Why must "fear and trembling" be a reference to the fear of losing one's salvation?
Philippians 2:9-13
9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
12 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 salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
In context, verse 12 follows Paul writing of the Final Judgment when all will bow the knee and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. In the light of this, we ought to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." As a born-again child of God, I look forward to this day and take joy in the prospect of declaring Jesus my Lord. On this matter, the apostle John wrote the following:
John 4:16-18
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
John didn't think the saints of God would stand before Him on the Day of Judgment afraid but with confidence, knowing they were "as He is" that is, "joint-heirs with Christ" (Ro. 8:16), redeemed, justified and sanctified "temples" of the Spirit of Christ (1 Co. 1:19-20; 6:19-20). These saints have both known and believed the love God has for them and are indwelt by His love in the Person of the Holy Spirit (1 Jn 4:13; Ro. 8:9-16; Ro. 5:5; Ga 5:23). So, then, they have no craven fear of punishment on Judgment Day, only joy at meeting the One whose love lives within them and fills them.
I don't think, therefore, that by "fear and trembling" Paul meant the sort of fear a guilty man endures when the sentence for his crimes is about to be handed down. I think it is the "fear" that is reverential awe and "trembling" that expresses excitement at the wonderful prospect of meeting their loving Creator face-to-face. And why should the born-again person have craven fear of wrath and punishment when God is working in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure? If this is the case, as John wrote, they can have boldness in the Day of Judgment, not fear, because they know that "He who has begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil 1:6).
No, this is not what OSAS says at all. I have held to, and taught, OSAS for decades and never have I ever urged my fellow siblings in Christ to "get comfortable and take it easy" because their eternal destiny was irrevocably secure. Quite the opposite, actually. Instead of fear of punishment motivating believers, I have shown them that God commands them to a higher, far more powerful motive for walking in His will and way: Love. His First and Great Commandment to His children is to love Him (Matt. 22:36-38), not live in constant terror that He will remove His salvation from them. As the apostle John wrote, "he who fears is not made perfect in love." As God's love fills the believer, maturing them spiritually, it "casts out fear" so that the mature saint of God lives only in joy, and peace, and eager expectation of an eternity with their Maker.
God's First and Great Commandment addresses the inner man (or woman), what they desire (i.e. love), ruling out Christian living from any other motive than love:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
No matter what I say (vs. 1), or know (vs. 2), or do (vs. 3), if love is not my fundamental motive for it - first for God and then for others - it all "profits nothing" spiritually. In part, this is because every other motive has Self as its chief focus rather than God. Fear, in particular, is like this. The Christian man who fears God in a craven way, who is in constant terror of punishment from Him all the time, is focused on protecting himself from God. He sees God only as a threat to be avoided, a danger to himself that he needs to mitigate as much as possible. This "God-fearing" man has his own well-being in mind, not the joyful self-sacrifice that agape love engenders. And so, God, in the passage above from 1 Corinthians 13, rejects completely this sort of craven fear as a proper motive for living as His child.
I used to practice and teach a Japanese martial art. For thirty years, daily I sweated and strained, suffering twisted appendages, being flipped onto my back, punched in various tender places, breaking teeth, spraining tendons and dislocating joints in the process, and so on. Why? Because I was really self-disciplined, as my sister once said to me? Because I was afraid not to train? Not at all! I endured all of this - and joyfully - because I loved the training and what I was learning from it. Fear could not have carried me through all that it cost me to train. Only love of the training was strong enough to keep me at it despite the sacrifices and pain of doing so and to train with joy.
So, too, in walking with God. Only love is powerful enough to motivate me into the self-sacrifice of agape love and only agape love produces in me joy in the midst of dying to myself. I know, you see, that in the sacrifice of myself, I will encounter more of the God I deeply desire, and so I'm happy to give up whatever I must in pursuit of Him. Fear can't do this, which is why God's First and Great Commandment is what it is.
When, then, I hear Christians tell me that they rely on fear to motivate them in their walk with God, I understand that they neither know God, nor are walking well with Him. In my experience, in these sort of believers there is always gross, secret and persistent sin underneath their angry, legalistic "righteousness." What's worse, in every instance where they think they're obeying God's laws, because they are doing so in disobedience to His First and Great Commandment and relying on fear instead, they are in chronic disobedience to Him! Remember Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.
Yes, you're wrong. In my experience, believers confident in the love and salvation of God are fiercely eager to know and walk with Him, prompted by a deep love for Him as they are. There are, of course, "false brethren," "tares" that dwell within the Church that see God's grace as a license to disobey Him. But false converts can be found in every doctrinal camp within Christendom and are always the most vicious and ugly in their defense of their particular doctrinal "hobby horse" (that's how you can mark them out as the "tares" that they are).
God's only prescribed motive for walking with Him is love, not craven fear of punishment, or duty/obligation, or self-righteousness, or habit, or whatever. Gratefulness, too, is not love (though it overlaps somewhat with love) and as such it is not sufficient as a motive for walking with God.
Again, OSAS doesn't "suggest" getting comfortable and careless morally and spiritually. See above.
