A Good Work In You

Q: What does the Bible say about God's good work in us?

The Bible teaches that God begins a good work in believers and will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6). The Apostle Paul in Philippians 1:6 affirms God's promise that He who began a good work in believers will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. This 'good work' is the implantation of the life of Christ in our souls, a divine act that transforms us. It signifies that our spiritual regeneration and ongoing growth in grace are entirely works of God rather than human efforts. This is foundational to the Reformed understanding of salvation as it emphasizes God's sovereignty and grace in bringing His elect to faith and maturity in Christ.

Q: How do we know God's grace is at work in our lives?

We can observe God's grace at work through the changes in our hearts, such as faith, love, and a desire to follow Christ (Philippians 1:3-6). God's grace manifests in our lives through the transformation of our hearts and desires. As Paul expresses his confidence in Philippians 1:6, this work involves the daily sanctification of believers and the cultivation of a genuine faith that produces good works (Ephesians 2:10). The presence of spiritual fruit, such as love, peace, and righteous living, serves as evidence that God's grace is actively at work within us, leading us to a deeper relationship with Christ and a more profound commitment to His service. This divine work reassures us of our secure position in the covenant of grace.

Q: Why is understanding grace important for Christians?

Understanding grace is crucial as it underlies our faith and assures us of God's ongoing work and promises in our lives (Philippians 1:6). Grace is fundamental to the Christian faith because it conveys God's unmerited favor towards sinners. As articulated in Ephesians 2:8-9, we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, ensuring that our salvation rests solely on God's initiative and mercy. Recognizing grace helps believers to understand their identity in Christ and the eternal security of their salvation. Moreover, this understanding fosters humility, gratitude, and love for God, motivating believers to live in response to His grace through obedience and service. The assurance that God continues His work in us until the completion on the last day gives us hope and reaffirms our commitment to the gospel.

Q: How does God work in the lives of believers?

God works in believers through His grace, enabling them to will and do His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). According to Philippians 2:13, God actively works in believers to will and to do His good pleasure. This underscores the Reformed belief in God's sovereignty in salvation and sanctification. The work of God in us is a collaborative effort of the Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work together to bring about a transformation that results in spiritual growth and maturity. The Holy Spirit, as our Comforter, guides, empowers, and convicts us, deepening our faith and prompting us towards righteousness. Acknowledging and depending on God's work assures believers that they are not alone in their spiritual journey but are supported by divine grace leading to eternal glory.

Q: What is the significance of calling God 'my God'?

Calling God 'my God' signifies a personal covenant relationship established through faith in Christ (Philippians 1:3). The phrase 'my God' reflects a profound personal relationship between believers and the Lord, emphasizing the covenant promise God made to His people. This relationship, rooted in the example of Abraham and echoed in the prophets, illustrates that God is not merely a deity to be revered but a personal God who actively engages with His children. This personal relationship assures believers of God's faithfulness and love, anchoring their identity and hope in His promises. It also highlights our communal connection with other believers, as we together recognize the Lord as 'our God' who fulfills His covenant across generations. Thus, acknowledging God as 'my God' fosters both individual faith and collective unity within the body of Christ.

Philippians chapter 1 reading from verse 3 down to verse 6. The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Philippi where the Philippians were and he says this, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. always in every prayer of mine for you, all making request with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Amen. May the Lord bless this short reading of his word.

Our subject today is the good work of God in the lives of his people. And this is a very suitable subject for a gospel preacher. A preacher who might say, come and let me tell you what the Lord has done. Paul could tell the Corinthians, not the Philippians, but the Corinthians. We read it a little earlier in our opening reading. Brethren, I declare unto you the gospel.

And that is what the apostle did. And it is what all preachers do, all faithful preachers, all gospel preachers. They declare the gospel of God, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they tell men and women what the Lord has done, the good work of God.

This is what Paul is doing when he writes to the Philippians. It is what he calls here in his introduction, a good work in you. The first thing that I want us to note is Paul's description of the gospel as a good work. And it is a good work that is performed by God. It is a divine work. He tells us this good work, this gospel work, this work of grace, it is the implanting of the life of Christ in the soul of a man. Because that is what we're talking about here. That is the good work that God performs. It is a divine work. And it is necessarily a divine work because no man can do that work for himself. God must do it.

And the gospel is that mercifully, he does do it. And he does it in us. Last week when we were finishing our sermon, you may remember it was to do with the first few verses and we made reference to grace and peace. But someone mentioned in the little notes in the chat box, someone mentioned at the end of the service last week what a fine word grace is. And I have to agree.

Grace is at the heart of God's dealings with us. Grace warrants and justifies our faith. Grace is the ground of our hope. If it was not that God had revealed himself to man as a God of grace, what hope have we? Indeed, what a vain and fearful world this world, this life must be if only judgment and condemnation lay ahead. If all we had to look forward to was judgment and condemnation when we die.

Let us thank God for grace. Paul has told us Our God is a God of grace and peace. But there's another strand to this message and it is this. Not only is our God the God of grace and peace, but our God works his grace and peace in our lives. There's a connection, there's a relationship, there is an activity goes on in the hearts of men and women that God fulfills. Think about that for a moment.

God labors to save. He exerts himself to do us good. He engages with us to deliver us from our sins. And he works for our salvation. It isn't wrong to say that our God suffered in his work. Men talk about blood, sweat and tears. Well, the Lord our God spilled blood, dripped sweat and wept tears in the great work of redeeming his people from their sin. The great work of grace.

We speak about the work of creation and how God rested on the seventh day. But from that time, that day of rest that the Lord had on the seventh day. From that time, our triune God has been working incessantly to redeem his church. He's been working on the Sabbath day for all that time in order to redeem his people from their sins.

Our Saviour tells us in John 6, verse 29, this is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. He says in John 5, verse 17, my Father worketh hitherto. Now that word hitherto means until this very moment. so that everything that's gone before is the father's work in bringing us to this point. My father worketh hitherto and I work.

The Apostle Paul is going to enlarge upon this thought of the Godhead working together. In chapter 2, so we're in chapter 1 verses 3 to 6 today, but in chapter 2 he tells the Philippians, it is God which worketh in you both to will and do his good pleasure. That's verse 13. so that God in his triune persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is daily working in bringing many sons to glory. Hebrews chapter 2 verse 10.

His work is the work of grace in the heart of man and it is a divine work performed co-equally by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each has his role, each has his office in that great covenant work. But it is a good work because everything God does is good. It's an internal work of grace because it's done in us. And all God's works are holy, perfect and wise.

Psalm 111 verse 2 says this, the works of the Lord are great, it continues the works of the Lord are great and they are sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. So it is right that we should be interested in what Scripture has to say concerning the works of God and the work of God in us.

So let us today seek out what Paul is telling us and what he's telling our brothers and sisters in Philippi. Paul speaks in these verses about the Lord as my God. And I wanted just to dwell on this for a moment or two because I think that as a little phrase, it is very important. Sometimes we pass over these things and we ought not to. So we're going to just take a moment to think about what the meaning of my God actually is. It draws that phrase, my God, draws our attention to the covenant relationship that exists between the Lord and his people.

God told Abraham in Genesis 17, verse seven, and I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant. to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. Now you see, these are the premises upon which God's work unfolds. These things that were promised to Abraham as the father of the faithful, these things that were promised and covenanted, entered into as a covenant with Abraham, are spoken of as being something significant for all Abraham's children. And that is what this phrase, my God, directs to. Not only Abraham was told this, the Lord told the prophets of a day to come when he would call out the people from the fallen race of Adam and make them his own, telling both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, ye shall be my people and I will be your God.

So this explains why God's work of grace and redemption is particular and limited and distinguishes between one person and another. It's a covenant work. It's covenant grace. Why do some people have faith and some do not? Why do some men and women and boys and girls come to a knowledge of the truth and believe in the Lord Jesus when some do not? because God has a chosen people and he has made promises to that people, made them his own personal possession and has become to them their God. The Lord further explains this work of his, this covenant work of his, this new birth and conversion work of his in Jeremiah 31 and verse 33. Again, speaking to those Old Testament prophets, he says, I will put my law in their inward parts. So here it is again, this working in you, I will put their I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they shall be my people.

This is how we know if we are His. We delight in the great works of God. The works of God hold a blessedness for us. We discover that the works of God include grace implanted in our hearts, righteousness imparted to our souls, peace instilled in our consciences, and worship drawn forth from our lips. We learn that the works of God make us a new creation. and that we are become his people and he is our God.

And Paul knew all that. Paul knew that. The apostle knew that. He knew it from his readings of the prophets. He knew it from his apostolic inspiration and he knew it as a believer in Christ. He knew the promise and he knew it was his own personal experience.

God is our Father who believe. If we believe, then God is our Father, says Paul. He is my God, and he is at work in me and in all his people, both to will and to do his good pleasure. Here in this introduction, in these few verses that we've selected today, Paul does not specify the means and the method of God's work in us.

He simply declares it as a fact that God is working in us, that he works in us. He has begun a good work in us. Paul simply states that as a fact. But later in his letter, he goes on to explain how that happens. The end, in chapter 4, verse 19, he tells the Philippians, my God, there it is again, my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. So that my God is working in you to supply all you need According to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus, God works his work of grace in his people by supplying all our spiritual needs by and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ's life, Christ's service, his sacrifice and death These are the means by which the Lord's people, the covenant people, are blessed and that the work of God is enacted and transforms our lives. The riches of God's glory for his church are thereby performed in us. What are they? Our justification, our sanctification, our holiness, the new creation, Love, grace, peace, adoption, pardon, forgiveness, daily strength, eternal life. These are amongst the glorious riches, the covenant mercies that God works in us through the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Paul is teaching the church that the Lord God is the personal God of every soul redeemed by Jesus Christ. All who have received God's grace and peace through the shed blood of the Lamb of God can with Paul call God, my God. You can call him my God. He is our God because His saving purpose is revealed to us and bestowed upon us in and through the saving work of Jesus Christ. Christ has brought us to God. Christ has brought us into the family of God by adoption and we can call Him my God. Now knowing the divine source and origin of this work which has been enacted in us, it coming as a work of God, the apostle thanks God for every remembrance that he had of the evident work of grace in the life of these Philippian saints. God was a, sorry not God, Paul. Paul was a man of prayer.

He knew his own weakness and he leaned upon the Lord's strength. And he prayed for himself and he prayed for others. And he prayed for the churches. He prayed for those that he had established. He prayed for those that he had visited. He prayed for the saints. He prayed for their needs. But he always joined his praises or his prayers with praises and thanksgiving. And that's the lesson for us. Prayers for future help ought to include thanks for past help.

The Apostle Paul blessed the Lord for all the remembrances he had of the grace of God in the lives of his Philippian brothers and sisters. He thanked the Lord for the salvation of the believers in Philippi. Now certainly the Apostle Paul and others had laboured amongst the believers at Philippi. But Paul knew that this little church was God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus. He knew that their conversion was the sovereign gift of God from above. And how appropriate then that he should thank God for his grace towards his friends in Philippi.

We do not thank believers for trusting in Christ. That would be perverse. It would be preposterous to even go there. We do not thank believers for trusting in Christ. We thank God for his saving and converting grace towards us. personally, and thereafter, as Paul does here, we thank him for saving faith and divine blessings granted to others. Paul thanked the Lord that he had shown mercy to his friends in Philippi, working effectually in them to call them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, because he knew that salvation was of the Lord.

He knew it was God who had begun this good work in them, the work of grace in the lives of these men and women. And he wrote to them of his confidence that having begun this good work, God would continue to perform it and preserve them and maintain that gospel grace in their lives.

Indeed, until the day of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is a beautiful statement, a beautiful promise for each of us to lay hold upon as well. That day of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ might well be the last day of time, or it might be the last day of your life in this world. But either way, what the Apostle Paul is teaching us here is that our God, my God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will not stop until his work of grace is done. will not stop until everything has been performed that is necessary and will not stop until that work culminates in our glory in eternity.

Our God, our Lord God is the master builder. He has never begun a work that he cannot finish. The Lord isn't like a man, a man like Christ speaks of in his parable, who, after he had laid the foundation, is not able to finish the building, so that all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish. The Lord is not like a man such as that. The church of Jesus Christ will not be an incomplete building.

Every such notion is outrageous. It is a palace fit for a king to dwell in. It is a temple fit for a people to worship the most high God. The work of building God's church began in eternal election, and it is the great project in which all the Godhead is fully engaged throughout time.

And yes, the Apostle Paul does speak of this work being begun in the lives of the Philippians. But let us make no mistake, it is an eternal work, ordained from before time in order to be worked out in the lives of individual men and women and boys and girls in time. God has saved us and called us, the Apostle writes to Timothy, saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. Now, to say that this work is begun in us does recognize that there is a beginning of awareness in sinners when God speaks to us in the gospel. Regeneration, or the new birth, or let us, for simplicity, call it our conversion, is the beginning of the divine work insofar as our personal awareness is concerned. but it is a work that has been going on from eternity.

God the Father chose in eternity all who are regenerated and converted in time. He chose them to be conformed to the image of his Son. And then 2,000 years ago, when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son to redeem them that were under the law, that we might be, sorry, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Lord Jesus has redeemed God's elect with his precious blood which was shed for the remission of sins for all for whom he died and all of those for whom he died are effectually called by the Holy Spirit to experience God's grace. So that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, according to that everlasting covenant, are laboring together to fulfill that which God promised.

And he is doing that work. And he is performing that work. day by day, constantly, in the lives of his church for the gathering of his people. Or in the lives of his people for the gathering of his church. But there's even more, I think, to this idea of this work being begun in us. Because what it tells us is that the beginning of this work points to it having a conclusion and a completion. Begun implies a subsequent momentum and growth and development and continuity. And so it is in the work of grace. You see, there is room for change in us all. And conversion is ongoing.

Believers do not get more holy. Because, as we know, Christ is all our righteousness. Christ is all our holiness. And we are complete in Him. So we're not getting more and more holy every day. That's just not how the scriptures teach us. We are complete in Him.

Nevertheless, we do grow and develop and mature, we grow in grace and we grow in a knowledge of the truth. We deepen our experience of Christ. As he deals with us, he teaches us. and we learn of Him. Our faith in Christ grows as it is tried and as it is tested. Our love for Christ grows as we better understand all that He does for us and more particularly appreciate the dimensions of His love towards us. Our hope grows as we grow older and as we draw closer to glory, our knowledge of ourselves grows as we wrestle with sin and the power of the old man in this flesh. God's work in us is far from finished, but it is begun, and that beginning is a sure and certain testimony to its ultimate completion, and he will perform it to the end. Think of it like this.

Our experience of new life and regeneration is a divine down payment of the eternal glory yet to come. Conversion and new life in Jesus Christ is a pledge and a promise from God of our believers' interest in Christ to all eternity. The Holy Spirit has been given to us in order to show us, as that earnest, that we are Christ's for time and eternity. And election is God's promise to bring us all the way through and deliver us safe in glory. Eternal life doesn't turn on a man's works. but it hinges on God's work of sovereign grace in us.

It is to do with the indwelling Holy Spirit. He is our earnest, he is our guarantee of God's saving grace in us. The deposit given to ensure that his promise of everlasting glory is ours. So our personal salvation is the good work that Paul is speaking of here in these verses.

The good work God has begun. It is our covenant union with the Lord Jesus and Christ ensures that what God has begun will be thoroughly performed until the day of Jesus Christ. It will never falter, it will never fail. It is not possible that the all-wise, all-powerful God will lose one of his children. The Church's eternal salvation is as secure as God is holy and unchangeable.

His promises to us are not conditional on human works, on human worth, but on divine grace and mercy. We do not get life by our good works and we cannot lose life by our sinful works. Because I live, says the Lord, ye shall live also. We shall persevere in time because we are preserved for eternity.

And I want to make one final point because I don't want to pass by this little portion without mentioning the believers' fellowship in the gospel. Paul rejoiced over these saints in Philippi. He rejoiced at the fellowship he shared in the gospel with the church at Philippi. And I think what he is teaching us here is that the gospel is the true measure of Christian fellowship. The gospel is the standard by which fellowship is possible. So when he speaks about our fellowship in the gospel, that is what he is referring to.

And true believers ought to fellowship in the gospel, even in spite of denominational distinctions and differences. Now by the gospel, I don't mean evangelistic fervor, although there is nothing wrong with that. I don't mean an agreed body of truth that some people limit fellowship upon. They say that only those who sign a particular statement of faith are available to have fellowship with.

There are differences of interpretation in doctrine, and I ought to be able to accommodate a brother's weakness and lack of understanding as he ought to be able to accommodate mine. It is Jesus Christ in the gospel of grace that unites believers and binds them together. If a man or a woman or a boy or a girl believes in sovereign grace, Can we withhold the right hand of fellowship even if we don't see eye to eye on every detail?

I think once again, and we've referred to 1 Corinthians 15 a couple of times today, but that was our reading and it was a suitable reading in the context of what we're saying here as well. In those opening verses of that chapter, Paul says, Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved. if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. If a man has faith in Christ, According to the scriptures, I trust that I can have fellowship with that man.

Religion without grace has no attraction for a child of God, and it will support no real enduring fellowship. Gospel fellowship is first spiritual and then practical. It is founded in a common love for the Lord Jesus and for what he has done for us. It issues thereafter in what we can do for him and what we can do for one another. I am sure that Paul had in mind both the true gospel that he had preached amongst the Philippians, the work of grace in their lives that they understood and had received, and the many practical blessings that he and the Philippians shared together. Not least the good that the church had done for him in sending their gift to him while he was in prison in Rome.

But let us as believers treasure fellowship in the gospel, wherever it can be found, and even be ready to overlook the differences of others if we share a common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a common faith that is according to the scriptures. May the Lord bless these thoughts to us today. Amen.

A Good Work In You

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about God's good work in us?

How do we know God's grace is at work in our lives?

Why is understanding grace important for Christians?

How does God work in the lives of believers?

What is the significance of calling God 'my God'?

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A Good Work In You

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about God's good work in us?

How do we know God's grace is at work in our lives?

Why is understanding grace important for Christians?

How does God work in the lives of believers?

What is the significance of calling God 'my God'?

Sermon Transcript

About Peter L. Meney

Comments

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