“The will of God in Christ Jesus for us is that we rejoice, pray, and give thanks.” Hallelujah!
Today we come to message nineteen: “Cooperation with the Divine Operation (2)”
The verses for today’s message are 1 Thes. 5:12-28 and the sections are:
I. COOPERATING WITH GOD
II. BE PRESERVED
III. THE COMING OF THE LORD
IV. SANCTIFIED WHOLLY
V. THE CONCLUSION OF THE EPISTLE
We need to cooperate with the operating God inside us.
We need to aspire to take the initative to have our spirit, soul, and body be preserved complete.
We need to get ready for the Lord’s coming by being sanctified wholly and by being preserved conplete.
His sanctification brings in peace!
The law makes demands on man according to what God is, but grace supplies man with what God is to meet what God demands.
“Lord, I long to have my spirit, soul, and body preserved. However, I cannot do this work. I take the initiative, Lord, to ask You to do this.”
If we would live a holy life for the church life, we must cooperate with God’s operation. God is now dwelling in us. The indwelling Triune God is operating within us all the time. This is the reason we should not quench the Spirit. Actually, the Spirit is the processed Triune God. The inward burning of the Spirit is the operation of the Triune God within us, an operation with which we need to cooperate. We cooperate by taking care of all the matters covered in verses 12 through 22. On our side, we need to cooperate. On God’s side, God is operating within us. The God of peace Himself will sanctify us wholly. The Triune God indwells, and we are the ones indwelt by Him. Hence, there must be two sides: God’s side and our side. He operates, and we cooperate with His operation.
Oh Lord strengthen all the saints in Your recovery to be those who cooperate with Your divine operation is us. Our desire and aspiration is to be sanctified wholly in our spirit, soul and body. Thank You Lord.
Praise the Lord! For us to live a holy life for the church life, we need to cooperate with God’s operation. It is so wonderful to see that God is continuously operating within us. When we see that the hindering factor is our lack of cooperation, Lord! We ask that You would make verse 12-22 possible in us! Be the God who operates in us the cooperation within us!
Our longing to be preserved complete is in the light of His coming back! Wow! Lord! We want to be ready for your coming! Make us so aware of the indwelling, operating Spirit within us, that we would cling to You, that our spirit, soul and body be preserved complete, even without blame(!) at your coming!
“May your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete.” I love the word complete. Not partially, not mostly, but complete. I don’t want to be partially preserved, partially gained at the Lord’s coming, but like Brother Lee said, I cannot do this work!! Thank you Lord, we can just open to Him and He will do it!
“But by the grace of God I am what I am; and His grace unto me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Grace in this verse is the resurrected Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit to bring the processed God in resurrection into us to be our life and life supply that we may live in resurrection.
I loved seeing the attitude of the apostle toward the young believers as seen in his asking for their prayer for him. This really shows that, even from the beginning, we can enter into a very sweet mutuality with one another. I have to say that so many times I have been so helped and shepherded by the new and young saints. Our receiving of their portion will also strengthen their faith and help them to grow (and visa versa of course). How wonderful!
“If we would live a holy life for the church life, we must cooperate with God’s operation. On our side, we need to cooperate. On God’s side, God is operating within us… Therefore, we take the initiative, but God does the work of preserving our entire being. Therefore, we should pray, “Lord, I long to have my spirit, soul, and body preserved. However, I cannot do this work. I take the initiative, Lord, to ask You to do this.”
In verse 24 Paul says, “Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it.” The faithful God who has called us will also sanctify us wholly and preserve our entire being complete.”
Amen!
For a long time I did not know the meaning of grace. But now I know! Law makes demand upon man based on what God is. Grace supplies man with what God is to meet God’s demand! Grace is God in Christ to be our enjoyment!
Also, we need to coorporate with God. We need to take the initiative, then God will do it! God cannot force us to do things. God will not force Adam to eat the tree of life because He is great. So we need to coorporate with God’s operation. Without earth move first, heaven cannot move. This is God’s principle in doing things. Yes God does everything for us but He still needs our coorporation. If we don’t pray, God won’t do it. So He needs our coorporation for His operation 🙂
The sanctifying work is God’s operation, but the aspiration to be preserved is our cooperation. When we have both God’s desire and our aspiration, we then have our cooperation with God’s operation to sanctify us wholly and to preserve our entire being.
To be preserved in our body is to be preserved for the church and for the day of the Lord to the extent that we receive Zoé in our mortal flesh. Not in a miraculous way, but in the way of the triune God spreading from within as the Life and Resurrection. This is part of our hope and we can firmly stand on this word and believe that He will preserve us also in this way. As in Proverbs 4:20-23
http://online.recoveryversion.org/bibleverses.asp?fvid=24469&lvid=24472
And Rom 8:11
http://online.recoveryversion.org/BibleVerses.asp?fvid=4983&lvid=4983
As our body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body -sanctified
We need to take the initiative to cooperate and invite the Lord to preserve our spirit, soul and body. We cannot do the work of preserving but Hallelujah it is God who does the work of preserving us wholly and completely! I really appreciated the process that God goes about to sanctify and preserve us: “God sanctifies us first by taking possession of our spirit through regeneration; second, by spreading Himself as the life-giving Spirit from our spirit into our soul to saturate and transform it; and last, by enlivening our mortal body through out soul and transfiguring it by His life power.” Praise the Lord this is marvelous! May we take the initiative to ask the Lord to do this in us!
The sanctifying work is God’s operation, but the aspiration to be preserved is our cooperation. When we have both God’s desire and our aspiration, we then have our cooperation with God’s operation to sanctify us wholly and to preserve our entire being.
Lord, we desire to cooperate with your sanctifying work. Lord, for the sake of Your return, we must be ready. We must be sanctified wholly! Lord, we give you the consent and our cooperation. We can’t do it! But You can!
If we would live a holy life for the church life, we must cooperate with God’s operation…. On our side, we need to cooperate. On God’s side, God is operating within us.
It is certain that here we see Paul’s desire, his wish. Paul desired that the God of peace would wholly sanctify the believers and that the believers would have an aspiration for their spirit, soul, and body to be preserved complete and without blame. Can you see in this verse God’s operation and our cooperation? No doubt, the apostle represents God. Thus, Paul’s wish is God’s wish.
Oh Lord! We see here that this is not only paul’s wish but also God’s wish. Lord Jesus, wholly sanctify us and make us those willing to contact you concerning this and cooperate with You!
“According to verses 16 through 22, we should rejoice, pray, give thanks, not quench the Spirit, not despise prophecies, prove all things, hold fast what is good, and abstain from every form of evil. If we take care of these things, the God of peace will sanctify us wholly. Here we see the matter of the believers’ cooperation 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.”
“Therefore, we should pray, “Lord, I long to have my spirit, soul, and body preserved. However, I cannot do this work. I take the initiative, Lord, to ask You to do this.””
“The grace that motivated Paul and operated in him was not a matter or a thing, but a living Person, the resurrected Christ, the embodiment of God the Father becoming the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, who dwelt in Paul as his everything. It is only when we enjoy the Lord as grace that we can live a holy life for the church life, a life that is genuine and proper for the church by the Lord as the life supply.”
The Lord sanctifies us. But we also need to cooperate with God to be preserved by Him! May the Lord have mercy on us that he would grant us the desire to be sanctified and preserved complete for His return.
Yes, our cooperation is of up-most importance! God operates based on our cooperation. What a very balanced view! We move and God moves by sanctifying us.
“When Paul wrote verses 12 through 22 of chapter 5, he had much on his heart that he still wanted to say to the new believers in Thessalonica.” He had the burden for their cooperation. Although they had the hope of being resurrected and raptured, they still needed to cooperate with the Triune God. The aspiration to be preserved is our cooperation. The sanctifying work is God’s operation. He is in the process of sanctifying us wholly and preserving our entire being complete!
The conclusion involves the operation of grace, a holy kiss, and a prayer. We should pray for one another to continue to live a holy life for the church life until the Lord returns.
Dear saints, we need to see from the apostle Paul, with all the items he listed, that God is operating in us, and we are cooperating with God by taking an initiative, so that our tripartite being will be sanctified wholly by the God of peace, and be preserved complete, blameless. And also, in God’s full salvation our entire being is saved and made complete and perfect.
All of these points are good, but do we really see that all these points are for the Lord’s second coming – that the Lord could accept us, and that we will be qualified to enter into the Master’s joy?? In v.23 bro. Lee asked on apostle Paul’s behave that: “Are you believers excited that the Lord Jesus will come back? Are you waiting for His coming?” Saints, are we really excited for the Lord’s coming? Are we even ready? Verse 23 ends with a condition: at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our respecting the leading ones, being long-suffering towards all, proving all things, not quenching the Spirit, and so forth, all the way to taking an initiative to be preserved complete and without blame(v.15-23), are all for the Lord’s second coming!!
As always we need to exercise our spirit, keeping it burning and not quenching the Spirit, so that this God-man operation-cooperation of sanctification and preservation can really be carried out, and that we could really be made ready for the Lord’s second coming. Paul further motivated us by concluding this epistle with an encouragement, “faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it.” (v.24) Saints, we need to have a clear and defining view that our God’s sanctifying us wholly and we asking the Lord to preserve us complete without blame, is aaallllll for the Lord’s second coming! May we pray unceasingly for each other, greet each other with a “holy kiss” in our spirit, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all, amen!
Praise the Lord!
The inward burning of the Spirit is the operation of the Triune God within us, and operation with which we need to cooperate. We cooperate by taking care of all the matters covered in verses 12 through 22. On our side, we need to cooperate. On God’s side, God is operating withing us. The God of peace Himself will sanctify us wholly.
It is God who takes the initiative. But in the second part of the verse, concerning our spirit, soul, and body being preserved, we are the ones who should somehow take the initiative. When we have both God’s desire and our aspiration, we then have our cooperation with God’s operation to sanctify us wholly and to preserve our entire being. Amen!!
In this message I was particularly impressed with the passive-active command, “be preserved”. On the one hand, we need to take the initiative to be preserved by telling the Lord, Lord Jesus, I long to have my spirit, soul, and body preserved – but I can’t do this work! I just want to take the initiative and as You to do this in me! When we take the initiative – we are active – the Lord will come in to preserve us. He wants our cooperation, our prayer, our opening, so that He may come in to preserve us and sanctify us wholly unto His return! Lord, I long to have my whole being – body, soul, and spirit – preserved and sanctified unto Your coming!
I enjoyed how the active-passive relationship between man and God was brought out in this portion: “The command ‘be preserved’ may be regarded as an active-passive verb. This means that we take the initiative to be preserved…but God does the work of preserving our entire being.” (“there are no passive yeses in the divine romance”) Lord preserve my spirit soul and body!
The Lord operates and we cooperate! We cooperate and the Lord operates!
It seems in 5:16-22 Paul was running out of room in his letter, he still had a lot more to say. So, it’s our cooperation dear saints to
*Always Rejoice!
*Unceasingly pray!
*In Everything give thanks!
*****O and do not quench the Spirit (this seems to be the topmost item, if we quench the Spirit, how can we rejoice, pray, thank! Let’s follow the sense of life within us and not quench this Living Person inside of us)
*Do not despise prophecies,
*Prove all things. Hold fast to what is good!
*Abstain from any kind of evil!
And, here comes God’s operation, The God of Peace Himself sanctify you wholly!