(Connecting Advent and Holiness)
The word “entire” connected to sanctification occurs one time in the NT. It has been misunderstood as final sanctification. Yet, in that verse, it is talking about something totally different from that. Read it again, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 NRSV). Not just your spirit and soul, but your body is to be holy. This is the meaning of entire: spirit, soul, and body. The Gnostics taught that only the spirit was good and not the body; close to that is the idea that only the spirit of a person can be made holy. Romans 12:1-2 makes it clear that we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable. This means everything, in its entirety, that makes you to be you needs to be made holy. No “compartments” can be left out. It is this that keeps us “sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”, His glorious second advent.
