Philippians 1:6 promises that the God who began saving you keeps working in you and will finish the job by the day of Jesus Christ.
Speakers
Matt Felton
Introduction: Unfinished masterpieces
Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi, worked on around 1482 and hanging in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is famous for being unfinished. It is "a masterpiece, but frozen halfway."
Gilbert Stuart's 1796 portrait of Washington was left unfinished on purpose. It became the most reproduced American portrait, including on the dollar bill.
Vasari, Da Vinci's first biographer, said he "began many things and never finished one of them."
Most of us have unfinished projects too: house repairs, car work, homework, half-read books.
If God is like that, we have no hope for the last day. The New Testament is clear that you must make it to the end to be saved.
The speaker named four kinds of listeners:
Unsaved and aware of it
Unsaved and deceived
Saved but doubting
Saved and confident
He prayed that those in the first two groups would believe the gospel, and that doubters would move into confidence.
Big idea: So long as your salvation is in God's hands, you can be sure that he will finish it.
1. God began the work
The church in Philippi began with Lydia, its first convert, when "the Lord opened up her heart." Paul writes to that church ten years later.
Think back to your own beginning. It may have been dramatic, a gradual process, or so early in childhood that you can't remember it.
The "good work" in this verse is not your good works or even your faith. It is God's saving work in you.
Before that work, your heart was dead, at enmity with God and hardwired to replace him with other gods, most of all yourself.
As at creation in Genesis 1:1, God made light where there was darkness and life where there was death.
Paul often reminds believers who they once were ("such were some of you"). Remembering your beginning guards against doubt.
If you think you got things going, you'll spend your life wondering whether you can keep them going. If God caused your first day, God can be your confidence for the last day.
2. God continues the work
He dislikes the phrase "once saved, always saved." The words are technically true but easily misused to mean "I punched my ticket long ago."
Paul was confident about the Philippians because they were still going ten years later. He warned the divided Corinthians: "Let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."
Conversion is final, but it is only the beginning. It changes you for the rest of your life, or it's not real.
Real Christians can have brutal seasons and commit any sin except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But irresistible grace is also irreversible grace.
Justification is God's once-for-all legal verdict. It is immediate, one-sided, and can never improve.
Sanctification is God steadily making you holy through the church, the Word, prayer, and God's people. It is lifelong and cooperative. The same grace powers both.
Evidences of God's saving power:
Increasing love for God's Word and its preaching
Love for God's people in your actual local church
Greater dependence on God in prayer
Growing awareness and hatred of your sin. Feeling "worse" may simply mean you are more aware.
A changing relationship with money and possessions
Growing regard for the poor and weak
Gratitude and joy
A growing instinct to forgive
Deeper humility
A greater burden for personal holiness
Endurance through suffering
Increasing desire for heaven
If you see none of this, don't try to produce it to earn God's favor. Receive Jesus, and he will work it out in you.
3. God will finish the work
The verse reads like a timeline of your life, moving from your beginning to "the day of Jesus Christ," when he returns to judge and to rescue his people.
All of history and all of your life are being pulled "as by a strong tide" toward that day.
We never feel completely prepared for anything, whether a test or a dinner party. Yet God will have you completely prepared for the most important day of all.
The speaker listed what he is not confident in: his past, his heritage, his emotions, his devotion, his knowledge, his gifts, and his faith. He is confident only that God will finish, completely and perfectly.
Spurgeon: "If God were to put salvation into my hands, I'd lose it in ten minutes." Your salvation rests in Christ's hands, and he will hold you fast.
Key Takeaways
God started your salvation, so your confidence can rest on him, not on you.
A past decision proves nothing if your present life shows no evidence of grace.
Feeling worse may mean that God has made you more aware of your sin.
God has no abandoned masterpieces. He will finish what he began.