👉🏼 (Reading: Philippians 2:12-18)

📜 ""Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.""
Philippians 2:12 (NLT)

📋 It is one thing to claim that one is saved, but quite another thing to show the results of our salvation. In today's focus text, the Apostle Paul urges us to demonstrate the results of our salvation. This refers to the kinds of fruit we bear as those saved by the Lord.

In Matthew 7:16-17, Jesus says: "By their fruit you will recognize them .. every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit." Those who are truly saved through faith in Christ become children of God who bear godly fruit because they have the Spirit of God living in them.

One praiseworthy fruit they bear is obedience to God's purpose. They are able to obey God because "God is working in (them), giving (them) the desire and the power to do what pleases him" (v.13). God's part is to give us the desire and power to please him and our part is to choose to cooperate with him by obeying him "with deep reverence and fear."

When believers allow the Holy Spirit to govern their lives, they are empowered to bear other godly fruit: They "live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people" (v.15).

Are you bearing godly or ungodly fruit?
Be diligent in showing the results of your salvation.

🔑 Key Lesson: Our salvation is evidenced by the fruit we bear.

🛐 Meditation and Prayer: Lord, empower me to show the results of my salvation by bearing godly fruit.

📚 Further Reading: 2 Peter 1:5-9.

◼️ The Bible in One Year: Matthew 23-24.