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Faith · Salvation & Grace

Philippians: The Road Between Two Ditches

Paul fights legalism and license at once, and holds the narrow road

Philippians is a short, joyful letter from a Roman prison, but underneath the joy Paul is fighting a war on two fronts at the same time. On one side stand the Judaizers, who add law to grace and put their "confidence in the flesh." On the other side is the quieter danger of license, the grumbling, the rivalry, the cheapening of grace into something that asks nothing. Paul refuses both ditches and walks the narrow road between them, and he shows us how to walk it: with the mind of Christ.

Against the legalists: no confidence in the flesh

In chapter three Paul turns on the Judaizers with unusual sharpness, "beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision" (Philippians 3:2), because they made circumcision and law-keeping the ground of standing with God. And Paul, who could out-credential any of them ("circumcised the eighth day… a Pharisee… touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless"), counts the whole resume as loss: "what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ… that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness… but… the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Philippians 3:4-9). Salvation is not earned. The pedigree is rubbish. The righteousness is a gift, received by faith.

Against the careless: work it out, in fear and trembling

But Paul will not let grace collapse into laziness either. The same letter is full of effort: "press toward the mark" (3:14), do "all things without murmurings and disputings" (2:14), let "your conversation be as it becometh the gospel" (1:27). And the hinge verse holds both truths in a single breath, the synergy this site keeps returning to: "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13). Not "earn it." Not "relax." Work, because the willing and the doing are truly yours; and tremble, because the One at work in you is God (see Free Will and the Plan That Cannot Fail).

The mind that walks the road: kenosis

At the center of the letter is the secret to staying out of both ditches, and it is not a rule but a Person. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God… made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant… he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Philippians 2:5-8). The legalist's pride and the libertine's self-indulgence are both forms of self-seeking; the cure for both is the self-emptying mind of Christ, who was God and stooped to a manger and a cross (see The Word Made Flesh). You do not white-knuckle your way down the middle of the road. You follow Him down it.

The church that kept the letter

There is a quiet testimony to how this took root. Decades after Paul, around AD 110, Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle John, wrote his own letter to that same church at Philippi, still shepherding them, still pointing them to Paul. He sets faith, hope, and love in exactly Paul's key:

"Faith, which is the mother of us all, being followed by hope, and preceded by love towards God, and Christ, and our neighbour… For if any one be inwardly possessed of these graces, he hath fulfilled the command of righteousness, since he that hath love is far from all sin."

Polycarp of Smyrna, c. 110 · Epistle to the Philippians

The faith that justifies is the same faith that, followed by hope and rooted in love, keeps a person far from sin. The two fronts are held together, just as Paul held them.

Where this lands

The gospel road is narrow on both shoulders. Step right, and you are back under law, trusting your own performance, which Paul calls loss and dung. Step left, and you have turned grace into a license that asks nothing, which Paul never once allows. The way through is the mind of Christ: receive a righteousness you could never earn, and then, because God is at work in you, work it out with reverent joy, pressing toward the mark, content in every state (4:11-13), guarded by "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (4:7). Rejoice, and walk.

Study the passages

Read them in context. Links go to BibleHub.

Related: Free Will and the Plan That Cannot Fail, Hyper-Grace, Lord, or Just Savior?, Faith Is a Verb, and The Word Made Flesh. Polycarp quoted verbatim from the Ante-Nicene Fathers (public domain). Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub.