1 THESSALONIANS 5:23-28 - Complete In Holiness

Introduction

In 1988 South Korea was preparing to host the Summer Olympics; one of their major construction projects was the Westin Stamford hotel (at the time, the tallest hotel building in the world.) Not to be outdone, the North Koreans began construction on a hotel that was intended to be even bigger—the [RYUG-yong] Hotel in downtown Pyongyang; a 1,000 foot tall tower boasting 3,000 rooms and five revolving restaurants. Unfortunately, about three years later North Korea’s main economic trading partner—the Soviet Union—collapsed, driving the nation into an economic depression that halted construction. Though there were a few attempts to complete the project, the “Hotel of Doom” (as it is called outside of North Korea) has never housed a single guest or ever even opened its doors to the public. It’s often air-brushed out of photographs of the city, and has most recently been installed with LED lights along one side to display propaganda for the North Korean government.

It’s a real-world example of Jesus’ exact warning in the passage that we read earlier in our worship:

Luke 14:28–30 (ESV)

28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

Jesus issued His warning to the great crowds of people who were following Him because they had seen His miracles; they needed to understand that if they were to follow Him they had to leave everything behind. They had to put their whole life to death:

Luke 14:27 (ESV)

27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

The 20th Century martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote memorably about this verse:

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.” (Bonhoeffer, D. The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM Press, 1948/2001), 44.)

Jesus doesn’t call you to add Him on to your present life; He calls you to put your old life to death—the way you used to look at the world, the priorities and passions that you used to have, the things that you prized and worked for, the way you related to other people in your life—all of it must die and be reborn.

The past two chapters of 1 Thessalonians have been full of the demands Christ makes on those who follow Him—in sexual purity (4:3–8), how to walk before an unbelieving world (4:9–10), how to grieve like a Christian, (4:13-18), how to live together as the Body of Christ, the church (5:12-15), how to keep our eyes on Jesus as we live day to day (5:16–22).

Coming to a saving faith in Jesus Christ is so much more than “going to Heaven when you die”— it is about fighting those battles with the sin that remains in you every day. Every day you are commanded to be morally pure. Every day you are commanded to demonstrate godliness to a watching world. Every day you are commanded to love one another as Christ loved the Church, every day you are commanded to keep your eyes off of the lies of the world around you and fixed on the perfections of Christ.

And when you realize how far you have to go; when you see how often you stumble and fall, how often you succumb to pride or bitterness or lust or anxiety or greed or lies—and when you consider that at any moment you may have to face His glorious appearing in the clouds, with all your shortcomings and imperfections and weaknesses, it can feel like your commitment to Christ is like the Hotel of Doom in North Korea—you started something that you can’t finish. You don’t have what it takes to grow the holiness that God requires.

And that’s the Good News here at the end of this chapter, at the end of this book—that

God Himself GUARANTEES your PERFECTION in holiness as you wait for Christ’s APPEARING

In this daily battle you face for sanctification, Christian—your continual struggle to fight sin and strive for holiness—God Himself is working for you!

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely...

See here in this verse

I. The PROMISE of God TO you for holiness (1 Thessalonians 5:23a, 24)

Back in Chapter 4 we are told that sanctification is God’s will for us. And in Chapter 3 Paul prays

1 Thessalonians 3:12 (ESV)

12 ... may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you,

So this is the first great encouragement we have in our battles with sin and striving for holiness—God Himself is

The SOURCE of your sanctification (v. 23a)

It’s wonderful here that Paul specifically calls God “the God of peace”—Christian, your faith in the work of Christ to save you means that you are at peace with God! Jesus has completely taken away God’s anger against your sin; not only is He no longer angry over your sin, but He is delighted to bend His attention toward perfecting you in holiness! The God of all creation is not distant or uninterested in your battle for holiness—He has made it His personal task to see to it that you are ultimately victorious in your struggle against sin!

The great promise of God to you for holiness is that He himself is the source of your sanctification. And in verse 24 we see

The SCOPE of your sanctification (v. 24)

—that it is God’s work in you.

1 Thessalonians 5:24 (ESV)

24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

In other words, at the end of the day, your holiness is His work in you. You must not stifle or quench His work in you (as we saw a couple weeks ago)—He gives you joy in all circumstances; don’t respond with fear or unbelief. He gives you a spirit of prayer at all times; don’t spend your days in prayerlessness or boredom in prayer. He gives you reasons to be thankful in the midst of all circumstances; don’t grumble and complain.

It is God who works in you both to will and to work His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13); He is the one who has made you His workmanship and has created you for good works so that you may walk in them (Eph. 2:10).

God is faithful to complete this work in you, Christian! He will carry it out! When has He ever broken a promise He has made? This is the God who split seas in two in order to carry out His promises; He topples empires and overthrows kingdoms and breaks the power of death in order to keep His promise to save His people—how can you wonder whether He will keep His promise to make you holy? In his commentary on these verses, John Calvin wrote:

For He does not promise to be a Father to us merely for one day, but adopts us with this understanding, that He is to cherish us ever afterwards (Calvin, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 305).

And His cherishing of us includes His unbreakable promise that He will carry out this work of completing us in holiness. 1 Corinthians 1:8-9 tells us that He

1 Corinthians 1:8–9 (ESV)

8 ... will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Christian, in the midst of your struggles against sin, in your striving for sanctification, cling to the promise of God that He guarantees your perfection in holiness as you wait for His appearing.

See here the promise of God to you for holiness, and at the end of verse 23,

II. The WORK of God IN you for holiness (1 Thessalonians 5:23b)

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

this is another one of those verses that draws our theological attention—what is the difference between the “spirit” of man and the “soul” of man?? And as important as it may be to think Biblically through those things, we don’t want to miss Paul’s point here: God will leave no part of your being unchanged by His holiness! However you divide up the essence of man—God will sanctify all of it!

There are three ways that the Scriptures describe the work of God to complete His holiness in you. There is a significant sense in which you have already been sanctified—set apart, made holy. This is called positional sanctification, and it is the sanctification that

Positional sanctification secures your STANDING (1 Corinthians 6:11)

and it is taught in verses like 1 Corinthians 6:11. Paul is writing about some of the sins that the Corinthians had formerly been immersed in, and goes on to say

1 Corinthians 6:11 (ESV)

11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

When you confess your sin in repentance and come to God believing in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus as the payment for your sin, the Scripture says that you are at that moment made holy in God’s sight! Christ’s blood atones for your sin; you are holy in His sight. When God looks on you, Christian, He sees the righteousness of Christ in you—He sees you positioned in holiness of His Son.

But at the same time, we know that our experience of the holiness of Christ in us is far from perfect, isn’t it? Our day to day lives are far more accurately described by Paul’s description of the inner war that he fought with his sin:

Romans 7:22–25 (ESV)

22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

And this is the second wonderful work that God promises to do in our sanctification—that day by day, the work of His Spirit in our lives increases our holiness in Christ. Positional sanctification secures your standing, and

Progressive sanctification ensures your GROWTH (John 17:19; cp. Hebrews 10:14)

in holiness. Jesus prayed before His crucifixion in John 17:19:

John 17:19 (ESV)

19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

Jesus set Himself apart to go to the cross so that you would become holy. This is what the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 10:14:

Hebrews 10:14 (ESV)

14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

God declares you sanctified in His sight because of Jesus’ work on the Cross, and here you see that your ongoing experience of sanctification—your increasing victories in your battles with sin, finding your joy in God and His Word and His people more than the fleeting pleasures of the world. Here in this life, as you strive in those battles with sin, you will never become sinless, but God promises that, as His Spirit works in you, you will sin less!

The work of God in you for holiness includes positional sanctification that secures your standing before Him, the progressive sanctification that ensures your growth in holiness, and the Scriptures point to the day when you will be

Perfected in sanctification with promised GLORY (1 John 3:2; cp. Philippians 3:20-21)

John wrote in his first epistle:

1 John 3:2 (ESV)

2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

When Christ appears on that Day of His return, you and I will receive that new resurrection body that is like His—never to die again—but more than that, we will receive the perfection of our holiness! Of all the reasons we are eager for Jesus to return—to bring justice to the earth, to vanquish His enemies, to conquer death once and for all, to raise the dead in Christ to life—surely one of the greatest reasons of all to eagerly await Him is because He is bringing your perfect holiness with Him!

Philippians 3:20–21 (ESV)

20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

To be completely and utterly free from sin—to be able to finally lay down your weapons; finally to “train no more” for war against the world, the flesh and the devil; never again to have to come in repentance and plead the blood of Christ once again for your failure to love Him more than your sin; to have that pure and untrammeled intimacy with Him that you have longed for all your life; to finally possess that purity of heart in perfected holiness so that you may see the very face of God and not be consumed! This is the great promise of glory that belongs to you, Christian, on the Day when Christ appears and perfects you in holiness for all eternity!

But there’s a lot of miles between that Day and today, isn’t there? In truth, it might be in the next few days before we hear that cry of command; or it might be the next few centuries. And so our duty until that Day is clear: We continue to trust the holiness of Christ that He imputes to us by His work on the Cross, we strive to grow in that holiness by not quenching His Spirit as He grants us the grace to say no to sin and yes to Him.

And in the final verses of this letter, Paul leads us from the mountaintop of these glorious promises of our complete sanctification—spirit, soul, and body—and brings us back to the lowlands of our every day duties to one another. Here we see:

III. The PRESENCE of God THROUGH you for holiness (1 Thessalonians 5:25-28)

Paul has just told the Thessalonians that God is faithful to completely sanctify them, body, soul and spirit. “He is faithful; He will do it!” And in these verses Paul calls on his readers to pursue the holiness God has promised them in at least three ways. God is faithful to sanctify you, and here are some specific ways to see that sanctification at work in your life—as these things grow in you (and as others see these things growing in you,) you have evidence of God faithfully growing you into His holiness.

First, a people who are growing in holiness are

PRAYING for one another (v. 25)

Remember how Paul opens this letter by praying for them:

1 Thessalonians 1:2 (ESV)

2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers,

and here he asks them to be praying for him!

1 Thessalonians 5:25 (ESV)

25 Brothers, pray for us.

Paul knows he can ask for their prayers because he knows God’s Spirit it at work in them, sharpening their desires to pray, increasing their effectiveness in prayer. When you find that God is drawing you more and more into prayer, that the boredom and distractions and superficiality and empty repetition that used to characterize your praying has been falling away and replaced by a new joy in prayer and greater times of intercession and praise before God, that is because God is at work in your sanctification! As you pray for others (and as they pray for you), God is working out His purposes to conform you more and more to the image of His Son, who loves to pray for you!

You see the holiness God promises you working out as you grow in praying for one another, and as you grow in

ENCOURAGING one another (v. 26)

In verse 26 Paul writes

1 Thessalonians 5:26 (ESV)

26 Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.

As you grow in the sanctification that God promises you, Christian, you will see that holiness coming out in the way you love one another—and once again, please see here how indispensable a body of believers is to your holiness! The arena in which your sanctification plays out is in your relationships with your brothers and sisters in Christ!

When you see a family of believers who love one another, who enjoy spending time with each other, who are always looking for ways to encourage and strengthen and enrich one another, you are seeing a church that is full of people who are being made holy together!

In Paul’s day, it was appropriate for close friends to greet one another with a kiss—in our day we reserve kissing for certain intimate relationships between parents and children or husbands and wives. But while it wouldn’t be appropriate for church members to kiss one another in our culture, there are other ways that this kind of affection and love are clearly put on display—the time we spend with one another, the involvement in each other’s lives outside of this hour, the readiness to sacrifice on behalf of a fellow member, the small acts of kindness and thoughtfulness that cannot be faked, but come out of a genuine and deep love for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

You see the evidence of God’s sanctifying work in your life as you increase in prayer for one another, as you increase in affection for one another. And most of all, you see evidence of God’s sanctifying work in your life when you

HONOR the WORD with one another (vv. 27-28; cp. 2 Timothy 3:16)

Paul becomes almost stern in verse 27:

1 Thessalonians 5:27 (ESV)

27 I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.

Verse 25 was a request— Won’t you pray for us?” Verse 26 was a direction: “Give our love to the members of the church.” But suddenly, Paul issues a straight-up command:”I put you under oath...” “Swear to me that you will read this letter to everyone!”

And the reason that I think Paul is so suddenly insistent here is because this direction is the sunlight in which the flower of sanctification must grow: “Read the Scriptures to everyone!” Don’t forget; this letter that Paul wrote to the Thessalonians is the Word of God—it is

2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)

16 ...breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

Beloved, without this Word regularly being sown into your heart, you have no assurance that you will grow in holiness—this is the means by which God “trains you in righteousness”, it is the Spirit-inspired way that He does His work to convict you of sin and righteousness and judgment, the way that He brings to your mind everything that Jesus has said to you, the way that He draws you to the Father through the Son. When you place yourself regularly under the proclamation of this Word, your sanctification will flourish in its light.

God Himself guarantees your perfection in holiness as you wait for Christ’s appearing—He has promised you, Christian, that you will become holier than you ever thought possible! You stand in the righteousness and holiness of Christ Himself—who can tear you away from that perfection? He has given you His Spirit to dwell in you—what temptation to sin can ever overwhelm His presence? He has sworn that He Himself—the God of peace—will not rest until every last part of you, spirit, soul and body are made complete and perfect in holiness!

Christian, with this powerful promise from God Himself—that you will be made holy—how can you not run to this battle every day, strengthened for victory over the sin that besets you? How can you leave here today, after being in the presence of God Himself who has called you here and pledged to you again His sworn purpose to complete you in His own holiness through Christ—the holiness that He suffered incomprehensible agonies of body and spirit to purchase for you—how can you go home this afternoon and take up the pursuit of your lusts again? How can you even consider pouring the cold sewage water of your appetites for comfort and wealth and sex and popularity over the fire of the Holy Spirit that burns in you to complete you in His holiness?

Look around you at your brothers and sisters in Christ here in this place. He has given you to them—and has given them to you—so that you may work out the holiness He is working into you as you pray for one another, as you delight in one another, as you read His Word to one another. You have seen here that these relationships He has given you are one of His favored means of working this perfection of holiness into you—and how many of you are going to jet out that door within seconds of the benediction in a few moments because you can’t be bothered to stay and cultivate those relationships? How many of you won’t be back here for the next two weeks because you have to work—and you won’t even fight for this hour with your boss, because you’re afraid it will make you look like a religious freak? You would rather quench the work of the Spirit of God making you holy in this body than lose out on another half hour of down time this afternoon; you care more about what how your paycheck would be affected by fighting for Sundays off than you do about what giving up worship will do to your soul? Why?

Do you not know that to despise the holiness God offers you means to choose damnation?

Hebrews 12:14 (ESV)

14 Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

To be indifferent to this holiness, this sanctification God promises is to be indifferent to God Himself. To say “I don’t care about my holiness” is to say “I don’t care to see the Lord”! On that day when He appears, if you do not possess this holiness, you will not see Him coming in any sense except in judgment. You cannot create this holiness in yourself—I hear people say all the time that they are “a good person” and that “nobody’s perfect, but God understands”, and that “As long as God sees that I’ve done my best and haven’t really hurt anyone, He will accept me when I die.” Friend, if that is how you are expecting to stand before God on that Day, please understand that without this holiness that comes from Jesus Christ, you will not stand. That day will be a day of damnation for you, not a Day of joy or peace.

This holiness only comes to you when you come to God confessing that you are a sinner and hopelessly lost in your rebellion against Him. Don’t despise this holiness; don’t turn away in indifference to the call God issues to you in His Word this morning. Come talk to me; come talk to any one of the elders; let us help you come to a clear understanding of what it means to trust Christ for your holiness, to hold on to His death, burial and resurrection as your only hope for escaping the wrath of God that will be revealed on that Day. Don’t despise this holiness; don’t turn your back on this moment to make sure that when that Day comes you will see not an avenging Judge, but your dear Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

1 Thessalonians 3:11–13 (ESV)

11 Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, 12 and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, 13 so 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. AMEN

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

Read 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 12:14. How do these verses relate to each other? Is sanctification our responsibility, or God’s? How does your understanding of where your holiness before God comes from affect the way you approach your Christian walk?

What is the difference between the sanctification you have already received, and the sanctification you will receive on the Day when Christ returns? How does this enable to you “strive” for holiness in your daily life?

Why is gathering for other believers for worship as a body so essential to the growth of holiness in your life? What does your current level of commitment to the gathered worship of the Church say about your desire for holiness in your life?