TUESDAY 5th
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
NIV (vv23-24) – ‘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.’
ESV (vv23-24) – ‘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. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.’
Today brings us to an end at our look at 1 Thessalonians, we will continue tomorrow by going straight into 2 Thessalonians.
The call to holiness has been given in this epistle, and of our own strength we would struggle and often fail, and so Paul brings a final word of salutation, a closing statement in which he seeks to ask that God will help us in this matter, ‘May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. . .’ The work of sanctification is an ongoing work, as we seek God to help us, he will and he will also enable us to abstain from every form of evil, and enable us to become more holy, more Christlike until that day of the Lord’s appearing takes place when we the Church will be presented to Christ as a bride without spot and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:27) Paul also asks that the whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless, that is that the whole being, everything about us will be kept so that we will be ready for that wonderful day, the coming of our Lord Jesus. Paul then concludes, ‘He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it’.
God is faithful, he has saved us, he has and continues to bless us, he has provided so much for us in this life and that which is yet to come, and as we continue in him, he keeps us, therefore this must demand from us that we remain faithful to him as well. We play our part and walk in obedience, we walk as we sing in the hymn, trusting as the days go by.
Although this has been all about 1 Thessalonians, I close by quoting from Jude, ‘Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.’