What Is Jesus Coming Back For?
If you’ve ever watched footage of soldiers crossing a minefield, you’ve seen what an agonizing process it is.
Every inch of every step matters.
Sometimes engineers go first, probing the ground inch by inch.
Sometimes markers are placed to show where it is safe to walk.
Sometimes a soldier can only put his foot where the man in front of him has already stepped.
The dangerous thing is buried beneath the surface, so you can’t see the disaster that is there, quietly waiting. One wrong step and everything explodes.
These two verses at the end of 1 Thessalonians are a bit like that.
They look harmless enough. They’re only two verses. In fact, they’re part of Paul’s closing prayer for his letter.
But hidden beneath these few words are some of the more debated theological questions in the last couple hundred years of church history.
- How does sanctification work?
- Can a Christian become entirely sanctified in this life?
- What does it mean to be blameless?
- Are we body and soul, or body, soul, and spirit?
- Can a believer be certain God will keep him until Christ returns?
Over the last two or three centuries, Christians have stepped into these verses and touched off one theological explosion after another.
And yet, after all those years of debate, it has become apparent that most of those theological explosions were over actual doctrinal duds.
Not because the doctrines don’t matter. They do.
But because they are not Paul’s main point.
Paul’s purpose here is not to settle every theological controversy hidden in these verses.
His purpose is to reassure Christians.
Jesus is coming back for them.
And until he comes back, God himself is committed to making them holy and keeping them safe.
If we’re not careful, we can spend all our time hunting for the mines and completely forget to actually follow the path across the field.
And the path leads to one reassuring truth after another.
So we will deal with those theological landmines, and try to do so accurately and adequately. But we won’t dwell on them. They’re just not the main point.
The point of these two verses 2000 years ago was to reassure the Christians in Thessalonica that Jesus was coming back for them and that the Spirit of the faithful Lord Jesus would keep on working to make them more like Jesus until his return
Today, the point of these two verses is to reassure Christians in Dundalk that Jesus is coming back for us and that the Spirit of the faithful Lord Jesus will keep on working to make us more like Jesus until his return
These are almost the last words in Paul’s letter.
They are a prayer or benediction, calling down God’s comfort and reassurance to the Thessalonian Christians and any other believers with questions about the Lord’s return.
If you’ve ever found yourself stressing out about the return of Christ, and all the questions that you still have unanswered about that epic mystery, these words are for you.
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
what they need to listen for
- 5 solid truths about what Jesus is coming back for
Jesus is coming back for his people
Notice the repeated emphasis.
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
Paul is not speaking in abstractions.
He is speaking personally.
Jesus is not merely coming back to consummate a kingdom.
Jesus is not just coming back to judge the world.
Jesus is coming back for his people.
The language is deeply relational.
These believers belong to him.
He knows them.
He called them.
He saved them.
And he promises to return for them.
That is why Christians don’t merely believe in an event.
We await a person.
The return of Christ is personal because salvation is personal.
The same Savior who called us by name intends to gather us to himself.
I hope you also notice that this is a promise given to a specific people, not just a generic group of individual persons.
This letter is explicitly addressed to the Thessalonian church.
Paul is not writing to a bunch of disconnected Christian believers who happen to live in the region of the city of Thessalonica.
He’s writing to a definite and structured body of believers, a church.
Jesus is coming back for his people.
Jesus is coming back for his holy people
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
Sanctify means to make holy.
To set apart.
To make more like Christ.
Every Christian has already been justified.
But every Christian is also being sanctified.
God refuses to leave his children exactly as he found them.
He saves us by grace.
But his grace immediately begins changing us.
Not because holiness earns salvation.
But because salvation produces holiness.
A bride prepares for her wedding because she is loved, not so she can become loved.
Likewise God’s people pursue holiness because they belong to Christ.
All tribes of Christians agree that sanctification is in one sense progressive. It begins at the moment of new birth and continues throughout the Christian’s life.
We grow in Christlikeness.
We increase in holiness.
Paul’s point here is that Jesus is coming back for a holy people.
Jesus is coming back for his wholly holy people
Some have used verse 23 to argue for something they call “entire sanctification.”
They see Paul’s language here as teaching that each Christian can and should reach a state of absolute holiness in this life.
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Usually these Christian brothers teach that this gift is received in a cataclysmic spiritual experience. Some of them even identify it with the baptism in the Holy Spirit. You know I never would, because I believe Jesus when he said that the baptism in the Holy Spirit that John the Baptist had spoken about was abour to happen just a matter of days from his Ascension into heaven from the Mount of Olives. We made that point clearly and repeatedly as we walked through the book of Acts together. Yet these brethren apparently missed that detail, and came to earnestly believe that this life-teaching experience of “entire sanctification” was the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
As they see it, someone who has received entire sanctification has basically conquered sin and is able to live in serene and undisturbed victory over sin—basically sinless perfection—for weeks or months or years or decades at a time. In the 1700s and 1800s there were several well known teachers—beginning with John Wesley himself—who claimed to have received entire sanctification.
We Reformed Baptists, on the other hand, have argued for progressive sanctification—a lifelong process of growth in godliness and holiness and Christlikeness—is the norm. We notice that there are many passages that describe the life of holiness as a race, a struggle, or a war, and warn tnat there is no such thing as somebody who doesn’t sin. And those passages come from almost all NT authors.
Beyond that, Paul’s focus here is clearly on two specific and glorious things:
- the Day of Christ’s return, when he will present his people to His Father transformed and blameless
- the faithful work of the Holy Spirit now to grow us and guard us in holiness until that Day
Paul is not telling the Thessalonins and us to seek a specific experince ihat will make them perfectly holy.
He’s saying that the point at which we will truly be completely, entirely, totally, comprehensively, utterly, wholly sanctified will be when we are glorified in the presence of Jesus Christ. In the meantime. the Holy Spirit is already reaching into every nook and cranny of who we are and rearranging things for the glory of God and for our eternal good.
Each of us had a sudden jump in holiness when we first were born again. As the years roll on, we have other seasons of intense spiritual growth and sudden moral transformation. But we also have ongoing struggles and repeated failures. In all of it, the Holy Spirit is at work to make us more holy, to conform us more and more to the image of Christ. We are getting more and more entirely sanctified—more wholly holy.
I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit cannot do a sudden radical and permanent work of transformation, so radical and so permanent that the Christian would never need pay attention to fighting the good fight of faith ever again, so complete, so absolute that the Christian lives the rest of his life effortlessly in sinless perfection. The Holy Spirit is God. He can do whatever he wants. I am just saying that he normally doesn’t work that way, and that even if he does, that’s not what this verse is talking about. This verse assures us that the Holy Spirit is always working to sanctify us more entirely, to make us more wholly holy. And this verse promises us that our sanctification will be entirely complete when our Lord comes back.
So Jesus is coming back for his wholly holy people—specifically to complete the work that the Holy Spirit is doing as he comprehensively renovates us.
Jesus is coming back for his whole wholly holy people
Then notice how Paul says the Holy Spirit is working on all of all of us—every piece of every one of us.
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christians have debated for centuries whether man is best understood as
- body and soul, or
- body, soul, and spirit, or
- a unified whole person.
The division of the human nature into body, soul, and spirit is a classic mark of neoplatonist Greek philosophy, both before, during, and after the writing of the New Testament. There were even some early Christian leaders who accepted it that neoplatonic understanding of human nature.
In recent times, there have been some fairly popular teachers in conservative evangelical circles who have insisted that man is made up of body soul and spirit, and have built extensive theologies, psychologies, and ministry empires on this trichotomy. And they have strongly maintained that anyone who doesn’t agree with their perspective on the makeup of man just doesn’t really believe the Bible. This is the verse they point to.
I want to show you why that’s not a fair or faithful way to treat this text.
For starters, it helps to notice something about how the Bible often uses lists.
Sometimes Scripture gives us an exhaustive list. Every item is meant to be included. The list of the twelve apostles is like that. Likewise the 12 sons of Jacob. When Jesus tells us to baptize new believers in the name of the father the son and the Holy Spirit, that’s the exhaustive list of the three persons of the godhead. There are no extras hiding around somewhere. Yes, the Bible does sometimes include exhaustive lists.
More often, however, Scripture uses representative lists. The writer gathers several important items together to communicate a larger truth without intending to provide an exhaustive, absolutely all-embracing inventory.
Let me show you a little bit about how the Bible uses representative lists
Some Familiar Representative Lists in Scripture
The Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control
Is Paul claiming these nine are the only evidences and outcomes of the Spirit’s work?
Should we conclude that courage, generosity, humility, compassion, or perseverance are not the work of the Holy Spirit in us because they are not listed?
The list is representative.
The Works of the Flesh in Galatians 5:19-21
A long list of nasties we won’t afflict ourselves with here.
But Paul closes with:
“and things like these.”
He explicitly says the list is representative.
The Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11
The passage mentions about a dozen heroes of the faith. It also lets us know that there are many more who are not mentioned. So, a representative list
Gifts of the Spirit (4 different lists)
Romans 12:6-8
prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leadership, mercy
1 Corinthians 12:8-10
wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation
1 Corinthians 12:28
apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles, healings, helps, administrations, tongues
Ephesians 4:11
apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers
No two lists are identical. That strongly suggests Paul is providing representative rather than exhaustive catalogs.
Lists Describing Human Nature
Body, Soul, and Spirit
1 Thessalonians 5:23
“May your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless…”
the classic text used by used by advocates of trichotomy.
Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength
Mark 12:30 Deuteronomy 6:5
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
Four components.
If 1 Thessalonians is exhaustive, why isn’t this one? And since this list appears on the lips of Jesus, why does it not become the normative or paradigmatic list, the one that interprets and explains all the others?
Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1:46-47
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”
Classic Hebrew poetic parallelism, making soul and spirit basically the same thing
Heart and Flesh
Psalm 84:2
“My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.”
Only two elements.
Soul and Body
Matthew 10:28
“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”
Appears dichotomous.
Inner Self and Outer Self
2 Corinthians 4:16
“Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”
Again, two categories.
These are clearly representative lists.
Maybe that was a Bible study overload. Let’s try something simpler.
If I tell my wife that I love her with all my heart, no one thinks I’m excluding my mind.
If I tell her I love her with all my heart and soul, no one thinks I’ve stopped loving her with my body.
If I tell her I love her with every fiber of my being, no one starts counting fibers.
The point is that I love her with everything I have and all that I am.
Paul is doing the same sort of thing here in our passage.
He piles up terms, not because he is delivering a lecture on biblical anthropology (the doctrine of humanity), but because he wants believers to know that God’s sanctifying work reaches every part of who they are.
So when Paul says “your whole spirit and soul and body,” he not be trying to hand us a blueprint of human composition.
Rather, he is doing what biblical writers often do.
He is piling up terms to emphasize completeness.
Every part of you.
Everything that makes you who you are.
Every faculty.
Every affection.
Every thought.
Every desire.
Every action.
God intends to sanctify all of it.
Jesus is not returning for a partially redeemed people.
He is returning for a whole wholly holy people.
Jesus holds his whole wholly holy people in his hands until he comes back
Here is the greatest comfort in the passage, and really the whole point.
Paul does not say:
“Try harder and maybe you’ll make it.”
He does not say:
“Hold on tightly enough and perhaps you’ll survive.”
Nor does he say:
“Pray hard enough To have the necessary spiritual experience to transform your life”
Instead he says:
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
The emphasis is entirely on God, What he has done, what he is doing, and what he has promised to do. It’s got nothing to do with what you and I have to do.
Think about what this God did and does.
God called.
God sanctifies.
God keeps.
God completes.
Why can believers have confidence?
Why can we rest peacefully in the hands of our Savior?
Because our future ultimately rests on God’s faithfulness, not ours.
Think about the whole story of salvation.
He went to the cross to accomplish our salvation.
He sent His Holy Spirit to seal our salvation.
He is coming back one day to consummate our salvation.
Every stage is His work.
Every stage is sustained by His faithfulness.
Every stage rests upon His promises.
The God who began the work has never abandoned the work.
And the God who started transforming us intends to complete transforming us.
set the hook
- Not the right experiences with holiness and the Holy Spirit
- not the right ideas about the makeup of mankind
- but just Jesus, Living in you in his Holy Spirit, working with you to grow to grow you in holiness until he gets back
what God wants them to do
So what is Jesus coming back for?
Paul’s answer unfolds like a staircase.
Jesus is coming back for His people.
Jesus is coming back for His holy people.
Jesus is coming back for His wholly holy people.
Jesus is coming back for His whole wholly holy people.
And Jesus Himself is holding His whole wholly holy people in His hands until He comes.
The question then becomes:
What does God want us to do with that truth?
Not panic.
Not speculate.
Not live in fear.
Not fret over whether we’ve had the right experiences to capture the proper holiness
Not constantly wonder whether He has abandoned us.
Instead:
Rest on His promises.
Yes, there is praying that you need to do. It is prayer that will help you rest on his promises
Yes, there is Bible memorization meditation that you need to do if this Bible work I will help you rest promises
Yes, there is fasting that you need to do, let it only be fasting designed to help you to rest on his promises
The God who called you is faithful.
The Savior who died for you is faithful.
The Spirit who lives within you is faithful.
And the Lord who is coming for you is faithful.
Therefore,
“He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”
That’s not wishful thinking.
That’s a divine promise.
And when Jesus comes back, He will find every one of His people exactly where His faithful hands have kept them all along.
Eternal Father, in this very moment, we turn again from our sin and ourselves to you and your glory,
Trusting only in your Son’s sacrifice for our sins to make us right with you.
We want to shelter ourselves in the shadow of his cross,
Bathe ourselves in the blood that he shed there for us,
Rest ourselves on his redemption
Robe ourselves in his righteousness,
Renew ourselves in his resurrection,
Lose ourselves in his Lordship,
And find ourselves in his friendship.
We want him to become for us, for today and forever, wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and salvation.
For he is the One who suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to you, our Father.
1Co 11 23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. 31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
4 questions for examining ourselves
- Do I turn from my sin and trust Jesus alone to make me right with God?
- Has my trust in Jesus led me to follow him in baptism, like he wants?
- Has my trust in Jesus led me to be part of a specific church family, like he wants?
- Is there some other sin I need to turn away from right now, before I eat and drink?
Song Title
Song lyrics
Benediction ???
Covenant
Having been led, as we believe, by the Spirit of God, to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, and on the profession of our faith, having been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we do now, in the presence of God, angels, and this assembly, most solemnly and joyfully renew our covenant with one another, as one body in Christ.
We covenant, therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, to walk together in Christian love; to strive for the advancement of this church, in knowledge, holiness, and comfort; to promote its prosperity and spirituality;
to support its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrines; to contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the church’s ministry expenses, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel through all nations.
We also covenant to maintain family and secret devotions; to train our children in the things of God; to seek the salvation of our family and our acquaintances; to be moral in our conduct, just in our dealings, faithful in our commitments, and exemplary in our behavior; to turn away from all gossip, complaining, and anger; to carefully avoid anything that we know to be harmful to other people’s spirituality or morality; and to be zealous in our efforts to advance the kingdom of our Savior.
We likewise covenant to faithfully steward whatever physical property God has given us to hold in common as a congregation, and to use such property only for the glory of God and the good of others in keeping with the teachings of his Word, the Bible.
We moreover covenant that if we ever leave this church family we will, as soon as possible, unite with some other church, where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God’s Word.
Be still, my soul
The Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently
The cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God
To order and provide;
In every change
He faithful will remain.
Be still my soul!
Thy blest, thy heavenly friend.
Through stormy ways
Leads to a joyful end.
Be still, my soul!
Thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence
Let nothing shake:
All now mysterious
Shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul!
The waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them
While he dwelt below.
Be still, my soul!
The hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord;
When disappointment,
Grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot,
Love’s purest joys restored!
Be still, my soul!
When change and fears are past,
All safe and blessed
We shall be at last.
Jesus is coming back for his people
Jesus is coming back for his holy people
Jesus is coming back for his wholly holy people
Jesus is coming back for his whole wholly holy people
Jesus holds his whole wholly holy people in his hands until he comes back