A Prayer

At the end of his first epistle to the church at Thessalonica, Paul includes a prayer.

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess 5:23)

The prayer includes a couple of interesting components. First, he includes this phrase describing the whole being: "spirit and soul and body." It is Paul's description of human beings or, at least, those who are in Christ. Now, I've heard lots of discussions on what we are. Some argue that we are spirit and body. To this group, "spirit" and "soul" are synonyms. And, biblically, this often appears to be the case. Jesus warned about not fearing the body, but the one who is able to destroy both soul and body (Matt 10:28). Two parts. In the Old Testament Scripture talks about the two almost interchangeably. In Genesis 41:8 "his spirit was troubled" and in Psalm 42:6 "my soul is cast down." Emotions are experienced in both. In John 12 Jesus was troubled in His soul (John 12:27) and, in John 13, He was troubled in the spirit (John 13:21). So in some uses and some applications there appears to be no distinction. Still, in this text as well as Hebrews 4:12 there is a distinction. In this text Paul clearly sees them as distinct, even if he doesn't say how they are, and in the Hebrews text we read that the Word of God can divide between the soul and the spirit. It appears, then, that they are closely connected (difficult to divide) but not simply two words for one thing. We are, then, a sort of mini-trinity. Kind of like being in the image of God (Gen 1:26).

The other part, though, that I find interesting here is easily missed. It's one little word that carries a load of meaning. The word is "kept." Notice who is at work here. The prayer (obviously) is to God and it is for God to do something. God sanctifies and ... God keeps. The prayer is for God's complete sanctification and for God to keep us perfectly. Now, think about that for a moment, because we generally think in terms of "work out your salvation." Here Paul says that we are kept by God. And that, brothers and sisters, is a great relief. The ultimate way that we are sanctified and we are blameless is because God is doing it.