It was Paul who took the message of Jesus out into the wider Mediterranean world and proclaimed Christ’s biblical vision of peace through non-violent justice against Rome’s imperial vision of peace through violent victory. That former program was, as he said in to the Corinthians in southern Greece, power and wisdom for God but impotence and stupidity for this world; just as that latter program was power and wisdom for this world but impotence and stupidity for God (1 Cor 1-4).

Here, then, is Paul’s own answer to this week’s question: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” he wrote to the Philippians in northern Greece, “for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:12b-13). I make four comments on that text—which is, by the way, my favorite text from the seven authentic letters of Paul.

First, it mentions “works” three times and that should have been enough to end the Reformation delusion of any “faith’ versus “works” dichotomy in Paul’s theology. It should be enough especially now as we struggle to get Paul back into his first-century matrix.

Second, that text is often ended at its first stage—with that phrase about “fear and trembling.” In that (mis)understanding it enjoins us to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” because God will punish us if we fail. But, when you read the whole text, that reading becomes extremely strange. If, after all, it is God who moves within us” both to will and to work,” that is, to start and to finish, why should there be any “fear and trembling” present at all? But hold that (mis)interpretation for a moment.

Third, Paul is writing to his beloved community at Philippi from prison—possibly but not definitely from proconsular incarceration at Ephesus, capital of the Roman province of Asia Minor. He mentions this situation for times: “you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (1:7); “it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ” (1:13); “most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear” (1:14) although some “others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment” (1:17).

Finally, then, Paul’s imprisoned situation helps us to understand properly why we Christians should “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” even though—or maybe especially because—it is God who moves within us in both will and work. There is “fear and trembling” not because our God will punish us if we fail but because our world will punish us if we succeed.