Series 1 - Lesson 5 - Annotation 11
What is meant by "work out your own salvation"?
11. In the Old Testament the words translated "salvation" have in common the meaning of a broad or wide place, an enlargement. In the spiritual life "enlargement" comes from righteousness, from dwelling under spiritual conditions. Salvation is deliverance and freedom from the narrow, limited consciousness in which man has placed himself by believing in the error desires, feelings, thoughts, words, and wrong acts of personality. Man is partially saved when he removes these mental patterns from both his conscious and his subconscious being, his mind and his heart, so that they will no longer produce more of their kind. He must replace them with perfect ideas or mental patterns. Working out his own salvation is the greatest work he has to do. He is to make of himself a replica or likeness of his Creator. The "working out" requires him definitely to concentrate on the ideal, to hold ever before him God's ideal. At first he forms his own idea of life and its requirements, but later he unceasingly tries to discover God's ideal for him.
Truth is established only when it is "experienced," therefore he must bring the God ideas or powers of his being into manifestation by doing all things to the glory of God. It is a just provision that each person must work out his own salvation. No one else can do it for him; there is no vicarious atonement. Each one must make in his own mind and heart the changes that cause him to be safe and free in all ways.
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Preceding Entry: Show the justice of the statement, "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." — I Cor. 15:22.
Following Entry: What is meant by "race consciousness"?
