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Scripture Reading: 1 Thes. 5:12-28
When Paul wrote verses 12 through 22 of chapter five, he had much on his heart that he still wanted to say to the new believers in Thessalonica. He had many things that he yet wanted to teach them. However, because he did not have the time to write further, he listed many different items together in these verses: honoring the leading ones, being at peace, admonishing the disorderly, consoling the fainthearted, upholding the weak, being longsuffering toward all, not rendering evil for evil, always rejoicing, praying unceasingly, giving thanks in everything, not quenching the Spirit, not despising prophecies, proving all things, holding fast what is good, abstaining from every form of evil. Actually, nearly every item requires a full chapter to be developed adequately.
In verse 23 Paul goes on to say, “And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “And” conjoins the blessing of God’s sanctifying of our entire being, given in this verse, with the charge of our abstaining from every kind of evil, given in the preceding verse. On the one hand, we abstain from every form of evil; on the other hand, God sanctifies us wholly. We cooperate with God for a holy living.
According to verses 16 through 22, we should rejoice, pray, give thanks, not quench the Spirit, not despise prophecies, prove all things, hold fast what is good, and abstain from every form of evil. If we take care of these things, the God of peace will sanctify us wholly. Here we see the matter of the believers’ cooperation with the divine operation. In verses 12 through 22 we have the believers’ cooperation in living a spiritual and separated life. In verses 23 and 24 we have God’s operation in sanctifying and preserving the believers.
If we would live a holy life for the church life, we must cooperate with God’s operation. God is now dwelling in us. The indwelling Triune God is operating within us all the time. This is the reason we should not quench the Spirit. Actually, the Spirit is the processed Triune God. The inward burning of the Spirit is the operation of the Triune God within us, an operation with which we need to cooperate. We cooperate by taking care of all the matters covered in verses 12 through 22. On our side, we need to cooperate. On God’s side, God is operating within us. The God of peace Himself will sanctify us wholly. The Triune God indwells, and we are the ones indwelt by Him. Hence, there must be two sides: God’s side and our side. He operates, and we cooperate with His operation.
In verse 23 Paul expresses his wish, his desire, that the God of peace would sanctify us wholly. Actually, this is the apostle’s prayer. Paul prays that the God of peace Himself sanctify us wholly. We may also say that the first part of verse 23 is Paul’s blessing, that he blesses the believers with a word concerning the God of peace sanctifying them.
In the second part of this verse Paul says, “May your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete.” In the first part of the verse, concerning God’s sanctifying us, it is God who takes the initiative. But in the second part of the verse, concerning our spirit, soul, and body being preserved, we are the ones who should somehow take the initiative.
The command “be preserved” may be regarded as an active-passive verb. This means that we take the initiative to be preserved. However, God is the One who preserves our spirit, soul, and body. Therefore, we take the initiative, but God does the work of preserving our entire being. Therefore, we should pray, “Lord, I long to have my spirit, soul, and body preserved. However, I cannot do this work. I take the initiative, Lord, to ask You to do this.”
Do you have the desire, the aspiration, that your entire being would be preserved complete? If we do not have this desire, we should ask the Lord to have mercy on us and grant us such an aspiration. But if we already have this longing, we then need to take the initiative to pray that the Lord would preserve us.
Paul wrote verse 23 not according to doctrine, but according to his experience. It is difficult for us to say whether in this verse we have Paul’s prayer or his blessing. It is certain that here we see Paul’s desire, his wish. Paul desired that the God of peace would wholly sanctify the believers and that the believers would have an aspiration for their spirit, soul, and body to be preserved complete and without blame. Can you see in this verse God’s operation and our cooperation? No doubt, the apostle represents God. Thus, Paul’s wish is God’s wish. His desire is God’s desire. This means that God wishes, desires, to sanctify us wholly. But do we have the aspiration for our spirit, soul, and body to be preserved? The sanctifying work is God’s operation, but the aspiration to be preserved is our cooperation. When we have both God’s desire and our aspiration, we then have our cooperation with God’s operation to sanctify us wholly and to preserve our entire being.
In verse 23 Paul refers to “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is a further reminder of what Paul has written in chapter four. In verse 23 Paul seems to be saying, “Are you believers excited that the Lord Jesus will come back? Are you waiting for His coming? If you are excited and are waiting, you need to practice what I have just written concerning being sanctified and having your spirit, soul, and body preserved. If you do not practice this matter, you will not be ready for the Lord’s coming back. You must be sanctified and preserved. Then you will be ready, prepared, qualified, for the coming back of the Lord Jesus. You must admit that at present you are not ready for the Lord’s coming. This means that He must delay His coming until the believers are ready. Dear ones, I urge you to get ready for the Lord’s coming by being sanctified wholly and by being preserved in your spirit, soul, and body complete and without blame.”
According to verse 23, the Sanctifier is the God of peace. His sanctification brings in peace. When we are wholly sanctified by Him from within, we have peace with Him in every way.
The word “sanctified” here means to be set apart; it is to be separated unto God from things common or profane.
The word “wholly” means entirely, thoroughly, to the consummation. God sanctifies us wholly, so that no part of our being, either of our spirit or soul or body, will be left common or profane.
Paul’s word concerning our spirit and soul and body strongly indicates that man is of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is our inmost part, the inner organ, possessing God-consciousness, that we may contact God (John 4:24; Rom. 1:9). The soul is our very self (Matt. 16:25; Luke 9:25), a medium between our spirit and our body, possessing self-consciousness, that we may have our personality. The body is our external part, the outer organ, possessing world-consciousness, that we may contact the material world. The body contains the soul, and the soul is the vessel of the spirit. In the spirit of the regenerated ones, God as the Spirit dwells; in the soul, our self; and in the body, the physical senses. God sanctifies us first by taking possession of our spirit through regeneration (John 3:5-6); second, by spreading Himself as the life-giving Spirit from our spirit into our soul to saturate and transform it (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18); and last, by enlivening our mortal body through our soul (Rom. 8:11, 13) and transfiguring it by His life power (Phil. 3:21).
God not only sanctifies us wholly, but also preserves our spirit, soul, and body complete. “Wholly” is quantitative: “complete” is qualitative. In quantity God sanctifies us wholly; in quality God preserves us complete, that is. He keeps our spirit, soul, and body perfect. Through the fall our body has been ruined, our soul has been contaminated, and our spirit has been deadened. In God’s full salvation our entire being is saved and made complete and perfect. For this, God is preserving our spirit from any deadening element (Heb. 9:14), our soul from remaining natural and old (Matt. 16:24-26), and our body from the ruin of sin (1 Thes. 4:4; Rom. 6:6). Such a preservation by God and His thorough sanctification sustain us to live a holy life unto maturity that we may meet the Lord in His parousia, His presence.
In verse 24 Paul says, “Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it.” The faithful God who has called us will also sanctify us wholly and preserve our entire being complete. This is Paul’s word of assurance to the believers.
In verses 25 through 28 we have the conclusion of this Epistle. Verse 25 says, “Brothers, pray concerning us.” Is it not surprising that Paul would ask those who have been in the Lord less than a year to pray for him? Would you have asked such young believers to pray for you? Paul’s request in this verse for prayer can be compared to a grandfather asking his young grandchild to pray for him. Nevertheless, Paul asked new believers, those who had been in the Lord for only a short time, to pray for the apostles. Paul knew that, no matter how little was their experience in prayer, it still would be helpful for them to pray. By this we see that we should not despise the new ones or the young ones. On the contrary, we should ask them to pray for us.
In verses 26 and 27 Paul says, “Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I adjure you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brothers.” Some manuscripts insert the word “holy” before brothers. This would mean that since this Epistle is concerned with the holy life of the believers, the apostle in his concluding charge calls the believers holy brothers.
Paul’s concluding word is this: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” Grace is God in the Son as our enjoyment. According to John 1:17, “The law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.” The law makes demands on man according to what God is, but grace supplies man with what God is to meet what God demands. No man can partake of God through the law, but grace is the enjoyment of God for man. Thus, grace is God enjoyed by man.
In 1 Corinthians 15:10 we have a further word concerning grace. Here Paul says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am; and His grace unto me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Grace in this verse is the resurrected Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit to bring the processed God in resurrection into us to be our life and life supply that we may live in resurrection. Therefore, grace is the Triune God becoming life and everything to us.
The grace that motivated Paul and operated in him was not a matter or a thing, but a living Person, the resurrected Christ, the embodiment of God the Father becoming the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, who dwelt in Paul as his everything. It is only when we enjoy the Lord as grace that we can live a holy life for the church life, a life that is genuine and proper for the church by the Lord as the life supply.
