A few months ago at a community event, a person waved to me smiling, and I waved back with one of those looks on my face that likely said what I was thinking, “I don’t know who you are, but you sure seem to know me, so…Hi!” I hoped they didn’t see my lost look. Maybe you know the feeling. You don’t want the other person to be offended that you don’t recognize them when they clearly know you.
Maybe six months had passed since I had seen this person, and in that relatively short amount of time they lost so much weight, they looked like a new person. My wife showed me their picture on social media. They literally appeared to be a different person. GLP-1 medications have been revolutionary in helping people lose weight.
How does God change a person? How does God make us new? It sure would be nice if there was a medication to make us better people, more like Jesus. Especially when we can struggle for years with poor attitudes, bad behaviors, unwise choices, and broken relationships. Is there hope for us?
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul writes that the God of peace will sanctify us all. Sanctify. What does sanctify mean though?
One scholar defines it this way: “to cause someone to have the quality of holiness—‘to make holy.” (Louw & Nida)
God is at work to make us holy.
Are you thinking, “Come on. For real? Holy? I’m far from holy. It doesn’t seem like God is doing a good job with me.”
Does Paul’s teaching there in verse 23 mean that we are currently holy? Does it mean we will be completely holy? Some bible teachers believe that we should just understand this idea spiritually-speaking. They say that what Paul is referring to is the holiness of Jesus. When we trust in him, we are covered by his holiness, like putting on clothes, so that God sees Jesus clothes on us, Jesus’ righteousness, and thus God deems us completely holy. God doesn’t look at our behavior. All that matters to God is that we have trusted in Jesus.
There are biblical passages that talk about putting on Christ. Clothing imagery. But those are images, figurative speech. Yes, Jesus in his death and resurrection did something that we could never do, but the idea of putting on Jesus’ clothes can be so spiritual, so theoretical, and so individualistic, that we can focus far too much on eternal life, and we can miss out on the extremely important process of sanctification in the here and now.
Paul is not primarily talking about spiritualistic, eternal life blamelessness in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Paul is primarily talking about very down to earth, real-life, day to day behavior. God wants to our behavior now to be different. God wants our choices now to be different. God wants us to think differently, to desire differently in the regular ups and downs of our daily lives.
In the here and now, sanctification carries the idea of being set apart. Santification/holiness doesn’t mean that we are somehow transformed into little gods walking around holier than thou. No, holiness and sanctification refer to the idea that the God of peace/shalom is at work helping us become different people, set apart for the mission of his kingdom, experiencing shalom, flourishing here and now, in community with others who are part of the shalom community.
God is at work helping us experience inward transformation so that his life, his thinking, his desire is inside us, and thus flows out of us. This is why at my church we emphasize a Fruit of the Spirit of the month. This month, goodness. God wants us to be growing in goodness, more and more like he is good. When we experience his goodness in our lives, it will surely flow out of us, and we and the others around us will experience flourishing.
But how is God at work? What if it doesn’t seem like God is at work in our lives? Is God not keeping his promise? Or is Paul exaggerating here? Those are important questions. Let’s continuing looking at what Paul has more to say that might help us answer those questions.
Continuing in verse 23, Paul says that God’s work of sanctification, his work of transforming our lives, is not just a little bit. Paul uses the word “completely.” In the New International Version, the translators turned this one word into the phrase “through and through.” God wants us to become new people. Completely.
God wants to transform us completely. In my community, Potter’s House is a ministry doing wonderful, sometimes grueling work to help people change. At Potter’s House, people live in community, immersed in Bible study, prayer, discipleship, and therapy. Gradually, as they grow, they can get jobs, have more privileges, as many of the people are transitioning away from incarceration or addiction. God can transform people struggling with addiction. God can heal broken relationships. God can help us remove hurtful ways of thinking and talking from our lives. Anger? God can help us forgive and be gentle. Narcissism? God can help us be humble.
Notice how Paul describes the thoroughness of the change in the rest of verse 23. Our whole being is in view. Spirit, Soul, and Body. God wants all of it to be blameless. There have long been debates among Christian theologians about what the writers of Scripture mean by spirit and soul. In the next post, we’ll try not to get sidetracked by that detour…
Engaging Scripture 
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