Transcript

There was man in Texas who invited a bunch of businessmen out to his ranch for a BBQ. He gathered them all around and once he got them all in place he stood up before them and said, “Look over this edge at my little lake on my ranch.

“I have filled it with crocodiles and alligators. If there is anyone willing to walk across these alligators and crocodiles and go from this end of the lake and get out on the other side alive, I’ll give you one of three things.

“I’ll give you a 500 acre ranch, a million dollars in cash, or the hand of my daughter in marriage. Whichever one you want.”

He had no sooner said it than somebody jumped into that lake. And everyone heard “Splash!” The rich Texan looked over the edge and there was a guy in that lake who didn’t even take his shoes off. He still had a three piece suit on.

He was running across those gators and crocs as fast as humanly possible. Water was flying everywhere. Crocodiles snapping and alligators were chasing him and snapping at him, and this guy was going through it all. He made it all the way to the other end.

He climbed out soaking wet but without a scratch on him. He was breathing deeply trying to get his breath. The rich Texan went over to him and said, “Son, I meant this as a practical joke. I didn’t really mean for anyone to try to go across that lake.

“But you did it and I’m as good as my word. Which one do you want, the five hundred acre ranch, the one million dollars in cash, or my daughter’s hand in marriage?”

The out-of-breath young man looked at the rich Texan and said, “I don’t want any of them. I just want to get my hands on the guy that pushed me!”

Sometimes we need a push in the Christian life, and God’s Word does that. It challenges us to progress and move forward in our practical sanctification, in living set apart lives for Christ and as a bright testimony for Him and His grace.

1 Thessalonians 5:23: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

For the last two chapters of this epistle, Paul challenged the Thessalonian church regarding their sanctification. In 1 Thessalonians 4:3, he had written, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.”

From that point forward, Paul gave the Thessalonians believers instruction about abstaining from immorality (4:3), increasing in love (4:9-10), minding your own business working with your own hands (4:11), and living sober, alert, and as a light before those outside of Christ in view of the Rapture and the Tribulation (5:5-9).

Then in rapid-fire succession, Paul lists some top-priority commands vital to our sanctification:

“Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thes. 5:16-22).

All of this instruction leads Paul back to his original challenge and God’s will for our lives to be sanctified. “Sanctify” means “to set apart,” and in its Scriptural definition, it means to be set apart TO GOD.

In being set apart to God, the Bible teaches about both positional and practical sanctification.

Regarding positional sanctification, Hebrews 10:10 teaches, “By the which will we are SANCTIFIED through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

When we trusted Christ as our Savior, that He died for our sins and rose again, at the moment of salvation we were sanctified. We were set apart by the Cross of Christ to God and we now belong to Him forever. This is positional sanctification.

We were set apart from Satan unto God. We were set apart from darkness unto light. We were set apart from sin unto righteousness. We were set apart from eternal death unto eternal life. We were set apart from hell unto heaven.

This is why Paul wrote the Corinthians, who were far from perfect in their everyday living, that “Ye are sanctified” (1 Cor. 6:11). That is our position in Christ.

We are positionally set apart unto God forever based on the redemptive work of Christ, and nothing can change that fact. We are God’s forever.

The Scriptures also teach about our practical sanctification. This refers to our spiritual growth in Christ and being set apart to God more and more in our practice. This is something that can and should change.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul is writing about practical sanctification. “Sanctify” in this verse is a verb. It thus speaks of an action. Practical sanctification is an activity.

It is a process and it’s about making progress, going from what we are to what God wants us to be in Christ, through a process of growth, molding, shaping, change, and transformation by grace and the working of the Holy Spirit.

Yakov Smirnoff, the Russian comedian, tells the story of how when he first came to the United States he was not prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores.

He said, “I’ll never forget walking down one of the aisles of the grocery store and seeing powdered milk; just add water and you get milk.

Right next to it was powdered orange juice; just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, What a country!”

We live in an instant society and culture. We like for things to take place instantly and quickly. Practical sanctification, however, doesn’t happen overnight.

It’s a process. And it is a process that should not be sped up. Just like it takes time for a child to mature into adulthood, it is necessary for it to take time for us to mature in the Lord. Sanctification is a process where we never arrive at the goal.

But we press toward the goal of being like Christ. That’s the goal Paul is talking about in Philippians 3, when he wrote,

“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect [mature]: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Practical sanctification takes place all our lives and ends only when we go home to be with the Lord.

There is both a negative and positive aspect of practical sanctification. Negatively, we need to rid ourselves of the poisons of sins, selfishness, and worldliness that plague us, so that God may free us to become who He created us to be in Christ.

And there is a positive aspect of sanctification in renewing our minds by the Word, growing closer in our relationship with Christ, living out His righteousness, and being conformed into the image our Savior.

As Puritan writer, Thomas Watson, wrote of sanctification: “It is a principle of grace savingly wrought whereby the heart becomes holy and is made after God’s own heart. A sanctified person bears not only God’s name, but His image.”

In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, the Apostle Paul points us to the One Who can help us to grow in our sanctification and to live out the instructions He has given for it: “the God of peace.” Paul prayed that “the very God of peace” would sanctify us wholly.

We can’t sanctify ourselves. We need to rely on God’s strength and provision by faith.

We are weak and we will fail if we try to live set apart lives to God in our own strength:

“My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my Portion for ever” (Psa. 73:26). We need the God of peace to sanctify us wholly, and we do so by faith in Him.

God is the God of peace, not the God of disorder, confusion, anxiety, impatience, restlessness, impulsiveness, or hurry. As God works in our life to sanctify us wholly it won’t be by these things.

Sanctification is something the God of peace does in us calmly, silently, with His unexplainable peace and strength working in us over time to change us.

As we live for the Lord, often we don’t even know it’s taking place, and we look back and we wonder how and when did this happen?

And we observe how, over time, God gently led us, transformed us little by little by His grace. By His working, He caused us to quietly grow, and He changed our lives from what we were to what we are now.

God does not delegate the sanctifying process. He does not command us to do it on our own. It does not happen by decree. God does it Himself.

“The very God of peace” sanctifies us. Sanctification happens by His action and working in our lives by grace as we walk in the Spirit and live by faith in Him. God is personally involved in our lives to sanctify us wholly.

However, here are things we have a responsibility to do in the process of God sanctifying us. Romans 6:19 tells us one, “For as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now YIELD your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”

We are called to yield and submit to the Lord. Each of us can get set in our ways, especially the older we get. But in order for God to set us apart to Himself, we need to humbly let God have the right away with our lives and yield our wills to Him.

Christ prayed in John 17:17: “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.” As the God of peace sanctifies us and sets us apart unto Himself, He does so by His Word.

As we renew our minds by the Word, we move closer to the Lord. The closer we are to the Lord, the more strength we gain and we find ourselves further from ungodliness and worldliness. The Word changes our thinking and our priorities. It leads us to be set apart from the thinking and priorities of the course of this world.

For the God of peace to sanctify us wholly, we need to be in the Word. This takes effort and discipline, and it takes time.

But the Word of God does the work of God in our lives to sanctify us. And as we spend time with His Word, we need to trust the Word and obey it, rightly divided.

2 Timothy 2:15 teaches us to rightly divide God’s Word: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. But we also must rightly divide the Word.

Because there are differences between God’s instruction for Israel under the law and God’s instruction for the Body of Christ under grace.

To be sanctified wholly we must be diligent to not wrongly apply promises and truth that is specifically and only for Israel under the law which does not coincide with God’s promises and truth for the Body of Christ under grace.

Israel had their own instructions for their sanctification, such as we read in Leviticus 20:7-8: “Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God. And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the LORD which sanctify you.”

The statutes God told Israel to keep in order to be set apart to Him was the Law of Moses. Like is true for us today, it is the Lord which sanctified Israel. But unlike today, the means by which He did that was by the Law and Israel’s obedience to it.

Today, we are not under the law, but under grace. The means by which God sanctifies us wholly to Himself is by the teachings of grace in Paul’s letters and our obedience to it.

But we can’t and won’t be sanctified wholly if we, the Body of Christ, put ourselves back under the law and try to keep it today.

For example, Israel was commanded in the Law of Moses says to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” But under grace, Paul teaches that Christ blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us by the cross, and that now “Let not man therefore judge you, in respect of an holyday, or of the Sabbath days.”

God’s command to keep the Sabbath isn’t instruction for us under grace. It was for Israel. Keeping the Sabbath is not for the Body of Christ today.

And you can’t be sanctified wholly today if you try to live by the Law. But you will be set apart to God today as you yield to and apply our instruction for sanctification today found in the truths of grace in the 13 epistles of Paul.

For example, as we trust and obey Romans 6 and our identification with Christ and dying to sin and having new life in Him, the God of peace will sanctify us:

“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Rom. 6:11-13).

The extent to which the God of peace wants to sanctify us is “wholly.” A. T. Robertson defines “wholly” as “the whole of each of you, every part of each of you.”

God’s will is for us to be WHOLLY holy! God intends for His sanctification to extend to every part of our being. There is no part of you that God doesn’t know or care about.

He does not want just part of us for Himself. He wants all of us. All of us belongs to God in our positional sanctification in Christ. He wants all of us to be set apart and to belong to Him in in our practical sanctification.

In the process of our sanctification, God wants our righteous position in Christ and our practice to grow closer and closer together, so that we become more and more righteous in behavior.

Paul made it more specific regarding being wholly sanctified when he wrote: “and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In this, we learn the makeup of every human being.

We are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Just as our Creator, man is a triune being. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He is one. Likewise, we are spirit, soul, and body, but we are one.

Our “spirit” is that part which enables us to have communion with God. It is about our worship and spiritual understanding. It gives us “God-consciousness.”

Our “soul” has to do with our intellect, emotions, and will. It gives us our “self-consciousness.”

Our “body” is our flesh, blood, and bones, and with the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, we have “world-consciousness.” The body acts on the input we receive from our spirit and soul.

A Junior Sunday School Teacher asked her eight eager 10-year-olds if they would give $1,000,000 to the missionaries. “YES!” they all screamed!!

“Would you give $1,000?” Again they shouted “YES!” “How about $100?” “Oh, YES we would!” they all agreed!! “Would you give just a dollar to the missionaries?” she asked. The boys exclaimed “YES!” just as before except for Johnnie

“Johnnie,” the teacher said as she noticed the boy clutching his pocket, “why didn’t you say ‘YES’ this time?” “Well,” he stammered, “I HAVE a dollar.”

In this little story, you see the “spirit,” the spiritual understanding of the need to give to missionaries and the spiritual conviction to give to the Lord when you have the money to give.

You see the “soul” in the emotion and reaction of being excited, and troubled, and the stubborn desire to keep the money.

And you see the “body” reacting in shouting and Johnnie clutching his pocket in holding that money in his pocket in response to the input he received from his spirit and soul.

And as the God of peace sanctifies us wholly, God works to sanctify and set apart all three parts of our person to Himself.

When we list these three parts of our being, we typically say “body, soul, and spirit.” Most times we think of the body first! And I especially do so when I am hungry!

But God puts the order here as “spirit and soul and body.” In God’s viewpoint, the spirit is of primary importance, the body last.

The order they are listed—spirit, soul, and body—teaches us where our priorities should be. When we put our relationship with God first and sanctify the spirit, then our soul and body follow.

As we put the spiritual first, this affects how we think, feel, react and what we do and where we go. We will be sanctified wholly as we live by faith and put Christ first.

Paul prayed that the Thessalonians’ “whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Preserve” means to watch over, guard, or keep.

Paul prayed that the God of peace would watch over and keep the Thessalonian believers moving on the path of sanctification until Christ comes back at the Rapture.

Paul’s prayer is that they would be “preserved blameless.” Paul does not say perfect, flawless, or faultless, but “blameless.” We will never be perfect on this side of heaven in our practice. The term blameless has to do with unquestioned integrity.

It’s an assessment of a person’s reputation and character. It means to do nothing blameworthy, having nothing that could call a person’s godliness into question.

Paul prayed that their process of sanctification and living a blameless life would be carried out with God’s help until the Rapture.

“Wilhelm was a mountaineer’s guide in Switzerland. Whenever people wanted to climb the Swiss Alps, they would ask Wilhelm to guide them because he was sure of foot and hand and eye, and because he knew the safest paths to the top.

“Wilhelm had spent his whole life guiding climbing parties to the tops of the mountains and then guiding them along the more difficult downward trail.

“Word came to Wilhelm one day that a party of climbers had begun the ascent without a guide and were lost in a blizzard which had come up without warning. Without losing a moment, Wilhelm went out to search for them.

“That was the last time poor Wilhelm was seen. When the storm was over they found him. On the slippery, treacherous mountain slope in the blinding blizzard he had slipped and fallen into a cleft in the rocks. They buried him there on the mountainside that he had loved so much.

“The people of the village at the foot of the mountain were so proud of Wilhelm that they wanted to put a tombstone over his head.

“There was a long discussion about what words they would carve into the stone. After much argument they decided on these words, “He died as he had lived—climbing.”

That is what God desires for each of our lives, that in our practical sanctification we live and die climbing to greater heights of maturity in Christ and in being like Him.

1 Thessalonians 5:24: “Faithful is He that calleth you, Who also will do it.”

The faithful One Who calls us is the God of peace. 1 Thessalonians 4:7 teaches us what God calls us to: “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.” God calls each of us “unto holiness,” unto living set apart lives unto Him for His glory.

And He will do it, because He is faithful. We can trust Him because He is trustworthy. We can fully rely on Him to sanctify us wholly because He is faithful to His Word. God is committed to our sanctification and spiritual growth.

God is faithful. God has called us unto holiness. And God will do it. These words are simple, direct, with no qualification or doubt of any kind.

It’s not, “He might do it” or “He could do it” or “If He wants to, He’ll do it.” It’s He “WILL do it.” We are pledged God’s faithfulness to sanctify us as we yield to Him.

As Paul wrote the Philippians: “Being CONFIDENT of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

Christ started the process of our practical sanctification at our salvation. We are confident that He that began this good work in our lives of setting us apart to Himself will perform it until the Rapture when we’re with Him and our sanctification is brought to perfection and completion.

As it’s been said: “The work You have in me begun, will by Your grace be fully done.”