By
George Nielsen
Paul the Apostle wrote to the
Thessalonians and spoke a blessing and a special impartation of grace over this
group of believers as he closed the letter now titled 1 Thessalonians. In chapter 5, verse 23, he wrote:
23 Now may the God of peace
Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be
preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. [NKJV]
First, Paul addresses a particular
character quality of God Almighty, peace, which he meant to convey the idea of Shalom.
Shalom included the absence of conflict, and also rest, personal
fulfillment, and contentment. Shalom has
this extra, emotional, aspect to it because it is a state of being where there
was no lack of any needed thing and thus no stress over needing “more.”
Then Paul gives his spoken petition
that he addressed to the God of peace, Yahweh-Shalom. He asks for a special move of God in
the Thessalonian church – to sanctify those people, and to do so completely. We,
in the Church today, probably do understand sanctification in a basic sense;
it means to be set apart for a special purpose to serve God and to please God
by living a life of personal holiness.
Paul was asking God for more than this!
I am not functioning as an apostle, but I am called and functioning as a
teacher and pastor. I am asking the
same petition for you who are reading this message I ask that Holy Spirit move in a special and
mighty way, imparting divine Peace (Shalom)
to you and stirring your heart and mind to desire sanctification at the
next level, beyond the basics – to “sanctify you completely.”
I am afraid that we are not taking the
concept of sanctification seriously. The
typical view is that “God does His part by setting us apart for service, when
we Come to Jesus.” But we don’t lock-in on our part, serving God.
Instead we live for God “just enough to
get by and look OK.” This isn’t rebellion, but it is a casual
attitude that doesn’t produce results.
When this is our viewpoint, satan can easily distract us and lie to us,
saying things like “you can’t succeed” or “you’re not gifted, not able, don’t
have time, etc.” Or, maybe you’re a
man who is rebelling, in a passive way – believing the lie “Christianity is
for girly-men; I’m a real man.” For
you, serving God means “I go to church on Sundays,” but that is the full extent
of your sanctification.
As I stated above, I have called out to
Holy Spirit to stir up your desire, so you want to receive and are ready for
being sanctified completely. Oswald Chambers has written a devotional
message (February 8th, in My Utmost for His Highest [Updated Edition c. 1992]) about the Cost of sanctification. If you are thinking, “well, Jesus paid the
cost” you are not fully understanding what the Apostle Paul wrote to describe
what he meant by being sanctified completely. The cost for our salvation was fully paid;
the price was the precious Blood of Jesus, shed for us when He died on the
Cross. The cleansing power of the Blood
of Jesus is complete. This is what
Oswald Chambers wrote about the cost of sanctification:
Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all
our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly
concerns. Sanctification means to be
intensely focused on God’s point of view.
It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and
spirit for God’s purpose alone.
In the devotion, Chambers went on to
quote part of John 17: 19, where Jesus is praying to the Father, the night
before His Crucifixion: “For their sakes, I sanctify Myself.” It is based on this text, and Jesus’
complete dedication to do His Father’s will and be our Savior, that Chambers was
able to arrive at such an intense, hard-core, “real-man” definition of sanctification,
and of the cost we have to pay for sanctification. Chambers also wrote “It will cost absolutely
everything in us which is not of God.”
So my message, which includes and
builds on what I have read and quoted from Oswald Chambers, is that we all need
to be sanctified completely. First,
understand that this is the next level up from the basic ideas we may have held
about sanctification. Then make the forthright choice and commitment to do this. Our God, the God of Peace, will step in to
help us. Holy Spirit can show us what
is “of God” in all the areas of our
life – home, family, employment, social, discipleship and ministry – and any
corrections we need to make for things that are not “of God.”
