Zachary Peters

We all know the moment when grumbling and complaining crosses a line. It ruins a trip. It ruins a holiday. It ruins an event. It poisons the dynamics of a team, and in the end it always costs something. And when grumbling and complaining take root inside a church, what it costs is unity itself.

That is exactly what concerned the apostle Paul. He wrote Philippians, in part, to deal with the grumbling and complaining that was creating division in that congregation. Grumbling and complaining lead to disunity, and when a church is divided, it cannot fulfill the mission and calling God has given it. The church has a purpose. The question this passage forces on us is simple: are we going to fulfill it, or are we going to get stuck grumbling our way into disunity?

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me. (Philippians 2:12–18, ESV)

“My Beloved”

Notice how Paul opens: my beloved. Imagine a sermon that began that way every week. Paul means it. He loves this church, and that affection shapes everything he is about to say.

This passage connects directly to what comes before it. The previous section held up the humility of Christ, and here Paul brings that example straight to bear on the disunity the Philippians were living in. The whole section began with a command to live in a manner worthy of the gospel, and one of the ways we do that is to live in humility and service. The supreme example of humility and service is Jesus Christ himself, the very reason the church exists. So when Paul says “therefore,” he might as well be saying, “Because of all of that—because everything I have told you is true, and you know it matters—keep going. You have obeyed well so far. Do not stop now.”

Then he narrows the focus: stop the grumbling and disputing. Fight for unity. And do it with fear and trembling. Finally, he ties their struggle to his own labor, so that in the end, if they remain obedient, his effort will not have been wasted and they will arrive together at a place of shared joy.

Work Out Your Own Salvation with Fear and Trembling

As a Pentecostal, I love this verse, because it calls attention to the need for effort in your relationship with Christ. You have to work.

There is a phrase you have all heard: “once saved, always saved.” There are careful ways to use it that hold up under examination. Unfortunately, most people do not use it carefully. It becomes a surface-level slogan: “I got saved at ten at VBS, so I am good”—even while living as a raging alcoholic, even while gossiping nonstop, even while never praying, never reading Scripture, never gathering with the church. And I am not sure that is good. I do not see that described as “good” anywhere in Scripture. You will be known by your fruit. If there is no godly fruit, it is fair to ask whether God is truly at work on the inside. I am not the judge and jury. But I will warn you: some of us may need to reconsider some things, in fear and trembling.

It is alright to carry a little fear and trembling in your walk with God. I do not want to mess this up. I do not want to waste the opportunity God has given me. This relationship means something, so I am going to do something with it. That is why I love this verse—it puts real weight on our side of the relationship.

Here is what the verse does not mean. It does not mean you produce your own salvation. It does not mean you justify yourself before God; you cannot. It does not mean you punch your own ticket to heaven. It does not mean you will live a flawless life, or that your efforts will ever be good enough. Here is what it means: you appreciate and cherish the grace given to you so much that you live as if you could lose it. That is a difference of attitude. I want to live like I could lose it, because it makes me pay closer attention—to what I watch, what I say, who I spend my time with, what my life actually looks like. You are not saved merely from something; you are saved for something. You are saved for a different kind of life. Salvation is not one single moment; it is a lifestyle. You can be saved—but are you living saved?

Some have tried to soften “fear and trembling,” to file down its sharp edge. I read several commentaries on this to be sure I understood it, and the best scholarship is unanimous: there is no way around it. This is an intense statement, and it should make us pay attention.

And yet—here is the comfort—look at what Paul says next: it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. You are not doing this on your own. God himself wants you to do it, empowers you to do it, and supplies the tools to do it. He gives you eyes to see your life rightly. He gives you the willpower you need. If you are fighting an addiction, he can rewire the very pathways of your mind so that you become a person who can work out his salvation in fear and trembling. God does not call us to something difficult and then leave us to figure it out alone. He does not hand you a job and send you to an empty worksite with nothing you need and a cheerful “good luck.” The call comes from him, and so does the ability to fulfill it.

That matters, because the call to unity—the call to stop grumbling and complaining—is hard. And it ties back to what Paul has been pressing since chapter one: be unified. It takes work. It matters. You have to try, and God will supply.

Why Unity Matters: The Shadow of Israel

Why does unity matter so much? Here Paul does something easy to miss unless you know the Old Testament well: the language he uses is the same language used to describe Israel. He is deliberately comparing the Philippian church—mostly Gentiles—to historical Israel. In Paul’s mind there is a continuity between the mission of Israel and the mission of the church. It is the same mission.

And what is Israel famous for as they come out of Egypt? Grumbling and complaining. God calls them a crooked and perverse generation because they complain at every step. God delivers them, and they complain. God splits the sea, and they complain. God sends manna, and they complain. God sends quail, and they complain. The grumbling keeps them from the promised land. It keeps them from becoming who they were called to be—because God called that nation out from among the nations for a purpose: to be a light. And again and again they fell short of it. Even in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells a Jewish audience that they are to be salt and light to the world, already drawing the old mission of Israel forward into the church. The mission has not changed. Be unified. Be a light. Do not look like the world; look like the kingdom of heaven.

So Paul tells the church: hold on to that. Hold fast to the word of life—the gospel—and make me proud. Do not make me feel I have wasted my time with you. And even if it costs Paul his very life, poured out like a drink offering, it will be cause for rejoicing if they live up to what he has preached. If they walk in obedience, it is a joy they get to share together. When we live in a manner worthy of the gospel, we walk into a season of rejoicing that runs deeper than anything else we could experience.

The Power of Unity

That brings us to one of the last recorded prayers of Jesus, in the Gospel of John.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20–23, ESV)

This is perfect unity. Jesus prays that the church would be one, just as he is one with the Father and the Spirit. Why? Because there is power in that unity to display who God is. The oneness of Father, Son, and Spirit has power, and the church’s oneness under that has power. We are lights to the world in part because we are unified the way Jesus is unified.

But unity is not merely a group of people who happen to get along. It is more than that. It is a unity born of fear and trembling—of wrestling with what salvation means for me, of figuring out what it means to follow Christ today.

Here is the trap of the modern word “unity”: we make it mean something it does not mean. We imagine it means overlooking every issue and letting people do whatever they want in order to keep the peace. A group that does not even believe in Jesus calls itself a church, and in the name of “unity” we are supposed to link arms with them. That is unity for the sake of unity, and it is not healthy. That is not the unity Paul is talking about.

We have the perfect example of God becoming man, crucified and risen, in Jesus Christ—who is the Lord. He instructs us, not only by his life but by his very words. So in fear and trembling—and yes, we should be afraid of getting this wrong—we look at his example and unify around it. We unify in Christ. We unify around what is concrete, because there is a concrete right and wrong in Scripture. There is a concrete gospel that Paul preaches, that Peter preaches, that the Gospels themselves hand to us. In fear and trembling we latch onto that, in unity, and in that unity we gain the power to be salt and light.

Unity cannot be merely superficial. If it were as simple as “you do your thing, I will do mine, and we will both call ourselves a church,” we would not have the letter to the Philippians at all. Paul would not have cared. We would not have half the New Testament—Peter’s letters, John’s letters, James—if a loose, surface-level connection to Jesus had been enough. But it was a specific unity, aligned to a specific gospel and the exact example of Jesus Christ, that mattered. That is what we line up behind. Unity for the sake of unity is powerless. Unity aligned with the truth of the gospel is powerful.

What the World Sees

As I studied this passage, I grew curious. The church is supposed to be a force for good. People may not like us, and they may reject us, but the accusations they bring against us should never be earned by our own lack of integrity, our lack of love, our lack of unity.

So I thought back over the past year and a half, over the negative stories about the church that reached the national news. I did some digging—used AI, used Google—and found roughly twenty-eight major negative stories about the church that made it to the national level, across outlets from the AP to Fox to MSNBC. Some were genuinely bad. A few, given time, turned out to be less than they first appeared. But the impression they leave is real, and for a people called to be unified and exemplary, that is sobering.

So what is the point of dwelling on all that negativity? Here is the first thing, and it took some reflection to land on: for every single national story about a church or a pastor or a church member doing something foolish, there are probably three thousand churches in that same region quietly doing the right thing. One out of three thousand is not a bad ratio—and there are far more than three thousand churches in America. It is never as bad as the headlines want you to believe. The next time a story breaks and you feel that sinking moment, remember: that is one church. In that same town there are ten or twelve more doing the right thing the right way. Not perfectly, but faithfully.

The world does not care about those churches. A church living quietly and faithfully does not make the news. The world elevates the negative; it cares about the failures, the scandals, the wrongs. So do not get trapped believing the media’s narrative about the health of the global church. Yes, churches sin. But for every church that does something terrible, countless others are doing exactly the right thing in silence. Do not beat yourself up, and do not fall into that trap.

And yet the world does watch closely enough that part of our responsibility, as a church, is to give it no ammunition. Let us not be part of the problem; let us be the solution—so that when the world does put us under a microscope, what it finds on the inside is unity. A unity aligned in Jesus Christ and his example, aligned in Scripture, empowered by the Holy Spirit. So that when they look at us, they see Jesus. That was his prayer: that they would see our oneness and know the Father sent him and loves them.

What We Actually Need

We have a job to do as a church. We do not need another program. We do not need another building. We do not need a bigger worship team or better technology. I do not need to preach better, and our worship leaders do not need to sing better. What we need is unity—so that when we rub elbows with the world, as we are called to do, the very existence of this unified church declares the glory of God. Everything else is just nice on top of that. But it starts with being unified in Jesus Christ.

Now, that is not always easy. For a small church where people know one another, it may be easier; disagreements come, and we work through them. But there are other churches that see things differently—this one believes this, that one believes that. A good portion of those differences, honestly, does not matter much. But some of it does.

And this is the necessary nuance: the call to unity is not a call to let people do whatever they want. Paul himself called out wrong in the church even as he remained unified with it. Unity is not the absence of conflict. We have every right, as Bible-believing Christians, to say that viewing homosexual practice as anything other than sin is not faithful to Scripture. We have every right to call a church that shrugs at drunkenness wrong. We have every right to address gossip that runs unchecked among us. It is precisely our unity in Christ that gives us the authority and the framework to recognize and name what is wrong.

So hear the nuance: unity does not mean avoiding every hard conversation. Where the issue is not a matter of salvation and truly does not matter much, lay down your own conceit and selfish ambition for the sake of peace. Many of our divisions have nothing to do with Scripture and everything to do with personality, and God gives us the tools to mend those. But where Scripture speaks clearly, unity means holding fast to the example of Christ and pulling one another along into it. Paul calls people to follow his example as he follows Christ’s. There is a right way and a wrong way; be unified in the right way.

When we do that, we gain a power, an authority, and a witness to do what God has been calling his people to do from the very beginning: to be a light. Put away selfish ambition and conceit. Be unified in Christ. And in that unity, walk into the world displaying the glory of God.