Scripture Reading: 1 Thes. 3:13; 4:3-8; Heb. 12:14; Rom. 12:1-2; Eph. 3:17-19; Mark 12:30; Phil. 2:5
In reading the Scriptures we need to touch the burden in the spirit of the writer. In particular, we need to know the burden in Paul’s spirit when he was writing 1 Thessalonians. Paul concludes chapter three of 1 Thessalonians with a word of blessing: “That He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints” (v. 13). Paul’s desire was that the readers of this Epistle would be established in their hearts blameless in holiness.
In chapter four Paul goes on to charge the saints to abstain from the defiling sin of fornication: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that you abstain from fornication.” In what way does Paul charge the saints to abstain from this sin? He charges them in the way of sanctification. First he tells them that the will of God is our sanctification. The will of God is that we would be sanctified, kept, preserved, and guarded in sanctification. The best way to abstain from fornication is to be sanctified, preserved, in God’s holiness.
In 4:3, 4, and 7 Paul uses the word “sanctification” three times. In verse 3 he says that the will of God is our sanctification; in verse 4, that we should know how to possess our vessel, our body, in sanctification and honor; and in verse 7, that God has called us in sanctification. According to 4:4, we should possess our body in sanctification and honor. Sanctification is before God, and honor is before man. Every fornicator loses his honor before man. In every society fornicators are despised; they have lost their honor before man. Therefore, we need to keep our body from such a sin, and the way to do so is in sanctification.
In 5:23 Paul gives a concluding word concerning sanctification: “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.” Here we see that our entire being — spirit, soul, and body — needs to be sanctified. We need to be sanctified by the God of peace not only in our soul and body, but also in our spirit.
According to 5:23, we bear some responsibility for being wholly sanctified. On the one hand, God will sanctify us wholly. On the other hand, our spirit, soul, and body need to be preserved. Although God preserves us, we need to bear a certain amount of responsibility to be preserved.
We may regard the words “be preserved” as an active-passive verb. This means that although we are being preserved, we need to take the responsibility, the initiative, to be preserved. Thus, “be” implies something active, and “preserved” implies something passive.
God intends to preserve us, but are we willing to be preserved? We may use the matter of giving medicine to children as an illustration of our need to bear responsibility to be preserved. Sometimes a child may need medicine, but he may not be willing to take it. In fact, he may resist the attempt of his parents to give it to him and even make it necessary for them to hold him down. Parents do this in order that the health of the child may be preserved. Sometimes we do not cooperate with the Lord to be preserved. This forces Him to do certain things to subdue us or restrict us so that we may take in what is necessary to be sanctified and preserved.
In 1 Thessalonians, a book on a holy life for the church life, we are told that different parts of our being need to be preserved. Our heart needs to be sanctified, our body needs to be preserved in sanctification, and eventually even our spirit, the most hidden part of our being, also needs to be sanctified.
In the foregoing message we pointed out that our heart is our acting representative. Now I would like to make this matter a little more clear. Perhaps the term “acting agent” is better than representative. Every one of us is a being, a human being. The word “being” is a modern expression. The biblical term for a human being is “soul.” This means that each one of us is a soul. The soul, as a being, has two organs: the inward organ, the spirit, and the outward organ, the body. We contact the physical world through the five senses of our body. Likewise, through the spirit, an organ which has senses of its own, we contact God.
Whether or not we are able to contact a certain thing depends upon the organ we use. For example, if you close your eyes, you will not be able to see anything. However, you cannot use your eyes to substantiate sound. For this, you must use your ears. Because atheists do not exercise their spirit, they say there is no God. We cannot substantiate God unless we use our spirit. John 4:24 tells us that God is Spirit and that those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit. If we exercise our spirit, we shall immediately sense that there truly is a God. Deep within, an atheist may say to himself, “Suppose there is a God after all — what will you do?” With the mouth an atheist may say that there is no God, but in the depths of his being, in his spirit, he may sense that there is a God.
Our soul must act. When our soul, our being, acts, that is the heart. But when we keep ourselves at a standstill, this means that our heart does not act.
We all have two hearts: a physical heart and a psychological heart. We know where our physical heart is located, but we do not know the location of our psychological heart. The actions or activities of our physical body depend on the beating of our physical heart. According to medical doctors, the death of the physical body takes place when the heart stops beating. A person who does not have any pulse is dead, for his heart has stopped beating. The point of this illustration is that the death of the body takes place when the heart stops beating. This is also true of the psychological heart.
Both our physical heart and our psychological heart have arteries. The main arteries of the psychological heart are the mind, emotion, and will. Heart attacks are often due to the blockage of the arteries. Recently I read that doctors who examined the bodies of young men who died in the Vietnam War discovered that in many cases their arteries were blocked even though they were quite young. Realizing the danger of blocked arteries, many watch their diet and are careful to exercise in order to cleanse their blood vessels. The problem of the physical heart is an illustration of the problem of the psychological heart. Today there are millions of Christians. But how many of these Christians are truly living? Most of them are not living. The reason they are not living is that the arteries of their psychological heart have been blocked. This blockage has caused them to die spiritually.
We all need to ask ourselves if we are spiritually healthy. To be healthy physically we need a strong heart. We also need a strong heart if we are to be spiritually healthy. All spiritual diseases are of the psychological heart. Our psychological heart may be wrong in different ways. We may be wrong in our thinking, in our loving or hating, or in the way we use our will.
If our psychological heart is healthy, it will be very active in thinking, loving, hating, and deciding. Our heart is our acting agent. This means that if we are active, our heart will be active in mind, emotion, and will. However, if a person is not active in his heart, we may wonder if he is spiritually alive. If he is alive, why is there no activity in his heart? Why does his heart not function in a normal way, since it is his acting agent?
I can testify that, even though I am elderly, I am very active in my heart. I am full of thought, feeling, and intention. My entire being — spirit, soul, and body — is active. However, the agent of this activity is not the spirit, the soul, or the body; the acting agent is the heart with the three main arteries of mind, emotion, and will.
In Romans 12:2 Paul speaks of the renewing of the mind. As the body represents our outward being, so the mind represents our inward being. According to Romans 12:1, our body needs to be presented to God as a sacrifice, and our mind needs to be renewed. To be renewed is to be saturated with God. This is sanctification. To be renewed actually is to be sanctified, and to be sanctified is to be transformed. Our mind needs to be renewed, sanctified, transformed.
In Ephesians 3:17 Paul says, “That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, having been rooted and grounded in love.” Love is a matter of the emotion. According to this verse, Christ makes His home in our hearts, and we ourselves become rooted and grounded in His love. This indicates that our emotion is touched by His love and that we grow in this love. To have our emotion filled with the love of Christ surely is an aspect of sanctification. Furthermore, when we are rooted and grounded in love, we can “know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ” (Eph. 3:19). This is also related to the sanctification of our heart, in particular of the emotion. To have our emotion filled with the love of Christ is to be saturated with Christ. No doubt, this is the sanctification of our emotion.
Mark 12:30 says, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” Here we have the heart, the soul, and the mind, with the soul mentioned in between the heart and the mind. The three parts of the soul — the mind, the emotion, and the will — are also parts of the heart. But why in Mark 12:30 is there no mention of the emotion or the will? The reason is that the emotion and the will are included in the soul. But why, then, is the mind mentioned? The mind is mentioned because it is the leading part of both the heart and the soul. Therefore, we need to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.
Mark 12:30 also tells us to love the Lord with all our strength. The word “strength” here refers to our physical body. Therefore, we need to love the Lord with all our physical strength and with all our heart, soul, and mind. This indicates that our entire being, our inner being and our outer being, should be occupied with the Lord our God and saturated with Him. This is to be sanctified, made holy.
I am burdened to point out that, as Christians, believers in Christ, we must be living. To be a living believer involves both our spirit and our heart. Doctrinally, we may say that we can become living by exercising our spirit. But in practice often it seems that the exercise of our spirit does not work. Many of us can testify that we have exercised our spirit, but still this did not always work to make us living. The reason the exercise of the spirit may not work is that the heart does not act. This means that there is something wrong in the heart. Perhaps the mind is not renewed, sanctified, transformed; it may not be saturated with the Lord and occupied by Him. Instead, it may be filled with worldly things. We may exercise our spirit and say, “Praise the Lord!” However, this exercise may not work to make us living. The exercise of the spirit works only when our heart is active.
If our heart is dormant or asleep, exercising our spirit to call on the name of the Lord will not be effective. This exercise cannot work if our acting agent, our heart, is dormant. This is the reason we need to deal thoroughly with our heart. This dealing must include our mind, emotion, and will. Our mind must be the mind of Christ, our emotion must be saturated with the love of Christ, and our will must be one with His will. If this is the condition of our heart, our heart will be active and functioning. Then if we call on the Lord when our heart is active, this calling will be very effective.
We all need to look to the Lord to have mercy on us. We need to pray, “Lord, have mercy on me. I want to have my mind renewed. I want to have my emotion filled with Your love. I want to have a will that is truly one with Your will.” If we have such a heart, then the heart as our acting agent will be established blameless in holiness, blameless in the state of being made holy.
As Paul was writing chapter three of 1 Thessalonians, he must have had the intention to go from the inner being, the heart, to the outer being, the body. This is the reason he gives the charge concerning abstaining from fornication and concerning possessing our body in sanctification and honor.
Fornication is a gross sin. According to the Bible, Satan’s purpose is to use sin to defile the man God created for Himself. Any kind of vessel is defiled when it becomes dirty. Furthermore, the function of a dirty and defiled vessel is annulled. For example, we do not use a cup that is dirty. Before a dirty cup can be used, it must first be cleansed. God created man as a pure vessel, but Satan injected sin into man with the intention of defiling him and spoiling him. The most defiling sin is fornication. Stealing is sinful and unclean, but it is not as defiling as fornication. Fornication damages God’s purpose, it damages the human body, and it damages the family and society. Nothing else damages humanity as seriously as fornication does. Therefore, after speaking concerning the sanctification of the heart, the inward being, Paul could not forget to speak concerning the outward being.
Fornication always comes from a changing heart, a heart that has not been established. If your heart has been established, it will be difficult for Satan to seduce you to commit fornication. But it is easy for those who are changeable and fickle to fall into the snare of fornication.
As Paul was writing chapter three, he probably had the thought of going on to write concerning the believers’ outward being. He may have said to himself, “Paul, you are speaking concerning the inward being. Faith is a matter of the heart, and love is a matter of the emotion. Both are related to the inward being. But what about the body outwardly?” Paul was an excellent writer. When he writes about a matter, he writes about it to the uttermost. Thus, when he comes to the matter of outward sanctification, he deals with the most defiling sin, the sin of fornication.
Stay away from fornication. If you become involved in fornication, you will open the door wide to all kinds of corruption. Believers and unbelievers have been damaged by the gross sin of fornication. Therefore, Paul commands the believers to abstain from fornication. He tells them that sanctification is God’s will. Because God’s will is to keep us always in sanctification, we should abstain from everything that is unclean so that the body may be preserved.
At this point I would like to say a word to the young people. As Christians, we may need to read the newspapers to know the world situation. I read a newspaper nearly every day, but certain pages I would never read, for they are defiling. Once your mind has been defiled by looking at a certain picture, it will be very difficult for you to remove this defiling element. Furthermore, we should not listen to certain kinds of conversations or touch things that are unclean. But most important we should abstain from fornication. We must keep, preserve, safeguard, our vessel clean in sanctification before God. It must be holy, separated, and saturated with God and also kept in honor before man.
Man was created by God with honor, for man was made in God’s image. Therefore, we are to express God and represent Him. We have been assigned a most honorable position. Marriage is a holy and honorable matter, and it is for the fulfillment of God’s purpose. This is the reason the Bible tells us to honor marriage. But fornication destroys mankind and causes the one who falls into it to lose his honor. Therefore, we must preserve our body clean in sanctification and honor.
I believe we have touched the burden in Paul’s spirit as he was writing chapters three and four of 1 Thessalonians. First he dealt with the inward being represented by the heart and then with the outward being represented by the body. Inwardly, our heart must be established in holiness; outwardly, our body must be preserved in sanctification and honor. This is to have a holy life, and this holy life is for the church life. If we have a heart established blameless in holiness and a body preserved clean in sanctification and honor, then, in a practical way, we shall have a holy life for the church life.
