Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Philippians 2:13 - 2:13
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
For - encouragement to work: “For it is God who worketh in you,” always present with you, though I be absent. It is not said, “Work out your own salvation, though it is God,” etc., but, “because it is God who,” etc. The will, and the power to work, being first installments of His grace, encourage us to make full proof of, and carry out to the end, the “salvation” which He has first “worked,” and is still “working in” us, enabling us to “work it out.” “Our will does nothing thereunto without grace; but grace is inactive without our will” [St. Bernard]. Man is, in different senses, entirely active, and entirely passive: God producing all, and we acting all. What He produced is our own acts. It is not that God does some, and we the rest. God does all, and we do all. God is the only proper author, we the only proper actors. Thus the same things in Scripture are represented as from God, and from us. God makes a new heart, and we are commanded to make us a new heart; not merely because we must use the means in order to the effect, but the effect itself is our act and our duty (Eze 11:19; Eze 18:31; Eze 36:26) [Edwards].
worketh - rather as Greek, “worketh effectually.” We cannot of ourselves embrace the Gospel of grace: “the will” (Psa 110:3; 2Co 3:5) comes solely of God’s gift to whom He will (Joh 6:44, Joh 6:65); so also the power “to do” (rather, “to work effectually,” as the Greek is the same as that for “worketh in”), that is, effectual perseverance to the end, is wholly of God’s gift (Phi 1:6; Heb 13:21).
of his good pleasure - rather as Greek, “FOR His good pleasure”; in order to carry out His sovereign gracious purpose towards you (Eph 1:5, Eph 1:9).