«　WEEK 5　DAY 1　»

　　1 Thes. 4:3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication.

　　Eph. 1:4 Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love.

　　God’s will is that His redeemed people, the believers in Christ, live a life of holiness according to His holy nature, a life wholly separated unto Him from anything other than Him. For this He is sanctifying us wholly (1 Thes. 5:23). (1 Thes. 4:3, footnote 1)

　　Holy means not only sanctified, separated unto God, but also different, distinct, from everything that is common. Only God is different, distinct, from all things. Hence, He is holy; holiness is His nature. He chose us that we should be holy. He makes us holy by imparting Himself, the Holy One, into our being, that our whole being may be permeated and saturated with His holy nature. For us, God’s chosen ones, to be holy is to partake of God’s divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and to have our whole being permeated with God Himself….This makes our being holy in God’s nature and character, just like God Himself. (Eph. 1:4, footnote 3)

　　[In 1 Thessalonians 4:3 Paul charges] the saints to abstain from the defiling sin of fornication…. In what way does Paul charge the saints to abstain from this sin? He charges them in the way of sanctification. First he tells them that the will of God is our sanctification. The will of God is that we would be sanctified, kept, preserved, and guarded in sanctification. The best way to abstain from fornication is to be sanctified, preserved, in God’s holiness.

　　In 4:3, 4, and 7 Paul uses the word sanctification three times. In verse 3 he says that the will of God is our sanctification; in verse 4, that we should know how to possess our vessel, our body, in sanctification and honor; and in verse 7, that God has called us in sanctification. According to 4:4, we should possess our body in sanctification and honor. Sanctification is before God, and honor is before man. Every fornicator loses his honor before man. In every society fornicators are despised; they have lost their honor before man. Therefore, we need to keep our body from such a sin, and the way to do so is in sanctification.

　　In 5:23 Paul gives a concluding word concerning sanctification….Our entire being—spirit, soul, and body—needs to be sanctified. We need to be sanctified by the God of peace not only in our soul and body, but also in our spirit.

　　According to 5:23, we bear some responsibility for being wholly sanctified. On the one hand, God will sanctify us wholly. On the other hand, our spirit, soul, and body need to be preserved. Although God preserves us, we need to bear a certain amount of responsibility to be preserved.

　　We may regard the words be preserved as an active-passive verb. This means that although we are being preserved, we need to take the responsibility, the initiative, to be preserved. Thus, be implies something active, and preserved implies something passive. God intends to preserve us, but are we willing to be preserved? We may use the matter of giving medicine to children as an illustration of our need to bear responsibility to be preserved. Sometimes a child may need medicine, but he may not be willing to take it…. Sometimes we do not cooperate with the Lord to be preserved. This forces Him to do certain things to subdue us or restrict us so that we may take in what is necessary to be sanctified and preserved.

　　In 1 Thessalonians, a book on a holy life for the church life, we are told that different parts of our being need to be preserved. Our heart needs to be sanctified, our body needs to be preserved in sanctification, and eventually even our spirit, the most hidden part of our being, also needs to be sanctified. (Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, pp. 189-191)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of 1 Thessalonians, msg. 22