Sanctified by God

It is the will of God to have the Spirit of God, use the Word of God to make the children of God look like the Son of God. God Himself is at work. He has to be the one within conforming us to the image of Christ.

We cannot do it on our own. Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb, and for the next few days, we're going to consider some of God's richest blessings for us as Christians, the benedictions and doxologies that we find in Scripture. These divine pronouncements are a wonderful source of encouragement for weary Christians, and to guide us through them is Dr. H.B.

Charles, Jr. Welcome to this session. We are studying the benedictions and doxologies of Scripture. In this particular talk, I want to point your attention to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 23 and 24.

It is a prayer for holiness, a benediction for our sanctification. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 12 through 25 records Paul's final instructions to this young church. There are some fifteen commands in these verses. Verses 12 and 13 are instructions about how the saints should relate to their spiritual leaders. Verses 14 and 15 are instructions concerning how the saints should relate to one another. In verses 16 through 18, Paul gives instructions about how the saints should relate to their circumstances.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, as this is the will of God concerning you in Christ Jesus. Verses 19 through 22 are instructions related to how the saints should relate to divine revelation. Then our text, verses 23 and 24, follow. The previous instructions make it clear that to live in light of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have work to do. We can't just coast through life having a good time. We're to live in light of that day and there is much that God expects of us. There is work for us to do. But verses 23 and 24 sit behind these instructions as if it's anticipating the question, what about the things we cannot do? There is work we must do, but what about the work that we cannot do? Verses 23 and 24 is the answer for those things we cannot do in our own strength, in our own wisdom, in our own resources.

In fact, it is the enabling for all of the commandments that we are commanded to do. Verses 23 and 24 is prayer, all that we are to do for God, all the obedience to His commands that we're to live out, all the service to one another, all the faith in midst of life circumstances is to be fleshed out through a life of believing prayer. The key to prayer is dependence upon God. And this benediction sits here as a prayer to remind the saints of our neediness for God. One writer noted that of all of the benedictions in the writings of Paul, this seems to be the one least used and notes that it's a shame, and he's right. The question is, why is this benediction so neglected? Maybe the best answer is that we so easily become preoccupied with what we want God to do for us that we neglect what we need God to do in us. There are other benedictions that affirm God's goodness and God's favor and God's blessings for us as we face the realities of life.

This is all about the internal reality of the believer's life. It is a reminder that God calls us to be holy, not merely happy. It is His will that we live sanctified lives. And it tells us we can pursue holiness in this world with confidence of divine help. Verse 23 bids us to ask God to make us holy. Verse 24 bids us to trust God to make us holy. Consider the two verses of this benediction.

First, verse 23 bids us to ask God to make us holy. 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 prayer consists of a comforting invocation and lofty petitions.

Note the comforting invocation. The prayer, as all prayers should, begins with God, focuses on God, exalts God, says, May the God of peace Himself. He begins this statement of blessing, this prayerful benediction with the assurance that God is at work in His people, both powerfully and personally. He is at work powerfully as He is the God of peace. This reference to God as the God of peace is representative of His power.

God is not the author of confusion, Paul will say elsewhere. God, at the same time, is the only one who can keep the peace. At the beginning of this letter in chapter 1, verse 1, he commends the saints with grace and peace. And in a real sense, grace and peace are synonymous. They represent the enabling help of God. This reference here to God being the God of peace is what F.F.

Bruce called the sum total of gospel blessings. God is the God of peace, he says, and He's at work in us powerfully, but He's also at work in us personally. Now may the God of peace Himself. One of the keys to being a good leader is to know how to delegate.

But the counterpart to that truth is that to be a good leader, you've got to know what not to delegate. Here we find the undelegated work of God Almighty, the sanctification of His people. Making us holy in Christ is no delegated work for God. The God of peace Himself is at work to conform us to the image of His Son. If I may say it the way I like to say it, it is the will of God to have the Spirit of God, use the Word of God to make the children of God look like the Son of God. God Himself is at work.

He has to be the one within conforming us to the image of Christ. We cannot do it on our own. For us to try would be the folly of the young man that just got his plumber's license and went to a trip to Niagara Falls and gazed at it for a moment and then mumbled to himself, I think I can fix this.

No, you can't. We can't resist temptation. We can't live obediently. We can't submit fully to God in our own strength. Only God, the God of peace Himself, can make us what we are to be in Christ. Indeed, we are, Philippians chapter 2 verse 12, to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

But Philippians 2, 13 makes it clear that we are able to work out our salvation because it is God who is at work within us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. And so the verse begins with a comforting invocation and then moves to lofty request. 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.

There's really two petitions here. There's a prayer for sanctification and a prayer for preservation. First, there's a prayer for sanctification. May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely.

The word sanctify means to make holy. We are made holy positionally in Christ Jesus. The whole life of the believer is a submission to God and a conformity to the Son so that our walk might reflect our position in Christ. This is his prayer here.

These are saints who have been saved by the grace of God, but they are now to live out the life of the teachings of our faith. And that life is just as dependent upon divine help as our very salvation. We cannot be holy in our own strength, our own wisdom, our own resources. We need God to sanctify us. And notice he says, may God sanctify us completely through and through, through to the end. One commentator made it clear that no believer can avoid all evil any more than a boat can avoid the water that it's in.

But the boat can avoid leaks. And so what is offered here is not some perfect sanctification but a thorough, complete submission of life to God. It is the spirit of Philippians chapter 3, verses 13 and 14, where Paul says, Brethren, I admit that I have not yet attained the perfect standard, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching for what lies ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He prays then for our sanctification and then he prays for preservation. In a real sense, this is just another way of praying for the same thing. He says, may the God that sanctifies be the God that keep you that way until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This second part of the petition confirms and compliments and completes the first. And so in one sense is Paul asking for the same thing in different words, and at the same time there is a distinction here. It's one thing for a mother to clean the house, it's another thing with husband and children running about for her to keep it that way. There these are in a real sense two different tasks and he says we should look to God for both. God alone is able to clean us up and God alone is able to keep us that way. And so he says, may this God sanctify you through and through. And in that same spirit he says, may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Again, this is no assurance of some sinless perfection on earth, but a thorough obedience of life where every aspect of my life is submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Or in the language of Proverbs 3 and 6, we're to acknowledge him in all our ways.

My life is not compartmentalized where I welcome Christ into my home of my heart, but I have rooms closed off to him. May the whole spirit and soul and body, all that we are thoroughly and completely be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In chapter 2 verse 10, Paul says, you are witnesses in God also how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers.

That's the example with which Paul walked when he ministered to this young church. And in chapter 3 verse 13, he prays that the Lord may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. And what he prays there, he gives assurance of here that God is able to keep us blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Archaeologists have found ancient burial places of early Christians that were marked simply with the term, without blame. No doubt the expectation that God would do exactly here with this benediction clear, that he will keep us blameless until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so verse 23 is a prayer of benediction in which we ask God to make us holy. And then verse 24 bids us to trust God to make us holy. There is a, verse 23, comforting invocation that moves to a lofty petition. Now in verse 24, it ends with a blessed assurance. Most of Paul's benedictions end with the word, amen. What does amen mean? Verse 24 may be the best definition of the word, amen. He who calls you is faithful.

He will surely do it. Amen. Here are three reasons why we could trust God to make us holy, to sanctify us completely, and to keep us body, soul, and spirit blameless until the coming of the Lord. First he says God has called you. God has called you. There is this external call of the gospel the sinner hears that bids us to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then there is the effectual internal call of God himself.

This is what Paul is referring to here. God has called us. Chapter 2, verse 12, he says we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and his own glory. God has called us into his kingdom and into his glory.

The language here though in verse 24 is present tense. There is this ongoing call on our lives. It is not that we have been saved and we just coast to glory. There is a high standard of following Christ that we are to pursue. God calls us.

Our assurance is rooted and resting in that call. Romans 8, verse 28 through 30 says then we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called. And those whom he called he also justified. And those whom he justified he also glorified.

This is the golden chain of eternal security that cannot be broken. We trust God to complete the good work that he has begun in us in Christ because God has called us. Secondly, he says though God is faithful, the God who has called us is faithful. The fact that God calls us is his divine activity, but the fact that he is faithful is his divine character. What he does is rooted in who he is. He is not a man that he should lie. He is not the son of man that he should have to repent of any wrongdoing.

Numbers 23 verse 19, God is faithful to complete the good work that he has begun in you. Two young boys walked up on a man shoveling his snow out of his driveway. They asked if he wanted them to finish the job, they said, we'll charge you $20 to finish shoveling the snow. He laughed, he says, sorry young men, I'm halfway through, you should have come early. And they laughed back at him. And they said, man, all our business comes from guys like you who start but don't feel like finishing.

This is the human problem. We are not able to finish what we start, but not so with God. He is faithful. The one who has called you will not abandon you until he has completed what he has started in you. Philippians 1 verse 6 says we can be confident of this very thing, that what God starts, God finishes. What God begins, God concludes. What God initiates, God consummates. We leave unfinished business, sometimes out of negligence and sloth and irresponsibility.

Sometimes we just don't have the time, energy, resources, help or knowledge to finish what we start. But one way or the other, we will all begin things in life that will be marked incomplete in the final inspection, but not so with God. He is, in a word, faithful. And confidence in the faithfulness of God is evident not merely in how you thank God for what he has done, but how you trust God for what he has yet to do. Now Imitations 3, 22 and 23 declares, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His compassions never come to an end.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. You can trust God to make you holy, to finish the good work he has begun in you, to conform you to the image of his Son, because number one, God has called you. Number two, the God who has called you is faithful. And number three, the faithful God who has called you will do it. Or as Paul says, he doesn't merely say he'll do it, he'll surely do it.

Because the caller is a doer. The one who calls is faithful to accomplish what he has begun in us. He will surely do it. What a wonderful assurance those five words are. He will surely do it.

What it. Well, technically verse 23, but there's a glorious ambiguity to that word it. Whatever you need him to do, he's able to do it. Ray Pritchard writes of this verse that if we concentrate on our weakness, we will lose confidence. But if we concentrate on God's faithfulness, we will just grow in confidence. This is a reminder that our confidence is not to be in ourselves. But the confidence for the Christian journey and all that is required is that he who has called us is faithful and he will surely do it. There is much that we must do in obedience to God to live out the high standard of Christian discipleship. But we do so with confidence that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

And in that regard, the songwriter is true. Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take him at his word, just to rest upon his promises, just to know thus says the Lord. Amen. Amen. Not only did God do everything necessary to save us, he also promises to sanctify us and help us grow in grace. That's one of the many important lessons from today's edition of Renewing Your Mind.

We're glad you could be with us. Dr. H.B. Charles Jr. has been our teacher. He is pastor at Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He taught eight lessons in all, a series we call Blessings and Praise, Benedictions and Doxologies in Scripture. These lessons will show you how much God preserves and protects his children, how he strengthens us during life's trials, and how he gives us all we need to live for his glory. And we'd like to send you this series on DVD for your donation of any amount. We've made it easy for you to request it.

You can call us at 800-435-4343, or if you prefer, you can go online to renewingyourmind.org. And here's a brief portion of what Dr. Charles will be teaching tomorrow. He is the God of all grace.

And while the enemy would have the believer to think that you are going through what you are going through because God does not care for you, here Peter says, let me tell you, even though you're going through, you are the beneficiary of a God who is the God of all grace. That's tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. Please join us. We'll be right back.