God’s Part and Ours

This claim is quieter than the last, and it sounds humble: “The commandments were not given because we have the strength to keep them. God will act first, and then we are to do so.”

Much of that is true, and it should be said plainly. God does work within us. As we saw in Chapter 8, He promised to put His Spirit within His people and to cause them to walk in His statutes. No one keeps God’s commandments in his own strength and then hands God the bill.

The question is what we do with that truth. The claim draws one conclusion from it, and the conclusion is to wait: until God acts, we are not yet expected to act. Scripture draws a different conclusion. It does not say, “Do it then, when that happens.” It tells us to act now, because God is at work.

The Car and the Fuel

Imagine that someone fills your car with fuel, the best there is, right up to the top, and then hands you the keys. You could not have bought that fuel yourself, and without it the car would go nowhere.

Yet the fuel does not drive the car. It does not turn the key, take the wheel, or press the pedal. If you climb into the passenger seat and wait for the car to start itself, you will be sitting there a long time. The fuel was given so that you could drive, not so that you would not have to.

That is the order Scripture gives. It never says that God is working and so you need not act. It says that God is working and so you can act.

For It Is God

Paul sets the two side by side in a single sentence. We read it in Chapter 2; here the order of its parts deserves attention:

Philippians 2:12-13 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own Salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

A small word joins the two verses: “for.” Work out your own salvation, “for it is God who is at work in you.” God’s working is not offered as a reason to sit still. It is offered as the reason to get moving.

The word for “at work” is energeo ἐνεργέω en-erg-eh'-o, to be operative, to put forth power, and from it comes our word “energy.” God is the one who supplies the power, “both to will and to work,” and precisely because He does, Paul says, we are to work it out “with fear and trembling.”

Paul’s opening words in verse 12 matter too: “just as you have always obeyed.” He is not writing to people who wait for God to make the first move before they obey. He is writing to people who have been obeying all along, and he tells them to keep on, now even more than before.

Already Granted

Peter, for his part, speaks of what God has given:

2 Peter 1:3 His divine dynamis δύναμις doo'-nam-is(power) has granted to us all things pertaining to zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life) and eusebeia εὐσέβεια yoo-seb'-i-ah(godliness) through the epignosis ἐπίγνωσις ep-ig'-no-sis(spiritual, complete knowledge) of Him who called us through doxa δόξα dox'-ah(glory) and excellence,

The tense is worth noticing. Peter does not write “will grant” but “has granted.” The word dynamis (δύναμις) is power, the kind of strength that gets things done. Peter does not say that we are still waiting for it. He says that it has been given, all of it, everything that a life of godliness needs.

Who, then, moves first? God does, and according to Peter, He already has.

Not Too Hard, Not Far Off

Long before Paul and Peter, Moses said the same thing about the commandment itself:

Deuteronomy 30:11 For this commandment (mitzvah מִצוָה mits-vaw') which I am commanding you (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw') this day, it is not too wonderful for you, nor is it far off.

The word for “too wonderful” is pala פָּלָא peh'-leh. It can mean marvelous, but here it means beyond reach, too hard to do. The word for “far off” is rachoq רָחוֹק raw-khoke', distant. God says that His commandment is neither. In the verses that follow, Moses goes on to say that it is not in the heavens and not beyond the sea, “but the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it” (Deuteronomy 30:14).

The last words are “to do it.” God did not give Israel a commandment and then add, “But do not try this until I have done something more.” He said that it was near, and that it was given to be done.

The Law and the Prophets in One Sentence

Another quiet assumption lies inside this claim. It often treats “the commandments Yeshua gave” as one thing and the Torah as another, as if Yeshua had brought a different set of instructions. But consider one sentence from the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 7:12 Therefore all things whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them — for this is the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) and the prophets.

This is what people call the golden rule, and Yeshua says of it, “for this is the nomos(law) and the prophets.” Here nomos means the Torah. Yeshua does not say that His rule replaces the law and the prophets. He says that it is the law and the prophets, gathered into one sentence.

If Yeshua’s commandments and the Torah were two different things, He could not have said that. His teaching sums up the Torah rather than standing against it.

The verb matters as well: “do also to them.” The golden rule is not something to wait for. It is something to begin doing the next time we speak to someone. No one hears “treat people the way you want to be treated” and decides to postpone it until a later stage of the spiritual life.

The Right Order

This, then, is the order Scripture actually gives: we can act because God works within us. It never says that we need not act because God is working.

The difference between those two sentences is the difference between a driver and a passenger. Both believe in the fuel, but only the one behind the wheel ever leaves the driveway.

For some readers, however, the problem is not who moves first but what happened when they tried. “I tried to keep them,” they say, “and it nearly crushed me.” That experience deserves a chapter of its own.