In this message we will continue to consider our experience and enjoyment of Christ in His coming as the hope of the church.
The coming of Christ is the cause of the complete sanctification in our spirit, soul, and body. First Thessalonians 5:23 says, “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.” Man is of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. The spirit as our inmost part is the inner organ, possessing God-consciousness, that we may contact God (John 4:24; Rom. 1:9). The soul is our self (cf. Matt. 16:26; Luke 9:25), a medium between our spirit and our body, possessing self-consciousness, that we may have our personality. The body as our external part is the outer organ, possessing world-consciousness, that we may contact the material world. The body contains the soul, and the soul is the vessel that contains the spirit. In the spirit, God as the Spirit dwells; in the soul, our self dwells; and in the body, the physical senses dwell. 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 our soul (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18); and last, by enlivening our mortal body through our soul (Rom. 8:11, 13) and transfiguring our body by His life power (Phil. 3:21).
God not only has made us holy in position by the redeeming blood of Christ to separate us unto Himself in His judicial redemption; He also is sanctifying us in disposition by His own holy nature to saturate us with Himself in His organic salvation (Heb. 13:12; 10:29; Rom. 6:19, 22; Eph. 5:26). God’s dispositional sanctification of our spirit, soul, and body is to “sonize” us divinely, making us sons of God that we may become the same as God is in His life and in His nature but not in His Godhead so that we can be God’s expression (1:4-5; Heb. 2:10-11). By sanctifying us, God transforms us in the essence of our spirit, soul, and body, making us wholly like Him in nature.
God not only sanctifies us wholly but also preserves our spirit, soul, and body complete. Wholly is quantitative; complete is qualitative. Quantitatively, God sanctifies us wholly; qualitatively, God preserves us complete, that is, He keeps our spirit, soul, and body perfect. The word wholly means “entirely, thoroughly, to the consummation.” God sanctifies us wholly so that no part of our being—our spirit, soul, or body—will be left common or profane.
Through the fall our body was ruined, our soul was contaminated, and our spirit was deadened. In God’s full salvation our entire being is saved and made complete and perfect. God is preserving our spirit from any deadening element (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). God’s preservation and His thorough sanctification sustain us to live a holy life unto maturity that we may meet the Lord in His parousia, His coming.
Although God preserves us, we need to take the responsibility, the initiative, to cooperate with His operation, to be preserved by keeping our spirit, soul, and body in the saturating of the Holy Spirit (1 Thes. 5:12-24). In the second part of verse 23 Paul says, “May your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame.” 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 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, although God is the One who preserves our spirit, soul, and body. 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.”
In verse 23 Paul refers to “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here Paul indicates that in order to be ready, prepared, and qualified for the coming back of the Lord Jesus, we must be sanctified wholly and preserved complete and without blame in our spirit, soul, and body.
In order to cooperate with God to preserve our spirit in sanctification, we must keep our spirit in a living condition by exercising our spirit. In order to preserve our spirit, we must keep our spirit living by exercising it to have fellowship with God. If we fail to exercise our spirit in this way, we will leave it in a deadened situation. To preserve our spirit is first of all to exercise our spirit, to keep it living and to pull it out of death. To rejoice, pray, and give thanks are to exercise our spirit (vv. 16-18). Moreover, we need to cooperate with the sanctifying God to be separated from a spirit-deadening situation (Num. 6:6-8; 2 Cor. 5:4). We must worship God, serve God, and fellowship with God in and with our spirit. Whatever we are, whatever we have, and whatever we do toward God must be in our spirit (John 4:24; Rom. 1:9; Phil. 2:1). In order to preserve our spirit, we should keep it from all defilement and contamination (2 Cor. 7:1) and exercise ourselves to have a conscience without offense toward God and men (Acts 24:16; Rom. 9:1; cf. 8:16).
In order to cooperate with God to preserve our soul in sanctification, we must take care of the three parts of our soul—our mind, emotion, and will. In order for our soul to be sanctified, our mind must be renewed to be the mind of Christ (12:2), our emotion must be touched and saturated with the love of Christ (Eph. 3:17, 19), our will must be subdued by and infused with the resurrected Christ (Phil. 2:13; cf. S. S. 4:4a; 7:4a), and we must love the Lord with our whole being (Mark 12:30).
Furthermore, we need to make a thorough confession to the Lord. We should stay with the Lord for a period of time, asking Him to bring us fully into the light. In the shining of His light which exposes us, we should confess our defects, failures, defeats, mistakes, wrongdoings, and sins (1 John 1:5-9). We need to confess everything that is sinful in our thoughts and in our way of thinking. We need to confess the germs of rebellion in our will. We need to confess that we express our joy and sorrow in a natural and even fleshy way and that we often hate what we should love and love what we should hate.
In order to cooperate with God to preserve our body in sanctification, we must present our body to Him so that we may live a holy life for the church life, practicing the Body life in order to carry out God’s perfect will (Rom. 12:1-2; 1 Thes. 4:4; 5:18). In order to have our body preserved, we should no longer live by our old man (Rom. 6:6). If we do not live by our old man, our body will be a slave to righteousness instead of a slave to sin (vv. 13, 19). Positively, we preserve our body by presenting it to God a living sacrifice (12:1). Then our body will even become a member of Christ (1 Cor. 6:15) so that we may live Christ, express Christ, and magnify Christ (Phil. 1:20). Furthermore, our body will be the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit for God’s dwelling (1 Cor. 6:19). God dwells in our body to move and to express Himself, to glorify Himself. In this way our spirit, soul, and body will be preserved in the Triune God. This is a holy life, and this is to be saved in the sanctification of the Spirit.