grace and knowledge of Christ, daily conforming them to the image of Jesus, that they would be more like him in thought, word, and deed. Paul tells his brethren there that this gospel work the Lord began in them is not a temporary thing. It’s not a project He entered into with enthusiasm, and then lost steam, became bored or distracted, and left it incomplete. No, the Lord will finish what He started.

The phrase at the beginning of the verse is literally an expression of extreme confidence. “This very thing” doesn’t necessarily refer to anything in particular, not even something in the previous verses. It’s an expression in the Greek that just adds emphasis to the verb: “Being very sure…” (Many translations make the verb first person singular: “I am confident…” The verb is actually a participle, but the context allows for translating it as a first person singular for the sake of clarity in English.)

“The one who began a good work in you” is clearly a reference to the Lord. It was God who put within their hearts the desire to hear the gospel message. It was He who changed their hearts by an act of the Holy Spirit, so they would no longer love their sin, but would turn to Christ and be saved. God was the initiator of salvation in their lives. As Paul so thoroughly argues throughout his letter to the Romans, their salvation was nothing that they did–it was all of God.

“… will finish it until the day of Christ Jesus.” God will finish that work of salvation that He began. This doesn’t mean they are not yet fully saved. I think there are two layers of meaning here. First, that while they are saved, and their eternal destiny is assured, there is still an on-going battle with remaining sin. The daily putting off of sin and becoming more Christ-like in attitude and action is what theologians call “sanctification.” While salvation happened one time for all eternity, sanctification is an on-going process that will eventually lead, one day, to perfection in heaven. For now, though, the Christian lives each day, and by God’s grace s/he learns to live less for self and more for Christ, loving him more than the world. On another level, you can say that we are certainly saved now, but we won’t actually experience that salvation fully until we are in heaven. Right now, we have been declared “redeemed,” but we don’t always feel redeemed. Christ has paid the price, it’s a done deal–but we’re still on earth struggling with sin. One day, however, we will put off mortality and enter immortality. Sin will be no more, and we will come to a full experience of the salvation that Christ purchased for us.

This is why God will complete this work “until the day of Christ Jesus.” The preposition translated “until” [Greek: achri] usually means “until,” or “up to.” I think what Paul is trying to communicate is the idea that God will persist in the work of conforming the Philippian believers (and Christians generally) up until the time we are all in the presence of the Lord, at which point the work will be complete. We will all stand before Him in purity and holiness, not because of our works, but because it is God who has been working in us to make real in our lives the promise of the gospel.

As we go through this week, battling with sin, fighting off temptation, and longing to be more like Jesus, let’s remember this promise of God: He started this work in us, and He is continuing to work in us, and one day that work will be complete. And this is God’s work, so it will be accomplished.

Have a great week!