Wholehearted [part iii]

This is the third message in a series we are working through on the topic of being wholehearted. Let me pull together what we have noted from the first two messages and lay our how we will wrap this up in these last two messages this week and next week. It started with taking a look at the greatest commandment in the Bible known as the Shama and summarized in the New Testament by Jesus. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. We noted that first week that this command is not so much a categorical checklist for loving God, but rather an invitation from God to be whole.

We have explored some of the ways in which God has made us as wholistic human beings—that we have a heart, soul, mind, and body—all interdependently working together as indispensable parts of who God created us to be. But we have also come to confess and admit all the ways we have become people who are fractured and torn on the inside; we are people who lack wholeness.

Author and teacher Chuck DeGroat writes about this in his book, Wholehearted. DeGroat notes how exhausting and draining it is to live as a person who lacks wholeness. The last two years in our country and our world has made this rather obvious. We are all people struggling to find and embrace this wholeness. We are divided and fractured and torn apart as a society because we are people who are fractured and torn apart ourselves on the inside. I think we all recognize that we want something better. We all want to ease some of the anxiety or tension or bitterness that we see all around us, and we all see—to some degree—inside of ourselves. We long to be whole.

Today I am going to pull a few verses from the conclusion of the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Christians living in Thessaloniki. Let’s look at these verses, spend a few minutes picking apart what Paul is saying, and then consider what this part of the Bible is telling us about being wholehearted.

1 Thessalonians 5:16–24 NIV

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil. 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Let’s start by making some sense of what Paul is talking about in these verses. After all, this does seem like a rather random list: rejoice, pray, thanksgiving, test prophesies, reject evil. It looks like this is all over the map, so where are the common threads that give these instructions a unified purpose? For that to make sense we should remind ourselves that this passage comes at the very close of the letter to the Thessalonians. This means that—as Paul often does—there are summaries of the letter content tucked into his final instructions and blessing. Let me note a few features that help bring these words into focus.

vs 16-22 — instructions turn towards interaction with God

more accurately in English as a bullet list instead of sentences

First off, I dropped us right in the middle of a paragraph—or so it seems. This list of final instructions starts back at verse 12, and I skipped us ahead to verse 16. Here is how the division works. Verses 12-15 are instructions for how the Thessalonians are to interact with other people. Then in verse 16—where I began reading—the instructions turn towards interaction with God. We see this also by the way the translators have chosen to insert verse divisions. Starting in verse 16, newly each command is set apart as its own verse. This reflects the Greek writing of Paul in which—starting at verse 16—we could think of this more accurately in English as a bullet list instead of sentences.

stop smothering the work of the Holy Spirit among you!

Those first three instructions echo earlier themes in the letter to the Thessalonians: joy, prayer, and thanksgiving. Then we move on to this other bizarre discussion of the Spirit and prophesies. Do not quench the Spirit; or as the older NIV Bible says, do not put out the Spirit’s fire. The force of this instruction gets lost in English from the Greek. It is not so much that Paul is giving a suggestion of something to avoid, but that Paul is calling out something they were already doing and telling them to knock it off. Here is what Paul is telling the church: Stop smothering the work of the Holy Spirit among you! And the next line flows from it as a subpoint on the list—Paul offers contempt for prophecy as an example of smothering the Spirit.

Paul has a rather narrow definition of what prophecy is in the New Testament. He would not refer to prophecy as being predictions of the future or end-times. In another one of Paul’s letters he explains what he means by prophecy.

1 Corinthians 14:3 NIV

3 But the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort.

when we fail to attribute goodness to God, we quench the Spirit — opposite of that is also true; when we attribute or assign to the Spirit anything that is contrary to the Word of God, this quenches the Spirit as well

The gift of prophecy is evident in those who use the word of God to strengthen, encourage, and comfort others. Paul makes an example out of prophecy to illustrate his larger point about smothering the Spirit. Hold onto the good; reject what is evil. When we overlook and fail to attribute to the Holy Spirit what is good—what is provided from God for our strengthening, our encouragement, and our comfort—when we fail to attribute that goodness to God, we quench the Spirit. But opposite of that is also true. Whenever we attribute or assign to the Spirit anything that is contrary to the Word of God—that which is NOT strengthening, encouraging, or comforting—this quenches the Spirit as well.

Alright, this path to wholeheartedness is looking pretty tough, if not impossible. I have to rejoice always even if I am not feeling very joyful. I have to pray continually even if I do not know what to be prying about. I have to give thanks in all things even if I am not feeling very grateful. On top of that I have to be careful in everything I am not smothering or quenching the Holy Spirit by misrepresenting God in any way. If these are examples of the steps I need to take in order to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, it’s no wonder I struggle with wholeness.

what if Paul is not describing the ingredients that go into becoming wholehearted, but rather the fruit that we bear as a result of being wholehearted?

But hold on. What if we have something backwards here. What if Paul is not describing the ingredients that go into becoming wholehearted, but rather the fruit that we bear as a result of being wholehearted? What if Paul is not describing the path to get there, but instead is describing what it looks like to be there.

what if wholeheartedness is not so much about doing something, but rather is about being something?

In other words, what if wholeheartedness is not so much about doing something, but rather is about being something? Wholeheartedness is not something you get done; it is something you are.

Let’s admit it. We are people who are so much better at doing than at being. We tend to define everything in terms of doing rather than being. In fact, we almost always wrap up our being inside of our doing. Here’s what I mean; when someone asks you to tell about yourself, what do you talk about? Most of the time we answer that question by talking about what it is that we do. It’s the career that we do for a living, or the hobbies that we do. Our natural tendency is to define ourselves by what it is we produce, what we get done, what we have to show for ourselves at the end.

It’s no wonder then that we think of wholeheartedness in this same way. It must be something that we somehow have to do, have to produce, have to show for ourselves. We don’t know how to think about ourselves any other way. So let me give you a few examples of what it means to be something without the doing.

you are forgiven by God

You are forgiven by God (because of grace, through Jesus). You cannot ‘do’ your own forgiveness. All you have is to be forgiven. But we have such a hard time accepting this. There are many people who feel like they could never truly be members of a church because they feel like they have nothing of value to offer, nothing of significance to contribute. But listen to the gospel; your place in God’s family here is not about you doing something, it is about you being something—being forgiven. So often then we get so stuck trying to do our own forgiveness that we never allow ourselves to be forgiven.

you are loved by God

Here’s another one: you are loved by God. None of us can ever make God love us. You cannot make anybody love you. You can do all you can to try to romanticize that perfect someone; but you cannot make another person fall in love with you. And how much more with God because God does not fall in love with you, God has always loved you since before you were born. You can never make somebody love you. All you can do is be loved. And yet, sometimes—just like forgiveness—we refuse to allow ourselves to be loved because we think we haven’t done the right things to earn it or deserve it. God’s love for you is entirely selfless. Allow yourself to simply be loved by God.

Now then, what if our wholeheartedness works that way? We never allow ourselves to truly be wholehearted because somewhere deep down we’ve been duped by the lie that we must have to do something in order to achieve this wholeness. This is exactly where the apostle Paul goes next.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV

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

“May God himself, the God of peace, make you wholly holy.”

Sanctified through and through. Kept blameless. Who is the one making this happen? Who is the one doing the sanctifying and the keeping? The Bible is very clear that God is the one who makes those things happen. You and I are the recipients; all we do is receive it. We cannot make ourselves sanctified. Paul is playing around with some Greek words here that actually come across in English with the same playful alliteration. Sanctification comes from the Greek word hogios which means holiness or to be made holy. The next Greek word is holoklanos. The English Bible I have up here translates that using the idiom through and through. Maybe you have a translation that says completely or entirely. Holoklanos means whole. A more literal translation of verse 23 would read, “May God himself, the God of peace, make you wholly holy.”

God is the one who gives wholeheartedness — all we have is to receive it Wholeheartedness is not something for you to do, it is something for you to be.

Then the same word is immediately repeated, that your whole (holoklanos) spirit, soul, and body may be kept blameless. Paul is describing wholeheartedness for us in this verse. He is giving us a picture of what heart, soul, mind, and strength looks like. And he is absolutely certain about one thing; God is the one who gives wholeheartedness, God is the one who makes wholeheartedness happen. All we have is to receive it. Wholeheartedness is not something for you to do, it is something for you to be.

when that healing sanctification begins to take place, we see it show up, it bears fruit

When you receive wholeheartedness from Jesus, that begins healing the fractures and tears between you heart, soul, mind, and body; when that healing sanctification begins to take place, we see it show up, it bears fruit. We see things like rejoicing always, praying on all occasions, thanksgiving in every circumstance. That is the fruit of wholeheartedness, from a heart, soul, mind, and body that has received and embraced wholeness.

Jesus offers this to you. He invites you to a life of wholeness in which you may love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Receive that invitation from God. Invite Jesus into your life and allow yourself to be wholehearted.

next time: how to cultivate wholeheartedness

Now, I am going to leave it here for this week. We are going to come back next Sunday and take one more look at this topic of wholeheartedness. Because maybe there are some listening today who might be thinking, this all sounds wonderful, I would love a wholehearted life, but I am having trouble finding it and making it a reality. Next week we will wrap up this series by considering just one question: how to cultivate wholeheartedness. Once you receive this healing gift of whole heart, soul, mind, and strength from Jesus, is there anything you can do to cultivate and nurture and grow this wholeheartedness? The answer is yes. Come back next week to hear more.