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: (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
II. God not only sanctifies us wholly but also preserves our spirit, soul, and body complete—1 Thes. 5:23: (2005 ST, msg. 9)
A. Quantitatively, God sanctifies us wholly; qualitatively, God preserves us complete, that is, He keeps our spirit, soul, and body perfect. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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: (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
B. In order to preserve our spirit, we need to keep it from all defilement and contamination—2 Cor. 7:1. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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: (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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). (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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: (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
B. To preserve our body is to glorify God in our body—v. 20. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
C. To preserve our body is to magnify Christ in our body—Phil. 1:20. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)
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. (2005 ST, msg. 9)