Hello again @Magpi89, you also had a question about the OT/Pauline phrase, "fear and trembling". Here's an excerpt from a commentary of mine that should be helpful (I'll include a little bit more about what it means to "work out" our salvation as well).
“Work out your own salvation.”
This choice of language is predicated on Paul's prior use of “salvation” in 1:28, which, he asserted, is “from God.” But ~“salvation” is not only something they receive; it is something they do.~
The context makes it clear that this is not a soteriological text per se, dealing with “people getting saved” or “saved people persevering.” Rather it is an ethical text, dealing with “how saved people live out their salvation” in the context of the believing community and the world.
What Paul is referring to, therefore, is the present “outworking” of their eschatological salvation within the believing community in Philippi. At issue is “obedience,” pure and simple... That “working out your salvation” has to do with “obedience” is verified both by the grammar and context. Thus everything about the sentence and its context indicates that Paul with this imperative is not referring to the “salvation” of individual believers, but the salvation that God has wrought in making them a people of God for his name in Philippi, and that at issue is their getting on with it.
Finally, they are to work out their salvation in this way “with fear and trembling.”
This unusual phrase, taken over from the OT, occurs in some odd moments in Paul, so that it is not at all certain what he intends by these words—especially since the OT sense of “dread” seems to be missing altogether. In its first occurrence (1 Cor 2:3), which probably should give direction to our understanding it in other places, its meaning is especially difficult to pin down. But whatever it might mean specifically in that instance, its being closely connected with “weakness” as further exemplifying the “weakness of the cross” indicates that at the very least it reflects human vulnerability. What people see in one who lives “in fear and trembling” is not self-assurance, but defenselessness. But for that very reason it seems quite wrong, as some have done, to suggest that “fear and trembling” is therefore an attitude that believers have toward one another. On the contrary, while the vulnerability of each will be apparent to the others, the OT background of this language calls for an understanding that has to do with existence vis-ō-vis God. The context in this case seems to demand such a view.
This phrase, then, first of all reminds the Philippians of the grandeur of the final words (in vv. 9–11). If the whole universe of created beings is someday (soon, from their perspective) to pay homage to their Lord, then they themselves need to be getting on with obedience (= working out their salvation) as those who know proper awe in the presence of God. ~One does not live out the gospel casually or lightly, but as one who knows what it means to stand in awe of the living God.~
On the other hand, nothing of failure or lack of confidence is implied.28 The gospel is God’s thing, and the God who has saved his people is an awesome God. Thus “working out the salvation” that God has given them should be done with a sense of “holy awe and wonder” before the God with whom they—and we—have to do. ~Fee, G. D. (1995). Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (pp. 234–237).
This is how I have come to understand "fear and trembling" in v12, IOW, that we (as we consider ALL that is involved and WHO it is who is involved) are to always, "work out our salvation" in "holy awe and wonder".
God bless you!
~Deut
