Word of Encouragement (6/29/2021)

Let’s move on to another prayer of Paul’s in 1 Thess. 5:23-24: “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.”

The first thing we notice is that sanctification is God’s work. That is why Paul prays to God to sanctify the Thessalonians. So, the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, “Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness” (#35).

When we say that sanctification is God’s work, it doesn’t mean that we have no role in it. We must keep in mind that God works in different ways. Think of the two main ways God works: miracles and providence. God’s miraculous work is His direct, supernatural work on the created order (like Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead), or His work which goes against the natural order of things (like Jesus walking on the water or feeding the five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish), or His special use of the natural laws to demonstrate His lordship over nature (like God parting the Red Sea with the east wind blowing over it all night long). Providence, on the other hand, is God’s work through the natural order of things in the created order. How does God feed the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field and provide for our needs? By using the laws of nature to give the ability for the animals to hunt and the trees to photosynthesize and the people to work. We can generalize the two in this way: while miracles are God’s direct, supernatural work on the created order, providence is God’s indirect work through the laws of nature and the agency of His creatures.

We can say that God’s work of sanctification is like God’s work of providence whereas God’s act of justification is like God’s work of miracle. In justification, God works directly without any instrument: He does everything for us, outside of us, and without us. Jesus lived a life of perfect goodness so we can be declared righteous. Jesus suffered and died for us to pay the penalty of our sins so we can be pardoned. All we need to do is accept all that Christ has done for us by faith. And God pardons our sins and declares us righteous while we are sinners. He can do this without sacrificing His justice because of what Christ has done for us.

Sanctification, on the other hand, is God’s work in us and through us. God transforms us, not like a potter who makes a vessel out of a lump of clay, but as an inspiring coach who builds a winning team out of his athletes. This analogy is far from perfect, but it serves to show that the athletes are not totally passive like the lump of clay; they do have to work hard. Of course, God is even more intimately involved in our sanctification than a coach ever can, given that He is the One who supplies us with all that we are and all that we have, not to mention His Word, His Spirit, and the means of grace. The WSC (Westminster Shorter Catechism) tells us that God enables us “more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness”. Paul told the Philippians, “God… works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). This is why they are to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (2:12).

Paul reinforces the idea of our sanctification as God’s work in v. 24: “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” Paul has already told us that our sanctification is God’s will (4:3). Because our sanctification is the will of a faithful God, who is sovereign in His power and wisdom, He will not fail to accomplish it. What a wonderful assurance! But God doesn’t give us this assurance to make us lazy, does He? Rather, it is designed to make us work out our salvation with fear and trembling because He is at work in us (Phil. 2:13). Let us pray this prayer for ourselves and for our fellow saints and, as we do, let us encourage one another to grow in the likeness to Christ!