Peace and Holiness
1 Thessalonians 5v23-24
6th May 2022
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
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.
The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.
There is only one true God, and He is the God of peace. There is perfect peace between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God wants His people, the church, to come to experience that peace. He wants us to learn to live together in perfect harmony, as the three Persons of the Trinity live together.
God is holy. In the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit there is no sin whatsoever. There is no selfishness, no pride, no competition, no malice, no unkindness, no arguments, no raised voices, no accusations. Again, God wants His people, the church, to become holy, as He is holy.
There is a sense in which we are already holy. 1 Peter 2:9 tells us that we, the church, are a holy nation. We have already been called by God, forgiven by God, adopted by God. We have already been given the Holy Spirit of God. We are His, and we will always be his. We are holy in the sense that we have been separated from the world, separated for God. We are God's chosen people, and we will be His for ever. We are God's ring-fenced people. In that sense, we are already holy. And that is a wonderful thing. We never deserved to be chosen by God. We never deserved for Him to make us His holy people, but He did choose us, and he has made us holy. He has separated us for Himself. Hallelujah!
But there is another sense of the word holy. We have been made holy and we are being made holy. To be made holy is to be sanctified, and Paul prays "May God himself… sanctify you through and through". We are already holy in the sense that we belong to God, not to the world. We are being made holy in the sense that our actions, our thoughts, our desires, our instincts, our priorities, our values, our philosophy, are being made holy.
We cannot make ourselves holy in this second sense, any more than we could make ourselves holy in the first sense. It's God himself who makes us holy in both senses. That's why Paul prays that God does it.
We are so weak, we're so easily tempted. A change in our health, or our circumstances, or our friendships, can make us so vulnerable to negative thoughts and actions. We need God. But it's God's intention that He sanctify us through and through – completely. And He will accomplish what He sets out to do. One day, you and I will be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5v48, 1 John 3v2-3).
The process of making us holy – of sanctification – is a gradual one, and it's performed by God not by us, but we can speed that process up by repenting thoroughly, and we can slow it down by refusing to repent. That is, we can co-operate with the Holy Spirit, and we all choose how much we co-operate with Him, and how much we fight Him off.
If we will pray, and study the Bible with an open mind, and meet together for worship, and break bread together, and if we will respond to the words of the Bible and the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we will be sanctified more quickly. Of course we will.
It's a good thing to pray according to Paul's example, that God sanctify us through and through.
I once heard that great Bible teacher David Pawson say, "I hear Christians telling me that they have difficulty hearing God. But everybody in this room can hear God right now. All you have to do is pray this prayer: 'Heavenly Father, is there something in my life that you don't like?'"
Your practical holiness is God's top priority for your life. God knows that the more holy you are, the more you will know His blessing, His anointing, His peace, His joy and His love, and the more treasure in heaven you will inherit. All Christians will life in heaven with God for all eternity, but some of us will have an even more blessed eternity that others. And the quality of our eternity depends on our holiness on earth.
Because of this, God wants to make you holy – to sanctify you. He wants this for your sake! He wants you to be as blessed as possible, both in this world and in the next.
I think we all know that the sins we still indulge, or perhaps the sins we haven't yet shaken ourselves free from, are not good for us, or for anybody else. In the moment, they can seem attractive, but we all know they do us harm in the long run. One moment of anger, or one moment of lust, or one evening of drunkenness, or one word of gossip or criticism, can seem harmless – even enjoyable – at the time, but we all know they're damaging really.
It's like an athlete training for the Olympics. We can tell ourselves that one hamburger and fries, one week lying in the sun drinking gin and tonic, won't damage our chances of Olympic gold, but they do.
And we know that one moment of self-indulgence can lead to another and another and another.
Do we follow Paul's example, and pray for holiness? I think we should. And when the Bible or the Holy Spirit point out a persistent sin in our lives, we should repent. It's not only the right thing to do; it's in our own self-interest. We want God's blessing. We want the joy of walking closely with Him, we want the best possible eternity. So let us co-operate in the work of sanctification.
Paul's desire, and God's, is that we be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope it's our desire, too. As we saw in Chapter 4, verses 13-18, Jesus is coming back. Those Christians who will have died by that time will come with Him on that return journey, and those who will be still alive on earth will rise to meet Jesus in the clouds. And on that day, I want to be blameless. I don't want to have to apologise to Jesus; I want to please Him in every way.
God – and Paul – want us to be blameless in our spirits, our souls and our bodies. God makes this His top priority. Paul writes, "The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it." If only we took our sanctification as seriously as God does! God will make us holy. To achieve this, God will bless us with many joys, and will discipline us with many hardships, as any good parent would. The writer to the Hebrews says:
Hebrews 12:7
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children.
and
Hebrews 12:10-11
... God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it
produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by
it.
I know it takes faith to receive hardship as God's loving discipline. I pray for you that you're able to do this. Like all children, we can resent parental discipline, failing to understand that it's good for us. Some of us have had harsh and unloving parents, and for you it's even harder. But God is a good Father. And God wants us to be holy, not only for His glory but for our benefit and blessing.