THE SECOND PART: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians
Message Three—The Spirit and Soul and Body
Scripture Reading: 1 Thes. 5:12-24
I. God has made us not only holy in position by the redeeming blood of Christ to separate us unto Him in His judicial redemption but also is sanctifying us in disposition by His own holy nature to saturate us with Him in His organic salvation—Heb. 13:12; 10:29; Rom. 6:19, 22; Eph. 5:26:
A. God’s dispositional sanctification of our spirit, soul, and body is to “sonize” us divinely, making us sons of God that we may become the same as God in His life and in His nature (but not in His Godhead), so that we can be God’s expression—Eph. 1:4-5; Heb. 2:10-11.
B. By sanctifying us, God transforms us in the essence of our spirit, soul, and body, making us wholly like Him in nature; in this way He preserves our spirit, soul, and body wholly complete—1 Thes. 5:23.
II. God not only sanctifies us wholly but also preserves our spirit, soul, and body complete—1 Thes. 5:23:
A. Quantitatively, God sanctifies us wholly; qualitatively, God preserves us complete, that is, He keeps our spirit, soul, and body perfect.
B. Although God preserves us, we need to take the responsibility, the initiative, to cooperate with His operation to be preserved by keeping our spirit, soul, and body in the saturating of the Holy Spirit—1 Thes. 5:12-24.
III. In order to cooperate with God to preserve our spirit in sanctification, we must keep our spirit in a living condition by exercising our spirit—1 Thes. 5:16-18:
A. In order to preserve our spirit, we must keep our spirit living by exercising it to have fellowship with God; if we fail to exercise our spirit in this way, we shall leave it in a deadened situation.
1. To rejoice, pray, and give thanks are to exercise our spirit; to preserve our spirit is first of all to exercise our spirit to keep our spirit living and to pull it out of death—1 Thes. 5:16-18.
2. We need to cooperate with the sanctifying God to be separated, from a spirit-deadening situation—cf. Num. 6:6-8; 2 Cor. 5:4.
3. We must worship God, serve God, and fellowship with God in and with our spirit; whatever we are, whatever we have, and whatever we do must be in our spirit—John 4:24; Rom. 1:9; Phil. 2:1.
B. In order to preserve our spirit, we need to keep it from all defilement and contamination—2 Cor. 7:1.
C. In order to preserve our spirit, we must exercise ourselves to have a conscience without offense toward God and men—Acts 24:16; Rom. 9:1; cf. 8:16.
D. In order to preserve our spirit, we must take heed to our spirit, setting our mind on the spirit and caring for the rest in our spirit—Mal. 2:15-16; Rom. 8:6; 2 Cor. 2:13.
IV. In order to cooperate with God to preserve our soul in sanctification, we must clear the three main “arteries” of our psychological heart, the parts of our soul—our mind, emotion, and will: Rom. 12:2, Eph. 3:17, 19; Phil. 2:13:
A. In order for our soul to be sanctified, our mind must be renewed to be the mind of Christ (Rom. 12:2), our emotion must be touched and saturated with the love of Christ (Eph. 3:17, 19), our will must be subdued by and infused with the resurrected Christ (Phil. 2:13; cf. S. S. 4:4a; 7:4a), and we must love the Lord with our whole being (Mark 12:30).
B. The way to unclog the three main arteries of our psychological heart is to make a thorough confession to the Lord; we need to stay with the Lord for a period of time, asking Him to bring us fully into the light, and in the light of what He exposes, we need to confess our defects, failures, defeats, mistakes, wrongdoings, and sins—1 John 1:5-9.
C. If we take the time necessary to unclog the three main arteries of our psychological heart, we shall have the sense that our entire being has become living and is in a very healthy condition.
V. In order to cooperate with God to preserve our body in sanctification, we must present our body to God so that we may live a holy life for the church life, practicing the Body life in order to carry out God’s perfect will—Rom. 12:1-2; 1 Thes. 4:4; 5:18:
A. Our fallen body, the flesh, is the “meeting hall” of Satan, sin, and death, but by Christ’s redemption and in the regenerated spirit as the “meeting hall” of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, our body is a member of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit—Rom. 6:6, 12, 14; 7:11, 24; 1 Cor. 6:15, 19.
B. To preserve our body is to glorify God in our body—v. 20.
C. To preserve our body is to magnify Christ in our body—Phil. 1:20.
D. To preserve our body, we must not live according to our soul, the old man; then the body of sin will lose its job and become unemployed—Rom. 6:6.
E. To preserve our body, we must not present our body to anything that is sinful but instead present ourselves as slaves to righteousness and our members as weapons of righteousness—vv. 13, 18-19, 22.
Ministry Excerpts:
KEEPING OUR SPIRIT LIVING
Certain verses in chapter five of 1 Thessalonians help us to see that the first way to preserve our spirit is to keep it living through proper exercise. Verses 16 through 19 say, “Always rejoice; unceasingly pray; in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.” To rejoice, pray, and give thanks are to exercise our spirit. When we exercise our spirit in this way, we cause it to be living. Exercising the spirit to keep it living is the first way to preserve it.
No one likes to have any kind of illness or disease in his physical body. If you become ill, you certainly will not want your body to remain in a sick condition. On the contrary, you will do everything possible to bring your body out of such an unhealthy situation. Likewise, we should not leave our spirit in a deadened condition. We should struggle to have our spirit freed from that kind of condition.
How can we release our spirit from a situation of deadness? We can do it through exercising our spirit by rejoicing, praying, and thanking. Do you realize that to be quiet is to keep your spirit in a deadened condition? If you allow your spirit to remain in a situation of death, this means that you do not cooperate with the sanctifying God to preserve your spirit.
This habit of allowing our spirit to remain in death has even invaded the church meetings in the recovery. I am not encouraging anyone to behave in an unruly manner in the meetings. My point is that we need to pull our spirit out of death and cooperate with the operation of the Triune God in sanctifying us. He wants to separate all of us from those whose spirits are deadened. Because we have been regenerated, we need to be different. We need to show that our spirit is living, that it is not deadened. Thus, our spirit should rejoice, pray, and give thanks to the Lord.
KEEPING OUR SPIRIT FROM DEFILEMENT
Another way to preserve our spirit is found in 2 Corinthians 7:1. In this verse Paul says, “Having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” This verse indicates that we should abstain from all defilement of both flesh and spirit. We need to stay away from anything that contaminates our spirit. This is the reason we should keep our eyes from looking at evil things, such as defiling pictures. Such pictures defile not only our eyes; they also defile our spirit. This is something I have learned from experience. In 1933 I visited Shanghai the first time. The church had two meeting halls then, one in western Shanghai and the other in northern Shanghai, quite far from each other. For transportation we often used the streetcar. The ride from western Shanghai to northern Shanghai took more than an hour. The first few times I took this ride in the streetcar I looked around at the various sights on the main street. But when I arrived at the meeting hall, I realized that my spirit was deadened. It had been deadened by my looking at so many things on the street. From this I learned to close my eyes and pray when taking the ride by streetcar. This preserved my spirit. Because I learned to preserve my spirit in this way, when I arrived at the meeting hall in northern Shanghai, my spirit was living. I had truly been sanctified in my spirit.
If you become contaminated by looking at certain kinds of pictures, your spirit will be defiled, contaminated, and deadened. As a result, you will not be able to pray unless you first ask the Lord to cleanse you from all defilement. I offer this as an illustration of our need to cooperate with the sanctifying Triune God to have our spirit preserved from deadness and contamination. (Life-Study of First Thessalonians, msg. 23)
CLEARING THE ARTERIES OF OUR PSYCHOLOGICAL HEART
Our psychological heart has three main arteries. These arteries, which are also the three parts of the soul, are the mind, the will, and the emotion. It is important to know how in a practical way to have these arteries unclogged. For the unclogging of the arteries of our physical heart, doctors may prescribe medication. But in many cases surgery is required to remove the blockage. The way to unclog the three main arteries of our psychological heart is to make a thorough confession to the Lord. From experience I have learned that we need to stay with the Lord for a period of time to confess our defects, failures, defeats, mistakes, wrongdoings, and sins.
Concerning the Mind
We may begin by confessing all the sinfulness and uncleanness that is in our mind, in our thinking. The artery of our mind can be compared to a ditch that is clogged with dirt and needs to be dug out so that water can flow through it. Our mind is filled with dirt. As a result, this artery is clogged. In order to unclog the artery of our mind, we need to confess everything that is sinful in our thoughts and in our way of thinking. By confessing our thoughts one by one, we shall remove the blockage from this artery.
Concerning the Will
What, then, about our will? If we go to the Lord concerning our will, He will expose it in a thorough and detailed way. It may seem as if we are being examined under a divine microscope, for one by one there will be brought to light all the germs in our will. In particular, we shall realize that we are very rebellious, that we do not know what it means to be submissive to the Lord. One by one, we need to confess the germs of rebellion in our will. The Lord may show you that, a few years ago, you were wrong in a particular matter. Then He may go on to show you how you were wrong with a certain brother or a certain sister. Each time you will need to confess. You should thank the Lord that you are under His light, under His exposure. By confessing all that the Lord exposes in our will, we unclog the artery of our will.
Concerning the Emotion
The artery of the emotion also needs to be unclogged. When we realize how serious is the problem we have with our emotion, we may be deeply sorrowful. We may despair and feel utterly ashamed of the condition of our emotion. We shall realize that in many cases we hate what we should love, and love what we should hate. When we come into the light of the sanctuary, we shall see that the most ugly aspect of our being is our emotion, for we do not use it properly. Both our joyfulness and our sorrow may be altogether natural. As the Lord exposes us, we may feel ashamed of the way we have expressed joy and sorrow, for that expression often was natural, fleshly, even fleshy. No wonder our psychological heart does not function normally.
PRESERVING OUR BODY
In addition to knowing how to preserve our spirit and our soul, we must also know how to preserve our body. Sin has damaged and ruined our body. For this reason, Romans 6:6 says that our body is a “body of sin.” Furthermore, we have presented the members of our fallen body to sin, to evil, to lawlessness. Romans 6:19 says, “You presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness unto lawlessness.” For instance, in gambling a person presents his hands to things that are sinful and unclean.
In Romans 7:24 Paul goes on to say that our body is a body of death: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Then in Romans 8:10 Paul points out that although the spirit is life because of righteousness, “the body is dead because of sin.”
If we would preserve our body, we should live a life that never follows the old man, that never follows our soul. Romans 6:6 says, “Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him that the body of sin might be made of none effect, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves.” If we do not follow the old man, the body of sin will be made of none effect. This means that the body of sin will lose its job and become unemployed. But if we live according to the soul, we shall use our body to serve the old man. Therefore, to preserve our body first requires that we do not live according to our soul.
Second, to preserve our body requires that we not present any member of our body to anything that is sinful. For example, we should keep our eyes away from evil pictures and our ears from unclean things. Many things that are broadcast over the radio are defiling. A number of saints have testified that they cannot bear to listen to certain talk among those at school or at work because that talk is so evil. Many people of the world are able to speak concerning sinful things without any sense of shame. Thus, we need to keep our body from seeing and hearing things that will contaminate and ruin it. This is to preserve our body in sanctification.
OUR COOPERATION WITH GOD’S OPERATION
In 5:12-24 we see the cooperation of the holy life with the divine operation. In verses 12 through 22 we have the believers’ cooperation in living a spiritual and separated life. In verses 23 and 24 we have God’s operation in sanctifying and preserving the believers. God desires to sanctify us wholly and to preserve our spirit, soul, and body complete. However, we need to cooperate with Him. The way to cooperate is to rejoice, pray unceasingly, give thanks to Him in everything, not quench the Spirit, and not despise prophesying in the church meetings. If we cooperate in this way, our spirit will be preserved from deadness, our soul will be preserved from pollution in mind, will, and emotion, and our body will be preserved from the defilement of this age. Then in a practical way we shall have a holy life for the church life. Paul’s aim in writing 1 Thessalonians, a book for new believers, was that they would live such a sanctified and holy life for the church life. (Life-Study of First Thessalonians, msg. 24)