Set Apart (05/22/23-05/23/23)

Sometimes I look at what I have gathered for comment in these “New Thoughts” sections and wonder if perhaps I should grow more selective.  The number of items I have collected here seems entirely out of proportion to the length of the passage.  But then, God’s Truth is deserving of far more than a quick read, isn’t it?  And I recognize that much of what I have pulled from my previous notes has come in recognition of confirming comments by these authors whose commentaries I value.  This is, frankly, a large part of why I spend the time to make this final pass through the text with so many commentaries at hand.  It is something of a safeguard for me, an opportunity for either correction or reinforcement as the case may be.  And it is indeed a great comfort when I can read through my earlier notes and find them echoed by better minds than mine.

With that, let me attempt to get started here.  Given the subject of sanctification which is central to Paul’s prayer, it behooves us to get a sense of what that sanctification is, and how it is spoken of in Scripture.  It is a topic which has led to multiple viewpoints among those whose faith is assuredly in God alone.  Some of that may be laid down to our natural propensity for law, although no doubt some would take that as being an inference from being generally aligned with Calvinism.  But it’s hard to consider the topic of sanctification as presented in Scripture and not find oneself at least a little bit bemused.  We are and yet we are being.  It’s something at which we need to exert ourselves to fullest extent, and yet it’s God’s doing.  What’s going on here?

It doesn’t help that these greater minds than mine, these men of as proven a faith as we are going to be able to find in this life, themselves find cause for disagreement when the take up the topic.  What is this sanctification, after all?  Well, let’s start there.  Sanctification is, as the sub-topic heading suggests, a setting apart.  And it is a setting apart for God’s exclusive use.  It is, then, a giving up of all claim to that which has been sanctified.  It is no longer yours.  This sense of the matter led to the practice of corban which Jesus found need to correct in the Pharisees.  Yes, you have declared your wealth corban, dedicated to God.  Yet, you have made of it an excuse to violate God’s command to honor your parents, to care for them in their time of need.  Now, I have to say that the way this is described, it seems like that which was declared corban had not in fact been entrusted to the temple treasury, except perhaps as one entrusts money to the bank.  It may have been dedicated to God, yet it would still seem to have been under the man’s control, which would seem to defeat the whole claimed purpose.

In the Old Testament, we have lengthy passages describing the lengths to which Israel had to go in order to sanctify things.  The ritual washings were matters of sanctification.  The application of oil was a matter of sanctification.  When sin reared its head again, there would be a great deal that needed doing in order to restore, as it were, sanctification.  Consider the tabernacle.  Here was a structure fabricated specifically and exclusively for God’s use.  Yes, the people, at least some of the people, could enter in, at least partway in.  But it was God’s tabernacle, God’s abode at least in some sense.  And the Holy of holies within was only that much more so.  What does that even mean?  It means, we could say, the sanctified of sanctifieds.  It was the portion set apart even from that which was already set apart – doubly set apart for God’s exclusive use.  And even with that, much was required in order to establish the tabernacle and its furnishings as truly sanctified.  Likewise the priests themselves, and their garments.  These, too, must undergo cleansings, sacrificial offerings, and personal preparation in order to be sufficiently sanctified to serve God Who is Holy.

But one must ask:  Did laving one’s hands in water truly cleanse?  Did the oil poured upon the head somehow truly impart sanctity?  Was there something about white linen with blue piping that rendered the wearer holier than he was without it?  For all that, the gold medallion on the high priest’s head declaring, “Holy Unto the Lord”:  Did that achieve his holiness?  All of these are just things, objects formed by physical effort by physical man from physical materials.  How could they?

Yet the need remains, does it not?  We know, or at least we ought to know, that sinful man cannot survive the holiness of God’s presence.  This is our great and insurmountable challenge.  We who would be set apart for God’s exclusive use are not even close to fit for His use.  Were He to draw near to use us, we would be consumed utterly.  Think about those sacrifices offered on the altar.  Why were they offered?  In hope of rendering one holy and acceptable in God’s sight.  What was offered, though, was consumed utterly by His presence.  We may write that off as symbolic in the case of those sacrifices offered before the tabernacle, but go back to Elijah and his challenge to the Baal worshipers.  Nothing in his actions had led to those sacrifices being consumed entire.  Indeed, he had undertaken to make that painfully obvious, surrounding the altar with water, all but ensuring that no outside fire could touch that which was laid upon it.  And the fire of God came down and consumed it.  Holiness must of necessity consume that which is sinful, and that, in the end, is what we lay upon the altar, whatever our intent.  It cannot be otherwise, for all that is in this sad, fallen world is touched by sin, infiltrated by sin, and therefore sinful.

What to do?  Well, we know the fundamental answer, don’t we?  We couldn’t do.  Therefore, God did.  He sent His Son, fulfilling a plan already laid out and set in motion before ever the world was created.  Before the first Adam was formed from the dust, already the whole arc of history which led to the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of our risen Lord had been laid out in full detail.  Already the continuation of history from that point, through the present, and onward unto the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ were likewise established in full detail.  From that first moment, nothing has ever transpired to cause a revision to the plan.  The seeming utter collapse of humanity prior to the Flood did not alter the plan.  It was part of that plan.  Adam’s failure in the Garden did not cause God to alter His plan.  It was part of the plan.  This present age, for all its inversion of right and wrong, good and evil, rejecting God and seeking with all its might to suppress the knowledge of Him, is not causing God to revise His plan.  There is no need.  His plan is perfect, and already perfectly accounted for all of this.  And it did so in the Man, Christ Jesus.  It did so solely in Christ Jesus, apart from Whom there is no other name by which we must be, or could be saved.

Now that whole aspect of Christian doctrine really ought to have us settled on this matter of sanctification, that it cannot possibly depend on us to attain.  The whole reason that Messiah was necessary, is necessary, and ever shall be necessary is that we couldn’t sanctify ourselves no matter how hard we might try.  How shall sin render itself sinless?  It can’t be done.  How shall corruption achieve self-purification?  The most casual survey of the natural order should put paid to any such thinking.  It can’t be done.  It requires outside agency.  It requires something which is pure, or has within itself the power to purify.

So, on the one hand we find sanctification presented to us as God’s work, and exclusively God’s work.  Is that not what we see even in these two verses?  “He also will bring it to pass.”  There is always something of this sense in the things God commands.  He calls us to the work, and then He does the work.  Whatever it is that He calls us to, we do well to remain mindful that, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).  And if we are doing something apart from Him, we can be assured that it will amount to nothing.

Yet we are called to give our all to this matter of sanctification.  “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Paul would write to Philippi (Php 2:12).  Of course, that comes with the immediate reminder and explanation that it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good  pleasure (Php 2:13).  Yet, so much of Paul’s writing consists in instruction as to how we go about this effort of sanctification.  There is plenty of law in the Gospel.  What are we to make of that?

Well, here is where we run into conflict.  There are those who, amazing as it may seem to others, suppose that in Christ it really is possible to attain unto sanctification, even of the degree prayed for here, in the here and now, in this life amidst this fallen world, while still in this sinful, fallen flesh.  Clarke is representative of that mindset.  On the basis of this brief prayer for entire sanctification and its promise that faithful God will bring it to pass, he concludes that we must accept that sanctification is not something achieved in or after death, but rather, a matter for this life.  He concludes, “You can do it.”  He writes, “He who can believe will find this thing also possible to him.”  I’m sure that sounds wonderfully advanced.  It also sets up the one who accepts it for a lifetime of anguish and guilt.  After all, if this is truly possible, then my failure must indicate a serious lack of faith in me.  I may not even be saved!  If I were saved, surely I would be well along in growing faith, therefore nigh on perfect in my sanctification.  And I am not, so what am I to conclude?  But beloved, this thinking ought not to be!

I have decided to pursue this conflict of viewpoints early in considering this passage because it is critical.  And I know how readily we receive the idea.  I used to hold to it myself in earlier years.  But it comes, as I say, of our natural propensity for supposing it must depend on us.  It must be our work, else how could it have value for our assessment?  It comes of thinking that we chose God, chose to have faith, and it does feel that way, doesn’t it?  I mean, most of us could probably point back to that moment when we first believed, and what was that but us deciding to accept what God was saying?  But that would conclude that what God was saying was true only after we decided to believe it was true.  That would leave God to be God only if we accept Him as such.  And all those cartoonish depictions of god fading out of existence because no more believers remained would not be fiction, but a most serious theological concern.

The thing is, if we take the overall message of the Bible, we cannot conclude that full and perfect personal sanctification is achievable in this life.  Even with the spirit renewed and reborn, which has assuredly transpired in even the newest and weakest of believers, yet the old man persists.  Yet, the ‘such were some of you’ Paul reminds us about (1Co 6:11), strikes far too close to, ‘such are some of you’.  We may fight it.  We should fight it.  Yet, we also know, if we are honest with ourselves, just how readily we would return to it.  And chances are that in our weaker moments, we do.  And now we have a dilemma, don’t we?  We cannot grow in fellowship with God while clinging to our fellowship with the world.   At one and the same time, we cannot be entirely separated from fellowship with the world without physically departing it, which is to say, this side of the grave.

Monks tried it.  It doesn’t work.  Ascetics tried it.  It doesn’t work.  No matter how much you may seek to separate from the world, the world is ever with you because this body in which you travail remains worldly, of the world.  We can argue soul, and I’ll save that for later.  But assuredly, this body remains earthy, of the earth.  And Paul assures us in 1Corinthians 15, which is to say God assures us, that there will be a new, heavenly body, a renewal and rebirth of the physical to accompany what has already transpired in the spirit.  John captures it quite nicely in his letter. “Beloved, we are now children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be.  We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is” (1Jn 3:2).

Let’s unpack that just a bit.  We are now.  We cannot be children of God except we have already been sanctified and set apart as His exclusively.  This has happened.  At the same time, it is painfully obvious that we are not fully matured in His image.  That remains not yet, and frankly, we don’t see how we’re going to get from here to there.  The getting simply is not in us.  Yet, we know we shall!  We know, because we know we are God’s children.  We look at our present, and see still no way in which this present us is going to be purified, freed from sin and sin’s guilt.  We are still too much with the world.  But God!  This is our hope.  This is our only hope.  And we hold that hope in the assurance, the unshakable assurance, that when He appears, we shall be like Him.  We shall see Him as He truly is, in His fulness.  And we shall not be consumed utterly by the impact.

But it shall be when He appears.  I’m sure Clarke would look at that as a promise that prior to the grave it shall have been done.  But then, he must face his life, come to his end concluding that he has failed, that he is doomed.  I see no other outcome possible if he is correct.  And, since we have the promise of God, Who is faithful and will do it, that the outcome is otherwise, I must conclude that he is not.  Ironside writes off such views as somewhat immature, observing that those who would claim full and complete sanctification in this life have clearly not yet fully studied God’s Word.  And this would appear to be the more well attested conclusion of the Christian faith:  We shall not be wholly sanctified, fully set apart and purified, until our Lord appears once more.  That is the reasonable conclusion we draw from John’s comment.

So, how do we deal with this?  After all, we are still left with what appear to be conflicting presentations of sanctification in Scripture.  We need to recognize that sanctification is presented with varied meaning or application.  I found Ironside particularly helpful here.  But don’t take his word for it, or mine, for that matter.  See for yourself that it is so.  There is that first act of sanctification begun in us which transpired long before we had the least awareness of salvation or our need for it.  It is there as Paul writes to this same church again, that he gives thanks to God for them because God chose them from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth (2Th 2:13).  Elsewhere we read of being elect in Him from before the beginning.

Then there is the positional aspect of sanctification, what we might call our legal standing before God, and this is fully accomplished in each believer in the moment we believe.  Take that same verse, salvation has come through sanctification, and sanctification has been accomplished by the Holy Spirit.  Thus, with Ironside, we can rightly conclude, “Every believer is sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”  I know how popular it is in certain portions of the church to question in regard to each denomination whether in fact they are partakers of the Holy Spirit, but you may as well ask if that denomination is truly Christian.  And in fairness, there are plenty of denominations of which that is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and sadly, for which the answer in this present time appears to be no.  But one cannot separate the Christian from the Spirit.  Apart from the Spirit come to open our hearts and minds to the Word, there can be no faith in the truth, there can be no salvation.  There can be no Christian.

So, in both these aspects, what is before us is a completed work, and that work is of the Spirit.  It is God’s doing by God’s choice.  It is not until we come to the third aspect of sanctification, it’s practical application, that we find ourselves involved.  This practical sanctification comes as we apply ourselves to the means of grace.  We study His word and gain from it.  We attend to prayer and to the enormous benefit of being set amongst the fellowship of the saints.  We discern those places where we stand in need of repentance, not merely regret for our mistakes, but determined effort to pursue a better way in the strength of God.  In short, by all those means which God has so graciously supplied us, we learn His will, and we undertake to obey it.  And this, we well recognize, is not something we do perfectly.  It is not within the power of our present nature to do so.  Oh, our spirit longs to thus obey, but then there remains the soul, and the flesh as well, which, as Paul so clearly depicts in the midst of his epistle to Rome, are for all intents and purposes at war with our spirit.  The battle is not with the devil, nor with our atheist or pagan neighbors.  The battle rages within, and it is a battle we cannot hope to win in our own strength.  But it is a battle we cannot fear to lose in the power of the God Who has already established our sanctification by His own decree, and assured it by His own working in us.

Father, how this reality tries us.  It tries us as we long for that perfection of soul which we know shall not pertain until we are with You, and as such, we know that longing for the day when indeed we are with You in glory, to enjoy You in Your immediacy forever.  It tries us as we see in ourselves just how eagerly we revert to form, chasing old habits, seeking our pleasures in the stuff of life, and distracted from those very means of grace which You have given.  It is an agony of soul such as would cause us to faint in despair if not for Your own working in us.  Yet, You strengthen us.  Yet, You supply us again with the power to stand, and as needed, to stand some more.  And You fill us with joy, joy which we often miss because it doesn’t appear as the world would have us to understand joy.  But it is joy, as You cause it to be written, unspeakable.  It is calm assurance amidst the storms of life.  It is that contentment of which Paul writes, satisfied with Your provision, whether it be a season of plenty or a season of subsistence.  For we know that You are good, and we know that You are indeed our Father, a loving Father, a tender and compassionate Father, but also a Father wise enough and strong enough to discipline us when discipline is needed.  Thank You.  Thank You for Your faithfulness.  Thank You for the absolute assurance that You, not I, are bringing it to pass.

Triune Man (05/23/23-05/25/23)

It may seem rather arrogant to speak of man as triune.  Is this not a term to be reserved for God?  Well, it is certainly a term coined for the purpose of describing the particular and essential nature of God, Who is three in one, being of three Persons and yet of one essence.  These three Persons are sufficiently unique that we can reasonably speak of there being fellowship in the Triune Godhead.  There is love within the Godhead.  Even in this, God being perfect lacks nothing.  He is not in need of worshipers in order that His existence may be sustained or completed.  He is complete in Himself, and always has been.  Yes, and always shall be.  And we, by His working, are made in His image.  I think at some level we could even say that we have fellowship and love even in ourselves.  It is not that complete and perfect fellowship and love which the Godhead experiences, but it bears resemblance.  We commune with ourselves often.  What else is it when we spend time in thought, in contemplation, even in daydreaming?  We are having fellowship in ourselves.  Who else would we be talking to in there?

And I think we would be hard-pressed to conclude that we have no love for ourselves.  If anything, the problem is that we have too great a love for ourselves, oft-times to the exclusion of love for others, and sadly, to the exclusion of love for the very God Who made us so.  It’s one thing to love yourself, and it’s a healthy thing, even needful for any life worth living.  But it is quite another to be so wrapped up in self that there’s really no room for any other.  We have a diagnosis for that.  It’s called Narcissism.  And a look around reveals that it is the fundamental symptom of disease in our time, the most obvious outworking of sin’s rot in the soul.  We have become all about self-love, self-promotion, self-aggrandizing thoughts and habits.  And we are the worse for it.  All that being said, the one who has no love for himself is desperately sick, and likely a danger both to self and to others.  The one who loves not himself is in a terrible place, and ought rightly to have our compassionate aid in addressing the illness.

But all of that aside, my point is this:  We are made in the image of God.  Even the most fallen of reprobates yet has claim to this reality.  We may have warped and distorted that image.  No.  There’s no may about it.  We have done so.  But God, in the lives of those whom He has chosen, is affecting repairs.  He has already renewed the Spirit, and He has entered into that lifelong work of renewing the soul, that work in which we too are engaged as we grow in maturity, and draw nearer the fulness of Christ’s image in us.  And He will renew the body as well, as needs He must, if we are to endure for eternity.  This body as it stands is most assuredly not up to the task.  In our younger days we might have thought otherwise, but as we age it becomes increasingly obvious.  Indeed, the older we get, the more undesirable it becomes to contemplate eternity remaining in this frail and fading frame.  Would you really desire eternity with the propensity for organ failures, fading faculties?  Do you have some particular desire to spend all eternity dealing with allergies, flu season, and the like?  With muscle loss, bone loss, fading eyesight and hearing?  I think back on my father’s last few years, and find it a wonder that he chose to hold on so long as he did – to the degree it was his choice.  God chooses.  God sets the number of our days, and naught that we or medical science at its best will ever do shall alter His choice.  But still, so much of those last few years seemed wrapped in the complaints of, “I can’t see, I can’t hear, I can’t move much.”  And all I can think is, no thank you.  I suppose when I reach that same stage, I shall likely view things differently, but from here?  Hard pass.  Take me, Jesus.

All of this comes as something of a preface to considering the description of completeness which Paul here applies to the work of sanctification and preservation:  Spirit, soul, and body.  Now, this can lead to many a curious conversation in Christian circles.  You will find many who find the soul, and soulishness a wholly negative matter, and those who cannot contemplate the body without accompanying overtones of sin.  We are not immune, I think, to the thoughts of the Manicheans and other similar heresies, which have seen a divide between the purity of spirit, and the incorrigible corruption of this earthy body.  Come to think of it, even amongst some of the most conservative Reformed commentaries, you’ll find traces of it.  Go read treatments on 1Corinthians 15, for example, and you will find those who set this present body as beyond redemption.  The spirit is renewed, yes.  The soul, perhaps, but the body?  No.  It’s scheduled for outright replacement.  Or so the thinking goes.  I’m not so sure.  There is transformation, to be sure.  We might even go so far as to posit something like metamorphosis.  Think that poor caterpillar reduced to a state not too far removed from primordial ooze as it transitions from many-legged leaf-eating machine to light, winged sipper of nectar.  It’s a transformation so complete one has to wonder what remains of the original creature in that which it has become.  No wonder this idea caught fire with philosophers.  No wonder it catches fire in our own imaginations.  Just look at depictions of man in heaven.  We are not able, I guess, to contemplate ourselves so utterly changed as to be unrecognizable in any regard.  But then there are those wings and such that always seem to appear, and this new, lighter than air capacity for sitting on clouds.  Clearly, we have internalized the point that there is going to be significant change.  But whether it is in fact an outright scrapping of the current frame and occupying something entirely new?  That remains unclear.

But let’s start at the top, as does our Savior.  We start with spirit.  And immediately, we must recognize that spirit is not always distinguished from soul, with soul sometimes set for both, where it is in contrast with the more physical, more tangible body.  Or, we may find spirit contrasted with flesh, where we are concerned with the purified versus the sinful remainder.  But spirit, when it is set apart from both body and soul, presents us with that portion of man which encompasses reason and conscience, the realm of thought and intellect.  This is a large part of what sets us apart from the animal kingdom in general, if you will forgive me, from the other animals.  Or perhaps you would prefer Barnes’ choice of ‘the brute creation’.  And here, we have need to be a bit cautious, given more recent input from the realm of life sciences.  We can see, for example, other animals which seem to display something like a conscience, a sense of right and wrong.  I suspect that in the long run we shall find that this seeming kinship of conscience is in fact a result of anthropizing perceptions of the animals in question.  But we can also see evidence of a certain sort of intelligence in many creatures.  We can perceive the squirrels out back assessing the latest installation of the bird feeder, and how they might reach it.  We have, perhaps, seen certain experiments made of that exercise, showing just how clever these creatures are at problem solving.  Or, take the crow with its capacity to invent and use tools.  Take dolphins and their learning of new means for fishing in particular settings.  Or, in recent news, take the example of orcas which have learned how to disable sailboats, and are teaching this newfound skill to their offspring.  Why?  Well, I would venture that food is involved.  But it still displays a certain sort of intellect.  But however great the similarities, this still does not mount to the upwardly-linked faculties of thought and conscience by which man is joined to the higher order, to that portion of creation which already occupies the heavenlies.

Next step down we find the soul, which is variously understood.  Some would set it as merely the animating force, those intangibles which account for there being life in this body of flesh.  As such, it would be that immaterial aspect of being which we share in common with animals, the life-force, if you will.  Others give it association with those aspects of our being which are often aligned with heart.  If Spirit is the seat of thought, reasoning, and conscience, things we associate with the mind, then the soul is the seat of passions, desires, and emotions, those things we associate with the heart.  Arguably, this still leaves us with that portion of being which we hold in common with animals.  And some would suggest that even plants share in this aspect of life.  Whether this shall prove to be true or whether it is but current theory remains to be seen.

The thing is, thus far, as concerns sanctification, it is the spirit alone that has undergone this thoroughgoing transformation.  And even that, I think we would have to conclude, is not entire and complete in the present order.  We still discover in ourselves plentiful room for advancement there.  But the soul?  The soul remains a challenge.  We might consider it as that region in which the old man still holds sway.  And that is indeed a problem for us.  That is the source of this war we know within ourselves.  There are two power centers and they are held by opposing forces.  The spirit, being subdued by and refocused on God, directs us towards righteousness.  But the soul, where the old man can still call the shots, desires yet the fleeting pleasures of sin, continues to be convinced that these can be pursued without regard to consequences.

Man in his proper condition, as he was in those first days in the Garden, and as He shall be when Christ comes and all is restored, has the spirit governing soul and body alike.  Those old urges and feelings may remain, but they are subjected to the reason and to conscience.  They are subjected to that in man which is itself subjected to Christ.  Here is our heavenward connection.  Here is our line of communication with our Lord.  It is firmly established in the spirit, which again, we may take to indicate that it is seated in the realm of thought and reason.  The soul, wherein emotions and passions and will charge about must needs be tamed so as to be guided by this higher order in us.  Its passions and emotions must be trained to attend upon heavenly things.  Here is that part of us that truly needs the instruction to seek first the kingdom of God.  For here is the part of us that is forever whining about its wants, ever complaining about the service, pining that we’re king’s kids, and as such, we ought to live in luxury and wealth.  Here are those urges to indulgence, which the man of God must needs refuse to indulge.

This doesn’t leave the man of God cold and distant.  Or, it ought not to do so.  This doesn’t require that true godliness is reserved to the male of the species, being as he is generally attributed with being more guided by reason than emotion.  Don’t get all offended at that.  It is a generalization.  It does nothing to deny woman her faculties of reason, nor men their feelings.  But generalizations do come to exist for a reason, and that reason is that they generally hold true.  Taking the whole set, it will be seen that in the majority of cases, this is how it works:  Men tend more towards reason and intellect, and women towards emotional decision making.  Men will kick the child out of the nest to fly on his own, to test his own abilities and thrive.  Women will seek to keep the child safe in the nest, where fears of his failure need not upset her.  Again, it’s a generalization.  Of course, there are exceptions, and for all that, you will not encounter a man who is all thought and no emotion, nor a woman utterly deprived of thought and wholly composed of emotions.  But it does strike me that here is sound reason for God’s decision to set man and woman together in marriage.  It wasn’t just for the entertainment value of watching these two, very different creatures trying to figure out how to coexist.  It was because both are needful for the wholeness of being.  And yes, by God’s gracious appointing there are those who are exceptions to the rule of marriage, who are designed by Him for a life of singleness and devotion to Him.

But the soul:  The soul should be in subjection to the spirit.  Yet in the fall it becomes clear that the spirit was deposed from its rightful place in his internal order, ‘sunk under’ the soul, as the JFB describes it.  Where it should rule it is instead ruled, and passions and desires rule the day.  Under these conditions, it should hardly surprise us that so many fail to rise any higher than animals in their behavior.  They are soulish.  They are governed by that which, in the animals, we would construe to be nothing but instinct. 

What drives the animal?  I would suggest two things, and I think the science would back me up on this.  First, there is hunger.  We could broaden it a bit to encompass self-preservation.  But hunger is the big driver, for most animals are sufficiently equipped to handle the climate in which they are found.  But food will always prove an issue.  God provides, it is entirely true.  But the animal must still spend a great deal of time, energy, and effort in obtaining that which God provides.  (And isn’t there a lesson in that for us!)  The second driver for the animal is procreation.  We can argue, I suppose, that there is the simpler gratification of pleasurable sensation involved, and it may be that the animal in pursuit of sexual encounter is not moved so much by conscious urge to preserve the species as by desire for pleasure.  If we wish to go that route, I would posit a further point:  That the desire for pleasure is a mechanism incorporated by God so as to preserve that species.  It is God’s will that they should act to preserve, and the desire for pleasure is the means by which He steers the creature to pursue His will.

Now let us be careful.  We cannot conclude from this that every urge of desire in us is therefore the outworking of God’s will in us.  It’s not that easy.  For one, we are fallen creatures.  So, too, are the animals, for all creation, we are told was subjected to corruption when man fell.  Death and violence are no more the original design for them than they were for us.  And so, as Paul writes, all creation groans, suffering pains like that of childbirth, longing for that time when the sons of God are revealed in their restored completeness (Ro 8:19-22).

What has happened?  The proper order has suffered an inversion in man.  Spirit does not guide and constrain soul.  Soul has usurped spirit, and now constrains it.  In such a condition is fallen man.  He is utterly sensual, which is as much as to say, he is animal.  Paul, being of an earlier age and free of Darwinian influences, speaks of them simply as earthy.

Last in the order we have here is body, the physical plant of man.  And before we get too caught up in matters of flesh versus spirit, with all its connotations for sin and holiness, let us recognize that what is set before us here is not sarx.  Sarx is the term for flesh, and that term does carry strong connotations of sinfulness in the Scriptures.  But here, we have simply soma, body.  This is that which God Himself shaped.  This is His design, the tent or vehicle He has chosen for spirit and soul.  Being His design, surely we must conclude that it is good, for God is good, and what He does is good.

This may help us resolve concerns about the resurrection and its implications for the body.  I know that somewhere along the way in earlier studies, there came out that line of reasoning that proposed that the body is too corrupt to be reformed.  The body we take into heaven is not some mildly revised version 2.0 of the current one.  It is something entirely new.  The original body, unlike spirit and soul, must die.  It must be replaced.  But that leads to other questions, doesn’t it?  Like:  Will we be recognizably ourself in this new body?  If former acquaintances encounter us in heaven, how will they know?  For all that, how is it that at some points Christ’s own followers could not recognize Him in His resurrected body, and at other times, the old appearance was obvious, even to the point of bearing the wounds of His crucifixion?  Well, we might suppose that this new body is not constrained to having a single form, but is, in its subjection to spirit and soul, capable of taking up such form as it finds useful for the occasion.  Or, it may very well be that the form remains largely unchanged, and the issue with failing to recognize Jesus was not that He didn’t look like Himself, but that those who encountered Him had no priors upon which to base any expectation of seeing Him.  There may have been familiar features, but since it couldn’t possibly be Him, they would never suppose it was.  Until it became so obvious that the lack of previous experience of such things could be overcome, and recognition come.  We might say it took an appeal to spirit, to the rational, thinking core of man to get him past the impossibilities perceived by the soul.

But here’s the thing for us to bear with us.  At the last day, the believer will rise, and will have a body, a soma.  And that body will, in that arising, be wholly renewed and transformed so as to be fit for eternity in the holiness of heaven.  If, as I have been suggesting, this is an entirely new body, then we can set aside concerns as to whether the Christian must be buried and his bones preserved in order to expect resurrection.  Man was made from dust, and by Scripture’s own accounting, to dust he returns.  If he was made once from such base components, surely God is able to do so again.  I don’t think it particularly matters what becomes of the body after death.  God will provide.  And for those yet alive in that day, though it transpires in the blink of an eye, yet this same full replacement must come about.  Corruption cannot put on eternity.  Perishing cannot put in the imperishable.  There must be a swap-out.

In the meantime, while this life persists, body is to be reined in every bit as much as soul.  If the spirit properly has charge of the soul, we might set the soul as delegated the responsibility of driving the body.  But the whole framework is being reoriented, and that, by the work of God in us.  Because He is at work in us, we have hope for that last day, when we are finally brought to completion, made whole, and restored to original design.

The JFB suggests that for the unbeliever, the picture is not quite the same.  Yes, they shall undergo resurrection, just as do the redeemed.  This much is clear.  But their resurrection shall still leave their body soul-animated, not spirit-endowed.  Obviously, or at least so it seems to me, this must be purely speculative.  We cannot test the premise apart from dying ourselves, which leaves no recourse for reporting back on our findings.  But I think we must conclude that their bodies, as much as ours, must be reconstructed for eternality.  I dare say they shall still be possessed of those powers associated with spirit, with thought and conscience.  If not, then what punishment is their interment in hell?  Without reason and conscience, it is nothing but the way things are.  Do we suppose the animal, in its earthly life, considers itself to be in a living hell?  Do we suppose it even has powers of consideration?  Would a gnu with self-awareness willingly continue its existence, knowing that it is guaranteed to become food at some point?  Honestly, a life with such utter lack of hope, spent consciously, must surely drive us towards nihilism.  Why continue?  If life offers nothing but hopelessness, pain, and eventual death, may as well get it over with and save the trouble.

So, I think I would have to conclude that the JFB is not entirely correct in their surmise.  Hell, to be punishment, must leave the punished aware of the reason for their existence, and aware, too, of the impossibility of bringing it to termination.  It is eternity spent as a nihilist with no means of suicide.  There is nothing but anguish, and no way to escape it; no way to escape being fully aware of that fact.  And there is no way to escape the cries of conscience, now fully aware of the costs incurred by a brief lifetime of soul-animated living.

Now then, while I have been taking some brief time to consider these three aspects of our being, we must recognize that Paul, in speaking of them thus, is not advising us to consider each in turn.  He is emphasizing the thoroughgoing completeness of this work of sanctification.  It shall encompass the whole of man.  Spirit, soul, and body shall be preserved.  If they are preserved, then it must be that they have been sanctified.  Here, it strikes me, is an immediate assault upon that Manichean view and such others as seek to make spirit all that matters in man.  No, says God.  I made all of you.  All of you is part of My design for you.  All of you has been deformed by sin and stands in need of the restorative, purifying work of sanctification.  And all of you shall be made whole.  All of you, the entire man, has been called and shall be made blameless at the coming of your Lord Jesus Christ.

It is the entireness of man that God redeems.  This is, as I have no doubt managed to say at least once by now, a restoring to our original, perfect, operating order.  This is man made once more as he was before the Fall.  The whole man has been debased by sin, and thus, the whole man must be sanctified.  Now Clarke would take it so far as to say that the point here is to inform us that the whole man can be sanctified to God.  Man is capable of being made holy.  And left at that, I should have to say that he is correct.  Man is capable of this.  But not in himself.  That is where he goes wrong, in thinking that if we will just give it sufficient effort, we can now do it.  But that leaves us with a Christ who is not a Savior so much as an Enabler.  It renders His sacrifice unnecessary because we could have done it ourselves.  To put it differently, if we could do it ourselves now, then we could have done so before.  But the truth remains that the necessary perfection is beyond us.  If Christ today has fully forgiven every sin of ours up to this moment, but has left us to now perfectly obey the command to go and sin no more, then we remain lost.  The one who supposes he can do so, or that he has done so, is blinded to his own sin.  The only way he could conclude such a thing is to have so lowered the demands of God’s perfect law as to make his poor attempts appear sufficient.  The truth remains otherwise.  The old man remains.  Sin persists.  It will take that which is promised even here to bring about that which is prayed for.  “He who calls you will Himself bring it to pass.”

I have one last observation I wanted to explore as we consider this triunity of personhood in ourselves.  It is a thought I had in first working through these verses.  We see that a large part of our problem as fallen man is that the proper ordering of internal authority has been cast asunder.  Spirit should reign over soul, as soul regulates body, which would leave us properly arrayed under the heavenly authority of God.  But instead, we have soul in charge, body run rampant, and spirit as good as cast into the dungeon.  And I perceive that in this condition we see ourselves suffering frustration and anxiety.  We see ourselves inclined towards anger.  It takes very little to bring us to anger, and it takes incredible effort to remain peaceable.  Now, I could simply observe that this is the expected outcome when the soul, the seat of passions and will, runs the show.  Of course, such emotional outbursts are going to be on display.  The soul wants its pleasures.  It wants its will to be the law, the only law.  But reality gets in the way.  To be sure, my rereading of Francis Shaeffer’s books in the evening is showing in its influence on where my thoughts travel.  But is it not the case?  We want what we want, and all things being equal, we want it now.  And when anything gets in the way of that, it leads to frustration.  And frustration leads eventually to lashing out, to anger.  And this is hardly godly anger.  It is the struggle of an animal in a trap, and the trap in this case is of our own making.

But I see that this still applies as we find ourselves called by God, redeemed and renewed in spirit.  Spirit has been restored, taken from the dungeon and set back upon the throne, yet this has not brought about a wholeness and a harmonious unity in us.  We still experience these three parts of ourselves at odds.  The soul may yet will the body to actions of which the body is no longer capable, perhaps never was.  But I want you to!  This is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of aging.  We know what we were once capable of, and the soul, the passions and the will, refuse to accept the reality that it is no longer the case.  Frustration!  Anger!  Why is my body failing me?  What must I do to you, body, to get you back in line?  But it is soul battling body even as it continues to battle spirit.  Spirit reigns, but it reigns over a most unruly kingdom.  And we are not able to bring our whole being into harmony.  It is beyond us.  We will focus on this aspect or that one, but it is not in us to give the whole of our person the whole of our effort.

We may, if we are of such a temperament, be giving great effort to our spiritual health, but in doing so neglecting bodily health.  Or perhaps we are so caught up in keeping the soul subdued that it really has all of our attention, lest it rise up and seek to wrest control from our spirit again.  But by our choice, we are effectively weakening our spirit, because our focus is not on its development, but on beating back the incursions of our soul.  We become almost fearful of our own soul, lest we become soulish.  We may cut off fellowship, lest we allow ourselves to develop unhealthy soul-ties, as some like to refer to the case.  Of course, in doing so, we are heaping unwarranted attention on our souls, and as effectively cutting off any potential for positive, healthy soul connections.  And yet, here we are called not only to a unified sanctification of our own person, but also to a harmonious community of sanctification with our brethren.

So, I would have to hold that the frustration and anger and anxiety that besets us is not simply the soul being out of order.  It’s the whole man out of order.  It’s the whole man at war within himself.  It’s a symptom, at least potentially, of our being too focused on a partial solution.  If we are in the gym every day seeking to keep this body in good form, but are neglecting time in the Word and time in prayer, we are doing ourselves a disservice.  If we are spending plentiful time in study, but giving no consideration to actual application and practice, if we are hearers of the word only, and not doers, then soul is being left to its own devices, and the battle rages on.  And certainly, if we are all about giving free rein to our soul’s delights without regard for right or wrong, well!  We are in trouble indeed.

But this is our condition in life.  The spirit has been redeemed.  Soul and body remain works in progress.  And thus, I think, we have those myriad calls to take up the task of sanctification, to sweat over it, give it our utmost concern and our utmost effort – but ever and always with an eye to the reality that it is God Who is at work in us.  If this is just me doing my level best, then I am at my worst.  I battle a hopeless battle.  But if God is at work in me?  He is faithful.  He will bring it to pass.  It may not come about as quickly as I would like (soul).  It may hurt, even physically, to undergo the process required of this sanctification (body).  But He will do it.  And we, if we are wise, shall come alongside our great God in this work which He is doing, seek to align ourselves with what He is doing and lend ourselves to the work to the degree we are able.  It may not be much, but it is pleasing to Him that we try, and so, it is enough.

As we seek to do so, let us, then, have an eye towards balance and wholeness in our pursuit of sanctification.  It’s not about beating ourselves up.  And it mustn’t be allowed to become a matter strictly for mind, or strictly for heart, or (though I don’t see how this would work anyway) strictly for body.  It’s the whole man God wants made whole, and we can’t hope to arrive at that wholeness if all our effort is on but a part.

Sanctified Unto Peace (05/25/23-05/26/23)

As I said at the outset, I have a surprising amount of ground to cover in these points I have set aside for pursuit in my notes here.  I could say that everything thus far has been but laying down the preparatory groundworks.  So now, perhaps, I can circle back to that first part of Paul’s prayer, that the God of peace would Himself sanctify us entirely.  This is Paul, so I think we can be assured that this is something more than platitude.  It’s not just a pleasant note on which to end the letter.  This is considered prayer, and it is instructional.

He speaks of the God of peace, which as one or the other of the commentaries pointed out, is in fact something of a common choice for him in his letters.  But Calvin finds it hard to see cause for that particular choice of title in this instance.  And I should have to say that this being the case, he shows himself a bit short-sighted.  Mind you, I would hardly assign him such a shortcoming in general, but for whatever reason, it seems his thinking in this instance was too constrained by other matters to see the picture that is set before us. 

Paul’s prayer is for sanctification, for our holiness, indeed our perfection.  And it may be that this emphasis on holiness so captivated Calvin’s attention that thoughts of peace seemed almost foreign.  I mean, it’s clear that our need for sanctification remains exceedingly great.  And it is also clear to most that this need shall remain, even if it is lessened as we proceed, so long as life and breath persist.  We are called to a life of disciplined effort towards this impossible work, and in that effort, we are called to dependency on God Who will do it.  But it’s a struggle.  It’s a matter for fear and trembling, as he writes to the Philippians, even knowing this.  After all, if I may divert just a moment toward that most favorite of verses, if it is God Who is at work in us, both to will and to work, it is indeed a truly awesome thing to be called alongside in that work.  The fear and trembling are not, then, expressions of concern for our inevitable failure.  They are, I conclude this morning anyway, recognition that we are ever and always in His presence. 

We have been granted an honor far and away beyond our station.  We are welcomed into this place of coming alongside, working together with our Father.  Yet, He remains utterly, perfectly holy, and we remain far too marred by sin.  Were it not so, there would be no reason for Him to be here working on us.  And we know it.  We recognize the incongruity of it all.  God, Who cannot so much as tolerate sin in His presence; God, whom to see is death because of the sin that is in us; is here – now – in us, sinful men that we are!   And how can this be?  I don’t know!  It is a cause for constant wonder to me that it can be so.  And yet, it is most assuredly the case.  My spirit resounds with the truth of it.  My conscience informs me in loud voice that indeed, the Holy Spirit is here and working and teaching and reminding and uttering His warnings when my soul gets out of hand.  Spirit!  Trouble in the land.  Soul is at it again.  Best get to work.

Yes, there is plentiful cause for fear and trembling in this work of sanctification, but not dread; certainly not dread of failure.  He will bring it to pass!  And with that, let me try and get back on track.

This prayer, though rendered to the God of peace, is not directly a prayer for peace.  But in that his prayer is for God to fully achieve His work of sanctification in us, it is  in fact a prayer for peace.  As the JFB puts it, “Holiness is the condition of peace.”  Holiness is the fundamental component of that harmonious concord which is peace.  Now, I could take those words from the JFB two ways, couldn’t I?  I could suggest, and probably would, that holiness is the condition of peace in that peace with God is impossible without it.  If God cannot tolerate the presence of sin, then the presence of sin in us must in fact render full fellowship with Him impossible.  We remain still at war with Him in our soul and our flesh, though He has put our enmity at an end.  The soul and the flesh are defeated foes, every bit as much as the devil, but like the devil, they still put up a fight, even though the outcome is inevitable.  Peace with God – true and full and eternal peace – will require that this sanctification has in fact been done and done in full in us.

At the same time, I could take the point as being that holiness is the condition of peace in that it is the outward evidence of that inward peace.  Where peace with God has been established, holiness follows.  Where He is, sanctification must appear.  It’s rather like the fruit of the Spirit of which Paul writes.  The list of that fruit’s aspects is not given that we might thereafter battle along to try and establish such characteristics in ourselves (and then beat ourselves up for the inevitable failures on our part).  No!  It is given as evidences of the indwelling Spirit.  Where He is, these things necessarily show.  And that is not told us so that we can anguish and wring our hands when we find ourselves coming up short in one aspect or the other.  Truly, they are given us as assurance.  When we see these things developing in our character, it’s not that we have done some great work in ourselves.  No!  It’s not about works.  It can never be about works, though we shall indeed be found working and have works to show for it.  It’s about what God is accomplishing.  It’s about what the Spirit has been producing from within His temple in our inward man.  The house is being cleaned, and here are signs of the ongoing work.  See them and be encouraged.  God is at work in you.  And He who began that good work is faithful.  He will complete it.

That for which Paul prays is that we be brought to and maintained in a blameless state of whole sanctification.  This is, as the JFB points out, the very expression of that shalom peace which consists in our nature being brought back into its original state, unmarred by sin.  In that state, spirit reigns as the chief part of the man, subordinate, of course, to God.  The channels of authority are in proper working order, and so, the soul’s feelings and desires are attuned to Him.  Our will is willingly subjected to His.  And our body, governed by a duly aligned spirit and driven by a well-tuned soul, is employed only in such things as will please God and be to His glory.  Now, we have basis for perceiving Paul’s reason for addressing his prayer to the God of peace.  Add that peace is His particular attribute.  God is peace, even as God is love.  Peace is of His essence, and as such, it is His to give.  And He does give us His peace, even as He has said.  “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives.  I leave peace with you, so don’t be troubled or fearful” (Jn 14:27).

Here, he prays to our God of peace for that which both expresses and establishes peace between us and God, our sanctification.  And the prayer is not that we should find ourselves suddenly enabled to pursue this successfully, but rather that He would do it.  And it comes attached to the absolute assurance that He will.  So, observe, as I prepare to shift to the next section, how this prayer lays hold of all that he has just delivered by way of exhortation.  Certainly, that part of his teaching which begins in verse 12 and carried us to this point has been all about living a sanctified life, and doing so in harmonious concord within ourselves, within the body which is the church, and of course, within our relationship to God Most High.  All of that has been geared towards peace, towards harmoniousness, towards rebuilding our lives in line with the original intent.

It brings us back to that tension, which is in fact no tension at all, between leaning wholly upon God for that needful work of sanctification, and simultaneously seeking to do our utmost to attain that same end.  Knowing it depends upon God has not left us to sit back and enjoy the show.  It has invited us to come alongside Him in His work, humbled by His willingness so to work, and recognizing the wonder, the honor given us, that we may join Him in it.

Father, thank You!  How incredible it is that You would choose to do this for such as myself.  How shocking that You would even take notice of me, let alone undertake to make of me a man after Your own heart.  And I know I remain far from that ideal.  But I know the great relief of hearing Paul, hearing You say,  “I will bring it to pass.”  Oh!  Thank You!  What hope could I have else?  But You are faithful.  You have proven it over and over again, and my heart knows it full well, even if it has as yet too much of its rebel youth about it.  I know too well my besetting sins, and I know You know them even moreso than do I.  And yet, You are here.  You are with me and not against me.  You have begun this work.  How could I possibly doubt it?  That beginning was too far and away beyond my experience, too decisively convincing, to ever think otherwise.  And as I have come to know You more, through these times of study, through Your word, through such prayers and contemplations as I manage to pursue, it has encouraged this great confidence that your Apostle here and elsewhere expresses.  You are faithful and You will do it.  Oh, but may I be found doing my best to work alongside You as You do.  May I present no hindrance to this work You are doing, but lend, as best I may, my own efforts to that same end.  Then, indeed, it shall be well with me.

Our Need for God (05/26/23)

Well, I can certainly hear strong hints as to the direction of these notes as we continue in what I have had to say thus far.  This is, I suppose, no surprise, given that what preceded was set there, at least in its points to consider, with that which follows already in view.  Perhaps I break these notes up too much, dwell too long on particular aspects, and wind up repeating myself rather a lot.  So be it.  It may not make for the most readable and compelling of writings, but it has served me well, I think.

So, let me pick up this next thought.  It is something that ought to reach the forefront of our thinking whenever we consider the necessary work of sanctification that so occupies our time in this life.  And it should occupy our time.  It should, in many ways, be our sole occupation.  For, if we are wholly given unto our Lord, if we are seeking to be entirely His, what else is there that we should be doing?  Perhaps I pick up a thread from this morning’s Table Talk, with its consideration of Jesus’ dinner with Mary and Martha (Lk 10:38-42).  You know the episode.  Martha is busily preparing the meal, setting the house in order, doing all this stuff to see Jesus and His disciples properly cared for.  Mary, on the other hand, is sitting with them, absorbing that which Jesus is saying, taking to heart that which He is teaching.  Martha takes offense at her sister’s inaction, and seeks that Jesus might remind her of her duty.  But instead, He reminds her of her own.  Mary chose rightly.  She is seeking to know Me, not just to work for Me.

It is our natural reaction to these calls to live sanctified lives, that we respond to it as a command to work.  We have to keep our nose clean.  We need to strive with all that is in us to cast off all vestiges of worldliness and commit ourselves to pursuing only that which carries the divine mandate.  Perhaps we should all become monks.  But that has never been shown to work in practice, and in fact, must in the end be discovered to be at odds with God’s purposes.  For, He did not call us out of the world, but left us to be here, in the midst of the mess, as outposts of that peaceful kingdom of which He is King of peace.

So, we have had this instruction to live lives of sanctity, at harmony within and without, driven by desire for God and godliness.  It’s not a pursuit of power.  It’s not a hungering after those gifts He may give.  It’s loving fellowship.  It’s respectful, honoring sonship.  But all of that amounts to work, doesn’t it?  And if it becomes to us no more than a set of necessary duties, laws to be obeyed like it or not, then it is dead effort from the outset.  Even as we set ourselves to those good works which are set there in advance for us to do, even if that includes serving in the pulpit and preaching, if this has become mere duty, it is vain and empty pursuit of pointlessness.  But where we are doing as God would please for the simple joy of pleasing God?  Where it has, by His hand, become second nature for us to do so?  Now, these good works give evidence of His own work within.  No, they do not then begin to earn merit.  There is nothing left to merit.  It has been given already.  He is doing it.  He will do it to perfection.

And we, if we are wise, recognize that the doing of it is far removed from our meager capacities.  We cannot attain to salvation by our frenzied efforts.  Neither can we, by our impassioned speech, however saturated with Truth, cause even one small step towards sanctification in those we address.  We have, perhaps, seen the reality of this, if not in our own efforts at evangelism, then in our own reaction to such efforts.  Calvin writes, “All doctrine is useless unless God engraves it, as it were, with his own finger upon our hearts.”  The good news is that He does!  And I suspect that many of us, like me, have known those times when doctrine was proclaimed to no purpose in our hearing.  Or, at least, it had no immediate effect.  The words came in, the words went out, and we remained unchanged.  Or so it seemed.

Of course, coming into the life of a believer, I can look back and see that here were seeds planted, though they lay dormant for so long.  I can look back, should I so choose, even to those very early years in Ewa Beach, when my parents were drawn to become members of the church where Pastor Sanford was preaching.  Now, I cannot claim to recall anything of that time, but I encountered Pastor in later years, when he would occasionally visit with my father.  And I encountered him more fully, I think, when I was able to connect with him via the Internet, and receive his letters, letters he was still sending to those he had known down through the years right up to the end.  Here, I learned of his experiences serving in India during the years of Gandhi and their revolution out from under British rule.  Here, I learned from his experiences among the Navaho.  And more than anything, I learned of his walk with God and of God’s faithfulness.

But there were those years that went before.  There were those years in Pachaug, attending service weekly, mostly for lack of choice, given my parents’ insistence.  But did anything register?  Did anything of Truth penetrate my thinking?  Not so’s you’d notice, no.  And given some of what that church tended to teach, perhaps it’s just as well.  But that was not the cause for my thickness at the time.  I just wasn’t at a point to receive this God.  He wasn’t writing on my heart just yet.  It would be long years, decades even, before I came to recognize my need for Him.  I was too convinced that I was a pretty good guy.  I could not perceive my sin, my need for a Savior, and therefore offers of salvation really didn’t hold much of interest to me.

But now?  Well, at least it’s a mixed bag now.  I do seek to receive from His word, to incorporate His Truth in my character.  And the more I seek to do that, the more I perceive just how great is my need for Him.  I have yet great need of His mercy, for my sins remain many.  I have need of His persevering faithfulness, for I have near constant need to seek His forgiveness.  But I have utmost confidence.  For the more I have come to know Him and to understand His dealings with me, the more I have come to recognize that it is His faithfulness, His work which gives me reason for confidence, not my poor record of compliance.

We might, however, wonder at this prayer.  For one, has Paul not just finished telling us that we need to be doing?  We need to get our act together, to live like sons of God, to walk worthy of this unthinkable gift of forgiveness which He has given us, right?  Right, but like all doctrine, so too are all our works useless unless God is in the working.  And so, Paul prays.  But he doesn’t pray a prayer of doubt.  He is not praying because he fears otherwise the outcome might be quite different.  He is not praying with an eye to cajoling God into doing according to his desires.  He is praying because he knows this is God’s clear intention, God’s purpose for those to whom he writes, which is, I must point out, the whole church in every age, not just this little collection of believers up the coast in Thessalonica.

Barnes writes, “It is always proper to pray that God would make his people entirely holy.”  Always.  But do not take the prayer as suggesting doubt.  Neither take such a prayer as suggesting we should be attaining this end in this life.  Even such a prayer coming from the Apostle is no proof of any such thing.  Notice.  Paul prays for entire sanctification, but he also prays for preservation – that spirit, soul, and body alike may be preserved complete unto the coming of our Lord.  Look, if sanctification had its completion to entirety in us in this life, there would be no reason to pray for preservation until Christ’s return.  He might pray for preservation until that work of sanctification is completed, but once we had attained to being wholly set apart for God, spirit, soul, and body, there could be no more temptation of sin, no battle left to fight, nothing that required this effort at preservation.

But the need remains.  And it is a need that exceeds our greatest, most diligent, most committed efforts.  It is a need that exceeds the power of the most impassioned preaching to achieve.  It needs God, because only Hie, by His own power, can do the work in us.  Now, here’s the great good news of this prayer.  God is faithful, and He will do it.  Indeed, as Ironside writes, “His faithfulness is infinite.”  And I could say, of course it is, for He is infinite.  Anything that is of His essence must likewise be infinite.  This is where we have cause for certain hope.  God has made covenant with us, and His faithfulness is infinite.  And let me stress, He has made covenant with us.  Yes, we have entered into that covenant, but it is fundamentally His doing, and it is fundamentally His faithfulness that gives us any reason for confidence in the terms of that covenant.

So, then, let us walk in humbling awareness of our continued entire dependence upon the God Who Is.  Let us draw strength for that walk from knowing Him as He is.  To that end, perhaps a few Scriptures would be of value to keep us reminded.  “The Lord is faithful.  He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one” (2Th 3:3).  “If we are faithless, still He is faithful.  For He cannot deny Himself” (2Ti 2:13).  Pause on that for just a moment.  There is that game that atheistic philosophers like to play.  If God is all-powerful, then surely there is nothing that He cannot do.  So, ha ha, can He make a boulder so big that He cannot move it?  It’s a silly game, but it somehow captures thoughts and imagination, and we might begin to doubt.  Well, we might if we don’t know Him and know His Truth.  It’s kind of a pointless question, really, as it gets to omnipotence perhaps, but only at a nonsense level.  In the end, though, it’s about will.  What God purposes stands.  End of story.  What He determines shall be is.  What He covenants to do is as good as done.  Indeed, given that God exists outside the flow of time, I think we can reasonably argue that What He covenants to do is already done.  We just haven’t experienced the whole of it yet because we are still within that flow.  But yes, there is one thing, most assuredly, that God cannot do.  He cannot deny Himself.  And thank God it is so!  Thus, as the author of Hebrews reminds us, we have this twofold assurance.  Ah.  Here is another thing God cannot do.  He cannot lie.  For He is Truth.  But hear.  “God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, in order that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement, we who have fled for refuge in laying hold of the hope set before us” (Heb 6:17-18).

And so, we have this encouragement from that same letter.  “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful” (Heb 10:23).  That’s the crux of this prayer, indeed the very heart of the Gospel.  Here is God’s offer, God’s promise.  And what He has promised, He will deliver, for it is impossible that He would not.  He is faithful, and as such, He cannot act faithlessly.  He is not a man that He should lie, for He is Truth.  So, hold fast!  Know that He is with you, in you, working moment by moment to bring about this finished work of sanctification, a work already completed from His perspective, but still in process from ours.  And knowing this, let us be encouraged to join in that work, to become one with Him in these labors which, after all, cannot fail.  For God cannot fail.

God's Work in You (05/27/23)

I have already written in regard to this tension that pertains between sanctification as God’s work and sanctification as our duty.  And I hope I have already established that in fact there is no real tension.  Here, I will be focusing primarily on that aspect of God working in us.  I do so because that is where Paul has focused our attention in this prayer.  May God Himself sanctify you.  May you be preserved.  That last comes, not surprisingly, in the passive voice.  Preservation is something received, not something we do.  Back in the day, folks would put up preserves, storing food against winter need.  The fruits and vegetables would not, could not preserve themselves.  It needed outside agency.  Your house, your car, your other various possessions will not simply retain their shine and function on their own.  The paint will not preserve itself against the wear of salt and wind.  It will take outside effort.  It will require action on your part to wash away the salt, to renew the paint, to undertake such repairs as time and use may require.  And you are no different.  Your preservation requires outside assistance.  Even in earthly terms this becomes evident.  Try as you might to avoid it, the time will come when you have need to avail yourself of medical assistance.  And in due course, you will assuredly need assistance in most things as your body ages beyond operational limits.

Here, we are concerned with something far more important than physical function.  We are dealing with the essential being of man.  Yes, the body is in here, along for the ride, as it were.  But it’s a spiritual matter, this sanctification.  It begins with the spirit.  It must, for the spirit is the pinnacle, the control center.  This has ever been so, even when the soul was out of line and calling the shots.  That was an assault on the control center, but the spirit remained and remains the proper locus of command.

All this to say that Paul has us firmly focused on this reality.  God must do it if it is to be done.  And here’s the good news for us:  He will do it.  Indeed, for those whom He has called, He has already done it.  And let us understand as well, that He is doing it.  He calls you.  It’s not that He called once, some many years ago, and then left you to grope along, making your own way, and hoping maybe it would get you home to Him.  He calls.  Present participle – stative condition.  He is constantly calling you, which gives us clear direction home.  No groping about lost.  Lost was our former condition.  Directionless was our former life.  No more!  God who called, calls still.  God who calls, sanctified you in that first moment when faith arose and took hold of Him who was calling, and He sanctifies still.  This is your assurance.  He is faithful.  He is able.  And, as Calvin observes of Paul’s prayer here, “He makes Him the sole Author of the entire work.”

It’s a point made repeatedly throughout the epistles, and as such, a point established throughout Scripture.  The epistles, after all, were not being delivered out of a vacuum, or as something so entirely new as to have no reference to that which had been revealed to date.  They were expansion, commentary, on what God had already said, what Jesus had already taught, what had been written from the outset in the writings of Moses and of the prophets.  This message, this prayer, looks to the cross of Christ.  It takes into account the high price that was paid for your salvation and for mine – a price paid in eternal blood, that being the only payment sufficient to account for our debt for sinning against eternal God.  God is not a fool.  He is not capricious.  He did not undertake to make payment for the sins of mankind, at least that portion of mankind He had determined to save, without having first determined to His satisfaction that this high price would prove to be worth having paid.  And, if He has thus determined to His satisfaction, then we can be assured that He has determined correctly.  It will be.  And, if He has correctly determined that our salvation was worth His own Son’s death, which in some way we must perceive was His own death as well, for Father and Son and Spirit are One, then you can be sure He will undertake to do what is necessary to see His purchase made whole.

Get this settled in yourself. You are appointed to salvation.  As I reread the passage this morning, it happens that the number of days spent thus far put me in the BBE translation.  (For what little it is worth, my habit is to read a different translation each day that I spend on a particular passage, and creature of established habit that I am, the order does not change, barring catastrophic disruption due to software malfunction.)  At any rate, the BBE gives us the declaration of this faithful God in verse 24 in these terms.  “God, by whom you have been marked out in his purpose.”  That’s the strength of this calling.  It’s not some invitation that you need to consider and maybe RSVP.  It’s not some unsolicited email from a vendor you purchased from once.  It’s more the announcement.  You have been declared.  You have been adopted.  It’s a done deal.  Indeed, you have been adopted all along, but you had no awareness of it.  Now you know.  Here’s your Father.  Do you know who He is?  Do you begin to see who you are, child of God?

Thus, we find multiple commentaries pointing to this reality.  Our calling is already evidence of God’s everlasting grace.  It becomes so especially as we come to realize that His calling is from before the beginning of Creation, let alone before the first cells of our person came together.  Life begins at conception?  Perhaps the physical, biological process of life, yes.  But if we would find the beginning of our life, we shall have to look farther back.  We shall have to look farther back, even, then Scripture brings us.  There, we start ‘In the beginning’.  But we also learn that God had determined our calling, our salvation, and yes, our sanctification, before the beginning!  There is the start of life in you.  Now, I am not proposing some hyper-spiritual existence prior to birth, or any such thing as would permit of reincarnation or having been before in some other existence.  But you, the personal you who is at this moment, were known to God even then (if ‘then’ can be reasonably applied to a time before time).  Your days were already marked out on His calendar, and He doesn’t miss a date.

All of this to say, as the Wycliffe Translators Commentary does, “His calling carries with it the successful completion of His purposes.”  God does not fail.  God cannot fail.  There’s another of those things God can’t do.  Because to fail would be for Him to act against His own purpose, against His own will.  And what could possibly exist to force Him to such an action – for no being will act against its own will willingly.  I know that at some level we should have to accept that yes, however coerced, even such an act was done willingly.  But I think so far as our general sense of willingness is concerned the point will stand.

Neither is this some novel teaching of Paul’s delivered only on this occasion.  As he reminds the Corinthians, he preaches the same message in every church.  The doctrine he delivers in one is the doctrine he delivers in every other.  There is one church, one body, one God whom we serve with one purpose.  And He is no respecter of persons, that He should work thus for one group, but so for another.  So, we find him writing to Ephesus, “that He might sanctify her [the church], having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”  Okay, again, the passive voice.  She did not cleanse herself.  He cleansed her.  And lest there be any doubt, “to present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless” (Eph 5:26-27).  Again:  God is acting. God is doing.  God is in the driver’s seat of this body we call the church, and of each individual member making up that body.

So, let us understand fully that we have been consecrated, which is, after all, what this sanctification is all about.  It’s a setting apart for God’s exclusive use, and that setting apart, that consecration for holy service to holy God, was done there in that moment you first believed.  And again, I might go so far as to say it was done long before that, even before the Spirit was sent forth into you to open you to the Gospel, all the way back to that same moment before the beginning.  And brother, sister, by His consecration – because it is His consecration – you have been made inviolable.  That is not license to go ahead and keep at those things you used to do before you became aware of God’s call.  Far be it from us!  Scripture is adamant.  You used to be like that, but no more.  You used to do these things, but no.  Don’t you know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, the house of the living God?  Would you really make Him party to such things?  As if you could!  But still, how could we return to those ways with the awareness that this perfectly holy God dwells within us and cannot but be made party to that which we do?

Yeah, I know.  And yet we do.  Because we’re stupid sheep, and we remain desperately in need of our Savior.  But you have been consecrated.  You have been made inviolable.  You have been given the awareness that sin and God cannot peacefully coexist, not even in you.  One or the other will have to go.  And here, it is well to understand that it won’t be God who goes.  He paid for this place.  He consecrated this place.  It is His.  You are His.  And beloved, God does not lose sheep.  Nothing and no one, not even our own stupid, stubborn selves, is even able to take us from His hands (Jn 10:29).  “When the Lord has once adopted us as his sons, we may expect that his grace will continue to be exercised towards us.”  That’s Calvin again, but surely by now you can see that it’s not Calvin’s theory.  It’s simply reflecting God’s own declarations, declaring to us what Scripture declares to us.

This is the reason for our confident assurance.  There can be no doubt as to our final outcome, because that final outcome is not finally in our hands, not up to us.  It is in His hands, from which none can snatch us.  It is in His power, by His will, and thus, His doing start to finish.  He calls.  He preserves.  He will present you to Himself blameless, so sanctified as to have no spot or wrinkle to be found anywhere in our pristine spirit, soul, and body.  That is stunning.  And yet, it is the clear message of the Gospel.  Go back to the Golden Chain of Romans 8:29-30.  He foreknew.  He predestined to conformity to Christ.  He called.  He justified.  He glorified.  The one gives basis for the next.  And all of it is declared in the indicative.  Fact!  And it is in the Aorist, past action already accomplished.  Done!  Beloved, as the JFB points  out, God’s calling will not fall short of its end.  His word, as we well know, does not go forth without accomplishing all He purposes.  So, again:  You are already glorified, though you and I might look at ourselves and not find anything terribly glorious about our current condition – physical or spiritually.  But, “It is finished!”  (Jn 19:30).  The work is complete in heaven.  So we are secure.  He will preserve.  Or, if you prefer, He will preserve.  But He already has.  Thus, He will present you blameless, in accordance with His purpose and His promise.

We see then that Matthew Henry is right to surmise, “Our fidelity to God depends upon His faithfulness to us.”  If you don’t recognize that yet, I pray you do soon and very soon.  Here is our guardrail against psychotic faith.  Because so long as we continue to struggle with this demand for sanctification as being something we must achieve on our own, by our own will, in our own power, we doom ourselves to repeated failure.  And repeated failure is bound to weaken what little resolve we may have, leave us frustrated, angry with ourselves, and eventually, angry with God for making such impossible demands on us.  I mean, why offer this hope and then leave it hopelessly out of reach?  But He doesn’t.  He is faithful and He will do it.  It is in light of this, ever and always in light of this, that we are then called to give our utmost effort to this enterprise of sanctification.  But that is for the next section.  So let me close this one in gratitude to God Who will do it.

Father!  How marvelous to be reminded of this.  And may I not be found making it an excuse to be slothful as regards my own contribution to the process.  But to know that You not only will do it, but have already done it!  Here is strength to go on.  Here is hope that cannot disappoint.  Here is joy unspeakable, and such peace as defies comprehension.  Thank You.  By rights, I should probably spend the next hour and more in nothing else but proclaiming my gratitude to You, shouting Your praises.  I should be bolting out of the house, seeking that one and all might be made aware of Your shocking great goodness towards me.  Mind you, at this hour of the morning such a display would be unlikely to lead to welcome reception.  But You know what I mean.  I pray that You would indeed so ingrain these realities into my thinking that my joy in You would be irrepressible, my desire to make You known irresistible, and my graciousness in presenting You to the unwelcoming world around me wholly true to Your holy and gracious nature.  I pray this with a certain degree of trepidation, for I know that any answer You might make of this prayer is likely to make me uncomfortable.  But I invite it nonetheless.  Why should I not?  What, after all, can man do to me?  What matters their rejection or even their reviling?  If You love me (and I know You do), whom have I any cause to fear?  Help me, Lord, to get that settled in myself, to be wholly Yours as You wholly desire and deserve.  And thank You yet again that You remain faithful even when I prove faithless.  Amen.

Man's Work in God (05/28/23)

We come at the last to our part in this work.  And what is it?  In my earlier notes, I observed that it comes down to doing your spiritual exercises.  If I were to think back to my school days, classes meant homework.  Teaching meant one had been given exercises to work through on his own time.  Did it seem like busy work?  Did it seem like some cruel punishment?  I mean, surely, they had already taken enough of my time already, right?  Couldn’t they do their job?  Yes.  They could and they did.  And part of that job was seeing that you had the  chance to put your learning into practice, to demonstrate that you had indeed grasped what they taught and could now use it.

Your parents likely had similar ways of ensuring that your training was in fact taking hold on you.  Were you left to play on your own for a time?  Here was opportunity for you to show demonstrated character.  How would they find you on their return?  What would they learn of your development?  By this they could then adjust and adapt their own efforts to supply what was lacking, to reinforce those lessons that had not as yet sunk in.

Now, in these cases, we may not be able to say that apart from these adults in our lives we could not have attained to maturity ourselves.  But I could say with reasonable confidence that you would not have attained the quality of maturity that you have.  You would get older, it is true.  You might even get wiser.  You could, perhaps, teach yourself to read, and then avail yourself of such books as would grant you education without them.  But I suspect it would have proven a much harder road, and far more likely to encourage error.  Mind you, there is a supposition here of having parents who cared enough to truly raise their children and teachers that actually taught, as opposed to indoctrinate.  You might learn, but from whence sound character?  From whence any knowledge of God?  Could you pick it up from observing nature around you?  To some degree, yes.  The general revelation in nature is sufficient to cause anyone to surmise that there must in fact be a God, and even to come to some understanding of what He is like.  But it still needs that special revelation that comes only by His doing.  Access to the Bible certainly helps.  I would even say it is utterly critical to our spiritual development.  But unless He imparts to us a spiritual understanding, it is to no avail.  And, God being God, should it be the case that access to the Bible is simply not possible, whether due to lack of language skills or government edict or whatever it might be, yet He is perfectly capable of making Himself known in that same, salvific degree.

But as yet, and as has been the case, shockingly really, since there was a Bible to be read, God has seen to it that try though man might, these words do not get erased.  They do not get rewritten to suit the current fancies.  If one nation moves to censor its circulation, another arises to preserve.  If the Church must go underground here, we discover that it is emergent there.  And in both cases, much to the consternation of those who would see it silenced, the Church remains vibrant and alive.  How could it not?  Our God is vibrant and alive, and He reigns.  He ordains.  He is faithful, and He will bring it to pass.

And it is with that certainty of God that we take up our exercises.  It is not that we do them in hopes of pleasing Him sufficiently that He might see fit to love us and save us.  We are saved.  We are loved.  If we were not, we would have no concern for the Bible or the Bible’s God.  We would be lost and lusting like the rest.  No, we don’t seek to earn God’s favor, for we know His favor rests upon us.  We pursue these exercises because we know that God, Who has assigned them for our doing, did so because they are in fact very good for us.  These are the things we do to be healthy and wise.  I am purposefully leaving wealthy out of that familiar phrase, because it too readily distracts us.  It’s not about wealth.  It’s about wholeness.  God’s work is holistic, encompassing the whole man.  The exercises He gives us, these means of grace by which we develop our capacity to live godly, to walk worthy, to travel humbly with our God, are designed to address the whole man, every aspect of being.  Don’t make them an onerous duty, though it surely is your duty to give them your all.  No!  Enter into this work with fear and trembling, yes, but not fear of failure, rather reverence for Him alongside Whom you work.  Enter into this work as the outworking of a true and proper Sabbath rest.  Enter into God’s rest as you enter into His presence, as you welcome His presence with you.  Enter into this work, in sum, knowing that you aren’t doing it, God is.

Enter into this work with the goal firmly in view.  Here indeed is a divine work.  God is doing it.  But we are more than just along for the ride.  We are called to surrender to that work, to walk out our daily life in obedience to what this work requires of us.  We are called to walk holy and humbly with our Lord.  I love, as anybody reading these notes of mine must have observed, that glorious tension of Philippians 2:12-13.  Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.  God is doing it!  Do it!  God is making you whole.  Join wholeheartedly in His doing.  Be amazed that He is doing it.  And gladly run to be with Him in the doing.  He is patiently achieving in us that very sanctification, full and entire sanctification, which He requires of us, that we might be found ready, without spot or wrinkle, on the day He calls us home to be His bride.

Now, then:  Calvin points out that this whole, entire sanctification cannot transpire except our affections are pure and holy alongside our reason being guided by our Lord.  He concludes that entire sanctification has come about, ‘when, in fine, the body itself lays out its endeavors and services only in good works’.  The spirit is there.  The soul is coming along.  The body, being as it requires spirit and soul to direct, is somewhat lagging.  It has too much of the earthy to it, and might be suggested as the stubborn mule within us, needing to be dragged rather forcibly into compliance.  But then, there is much about us that might be described as nearer the stubborn mule than the man of God.  But we are man.  We are moral beings under moral law and thus subject to moral culpability.  This imposes upon us a duty to ‘restrain and govern all [our] passions by a reference to that law’, as Barnes writes.  That law is God’s Law.  That Law is the call to love Him with all our being, and to do so perfectly.  That call is to love our neighbor – which has been defined to encompass every person we may encounter – with the same love we have for ourselves.  And for some of us, I dare say that means loving them significantly better than we love ourselves.  And again, the call is to do it perfectly.  Beloved, perfection is not in us.  But it is in God Who is with us, within us.  And He is working for His good pleasure, for that very perfection of holy character which is His desire for us.

Are we challenged to accept that this is the way of it?  Almost certainly we are.  It has too much about it of being something for nothing, and we are naturally suspicious of such things.  Surely, given the enormity of our crimes in having sinned against perfectly holy and eternal God, there must be serious duties of penitence and redress to which we must attend.  I mean, one can see how ideas like that of Purgatory arise.  We become aware of this holy God, so holy that any vestige of sin in man must lead to his destruction were he to come within sight of God.  And we simultaneously become aware how sinful we are.  I cannot say we become aware just how sinful we are, for I don’t think we really come to that point.  God is merciful.  Such awareness would crush us, at least as a starting point.  Perhaps, as we grow and mature, more of our need can be revealed.  Again, it’s training, not punishment.

But this awareness remains with us as we grow.  I can know that my God is at work in me.  Yet, I am also keenly aware that there are pockets of resistance that remain in me.  Pockets?  I probably have entire three-piece suits of resistance yet!  And this, too, urges upon us a works-focused mentality.  Surely, I’m not doing enough.  Clearly, God’s not going to deal with that part, or it would be gone, right?  So, it must be up to me.  But it’s not.  Yes, you must submit and pursue a life of obedience.  Yes, you have need to keep the goal in sight, to run this race of life with an eye to winning.  But winning isn’t in earning some best in show for having done your tricks well, any more than winning consists in piling up the most wealth of possessions, or, for that matter, in pursuing an ascetic life of utmost poverty.  Winning, dear ones, consists in discovering that contentment which Paul learned, the contentment that comes of knowing this perfectly holy God has made you His temple, is working in that willful soul of yours to bring about willingness to His working, is seeing to it that your spirit is in tune with His own.  Winning comes by resting; resting in Him, trusting in Him, resting even as we work at this lifelong process of sanctification knowing that, when it comes to it, success depends not on our compliance, but upon God’s faithfulness.

We don’t take that as excuse to ignore the matter entirely and get on with doing as we please.  We cannot.  For one, conscience, the voice of the Spirit, will not let us rest should we think to do so.  God is not an absentee Father.  Whom He loves, He disciplines because discipline is our need.  But it’s not about beating us for our neglect.  It’s about reminding us of our love.  And we don’t get it.  So often, we don’t get it.  Paul had to explain it all again to the Corinthians.  And they certainly had plentiful evidence of the Holy Spirit being present with them.  But they became distracted by those evidences, began to think these signs were the point, rather than pointers.  He would write to them, “The natural man does not accept the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, as they must be spiritually appraised” (1Co 2:14).  Nowhere, I suspect, is that more the case than when we come to considerations of this business of sanctification.  There, we discover that there remains in us much of this natural man.  And the natural man in us looks at this sanctification that is God’s doing and accounts it foolishness.  Where is the moral value in that?  How can Him doing it render me worthy?  And, if it is up to Him to do it, what condemnation can there be for my not doing it?

We find twin errors arising.  On the one hand, that idea we encountered with Clarke, that man can somehow manage to arrive at perfection of holiness in this present life, in spite of all the evidence against any such conclusion, and in spite of what such a perspective says of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection.  On the other hand, we have the carnal Christian as he is often called, or the social Christian.  He comes to church, maybe even regularly.  He sings the songs, nods approvingly at the message, chats politely during times of greeting and fellowship.  But come Monday, if not Sunday afternoon, he’s back in the world, and pursuing worldly pleasures with wild abandon.  Now, I’m going to offer what may be a somewhat shocking, even upsetting possibility.  Such a one may in fact yet be a true Christian, although we should have to conclude that if so, he is a very immature one, however long he has been at it.  But such a one is not to be written off as lost, or shunned as a counterfeit, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  That’s a different matter entirely.  No.  He is, at least until proven otherwise, a weaker brother in need of the godly counsel and brotherly advice of his stronger kin.

But keep your eyes on the goal, run the race and seek to finish well.  We cannot do that by worrying about our progress, and we certainly can’t do it by constantly comparing that progress to those around us.  It’s not about beating them, after all.  It’s about reaching the goal.  You don’t need to be first.  You aren’t striving for a ‘best in class’ award.  You are trying to get home.  You are running to meet your Beloved.  And there is one way to get there. 

I think I shall give the JFB the final stroke on these notes of mine.  “You must not look at the foes before and behind, on the right and the left, but to God’s faithfulness to His promises, God’s zeal for His honor, and God’s love for those whom He calls.”  There are your keys to winning this race, a race in which, for all intents and purposes, you are the only runner.  Look to God.  Trust His faithfulness.  Know His love.  Love Him and enjoy Him.  This is your whole duty.  Now, give it your whole self.