1 Thessalonians 5:23

23. And the very God The sole One who can perform this great work.

Of peace This prayer for their entire sanctification closes upon the whole paragraph, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22, the sum and aim of which is their churchly peace. This peace is the aim of both the governmental cautions of 1 Thessalonians 5:12-15, and of the words of harmony touching supernaturalism in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22. From that quarter of peace he would have the Spirit of the God of peace visit, enter, pervade, and sanctify their nature, whole and every part.

Sanctify Bloomfield remarks that this term, like the Hebrew קדשׁ , properly signifies to set apart, to remove from common use, and is often in the Old Testament used of the Levitical offerings. From this meaning of apartness from the gross and common comes the idea of consecration, purity, holiness. Hence, to sanctify is to separate from sin; to bestow, by the Spirit’s aid, the power of avoiding sin and living without condemnation before God. This can never be in this our mortal life, if we are tried by the law of absolute purity. And yet we are accepted by the law of faith in Christ, and pardoned and justified even in this life. Scripture and experience teach that there may be, and often is, such a measure of the Spirit bestowed in answer to the prayer of faith, that such uncondemning state may, even after being defaulted by sin, be re-entered and more or less permanently retained. There may be a state of continuous justification, noncondemnation, undiminished divine approbation, from day to day, and of indefinite length. This spiritual power is seldom, if ever, in such measure conferred at justification, but is the result of a more powerful faith in a maturer Christian life. Though there be a continuous flow of infirmities and short comings, which the absolute would condemn, yet is there also a flow of continuous repentant faith, and a continuous flow of justifying grace and merciful acceptance through the atonement. This is that higher plane of Christian Life, that evangelical blamelessness, for which St. Paul here prays in behalf of his Thessalonians. Barnes, in his Commentary, objects, indeed, that prayer for such sanctification does not prove “that it is attained in this life;” but the apostle in the next verse assures us that God “will do it.” That it is to be done before death is plain from the word preserved, which means a continuous process previous to the coming of Christ.

Wholly Not the whole Church; but, as Lunemann and all the best commentators agree, the whole personality of the individual. He thus prays thus for the whole being as a unit, and then distributively for the different parts of our nature.

Spirit… soul… body While man is properly divided as twofold into body and soul, in which the soul includes the whole incorporeal nature, the Platonic subdivision of the incorporeal into soul and spirit produces a threefoldness, or (trichotomy) trinality. This Platonic triplicity is so consistent with apparent facts, that it passed into popular language and was adopted by the Rabbies. It is an unsupposable coincidence that St. Paul should fall upon it here accidentally without ever having heard of this trinality from others. It could not have been unknown to philosophical Tarsus. Notes on Matthew 5:3; 1 Corinthians 2:14; 1Co 14:14 ; 1 Corinthians 15:44.

Unto Rather, in. The idea of continuity is not contained in the preposition, but is implied in preserved. The prayer is, that they may be so preserved in holiness as to be found blameless in the parousia of Christ.