Dennis Tuuri

Oh, there you are. Sermon in scripture is 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13. 1 Thessalonians the 3rd chapter verses 11-13. Our topic will be the perseverance of the saints. 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13. Now God himself and our father and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto you, and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you, to the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all his saints.

Younger children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools if their parents desire. The prayer of Paul’s that we just read, as we mentioned last week, is part of the transition from the first half of this epistle to the second half. It moves from the narration portion of the epistle to the exhortative or to the doctrinal and encouragement and commandment side of the epistle.

It sums up what is to be spoken of in the next two chapters. Additionally, we read in this prayer of Paul’s that he prays that God would direct his path toward the Thessalonians for a couple of purposes. One, that their love may increase and abound. And two, that they may be found blameless and their hearts established in the day of Christ’s coming or parousia. We’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. Now, in the balance of this book, we’ll see that ethical conduct is stressed in chapter 4, verses 1-2, and chapter 5, verses 13-22, relating to the love that is mentioned in verse 12 of our text, and Christ’s return or Christ’s coming or his parousia is referenced in verses 13 of chapter 4 through verse 11 of chapter 5.

So those two essential elements are what will be stressed by Paul in the rest of the book. And so this transition statement that we just read really sums up what follows as well, in specific the commands and exhortations to sanctification that begin in chapter four include purity in sexual relationships, justice in dealing with brothers, growth in brotherly love, and then Christian diligence in vocational calling in chapter 4.

And then he’ll deal with a section relative to the doctrine of Christ’s return in terms of providing a source of comfort for the Thessalonians relative to their departed ones. And then he gets back to more commands and exhortations in the second half of chapter 5. So we’re dealing in kind of a transition step here, but I think it’s important we deal with one of the important doctrines of the Reformed faith, the perseverance of the saints, as it fits into this prayer that Paul makes here.

And this week and again next week when we talk about sanctification—the will of God for your life, which is your sanctification—these are kind of more motivational, I guess, trying to provide the underpinnings for what then the ethical commands that Paul will give us specifically relating to the married state, to vocational calling, to brother love, etc. that will follow in the next two chapters. And so this is kind of underpinning for that and motivation to the end of obeying these commandments that he’ll lay out for us that enable us to grow and mature in our love for God and our love for our neighbor.

There is a parallel verse to the ones we’ve just read at the end of chapter 5. He essentially returns to the same theme in verse 23 of chapter 5. We read that he says, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s that same concept we just read of unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s very important that we follow up with verse 24 of that: “Faithful is he that called you, who also will do it.” The perseverance of the saints relies upon the faithfulness of God who calls us to salvation to bring these things to completion and to cause us to mature in the faith.

And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about this afternoon is this doctrine and some implications of it that may not be obvious, have not necessarily been stressed at least in the Reformed churches that have come forth teaching the doctrine of perseverance of the saints but not looking at it in terms of its positive implications that we’ll look at as we close out this afternoon.

Okay, so first I want to talk about Paul’s prayer as it relates to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. As we said, Paul essentially prays in verses 11 through 13. He really prays three things—three things that he wants God to do. He wants God to direct him to the Thessalonians. He prays that the Lord would make you to increase and abound in your faith to the Thessalonians and to the end that God would establish in verse 13 your hearts unblamable in holiness before God. There are three specific things that Paul prays for there.

Now, we talked before about how Paul’s prayer and his prayers can be seen as instructive to us in terms of how we’re to pray as well. And while this is not the main thrust of what I want to say this afternoon, it’s important that as we go through this prayer, we notice something in the first verse. He prays that God himself and our father and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto you. The word “direct” is a singular verb form. And he uses this in conjunction with two subjects of the verb—God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This stresses the unity of the Father and the Son.

Now, we mentioned this before that the book of Thessalonians is one of the earliest, if not the earliest epistle written. And so early on in the development of the church, the unity of the Father and the Son was clearly seen. This was not something that was developed later. It was always seen by the church. And we can see this is an evidence of that. And it’s important that we recognize that.

It’s also important to not just breeze over these names that he uses. He says, “Now God himself and our Father.” He refers to God as our Father. A very important doctrine as well, which fits into the command that he gives the Thessalonians to increase in their love one toward another. God as our Father loves us. And because we all have a common Father, all the brethren, we are all brothers and sisters in the Lord. And so there’s a familial love as it were that should exist among the church of Jesus Christ based upon the fatherhood of God. We are his children.

Now, additionally, however, he goes on to describe the Son in terms of three words: the Lord Jesus Christ. While stressing in this prayer our relationship to the Father as a relationship of the father to the son, he stresses in the term “Lord” the servant-master relationship. And so Jesus is our master. Jesus—that name of course was given to Jesus because he would be a Savior of his people; he would save his people from their sins. So when we read “the Lord Jesus Christ,” we should read that in terms of the Lord, the master in a servant relationship, and Jesus, the one who has saved us from our sins. And he is also the Christ, which means anointed one, which refers to his kingship. He is the King of kings, and he is also the anointed High Priest.

And so this prayer of Paul’s shows the relationship that we have to God. It shows that our prayers can be directed not just to God the Father but also to God the Son—not simply in the name of the Son but actually to the Son, what Paul prays here. And it points out that the Son has a relationship to us of being our Lord or master, our Savior, and also our King. Very important in setting the framework for what happens in the next couple of verses.

There is more than simply the lordship aspect stressed. There’s the kingship aspect stressed as well. We’ll get to that as we get to the latter part of the talk this afternoon.

One other thing that you might want to note in passing here is that the Jewish prayer forms of the Old Testament always pray to God—God himself only. And to equate Jesus here when Paul prays to Jesus—it is an obvious equating of the Son with the Father in terms of the unity of the Trinity as well. So that is helpful for us, I think, in our own prayer life and sort of sets the stage for what he’s going to say now.

And what he says first of all is that God would make us increase and abound and that he might establish our hearts. Now, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is one of the essential doctrines of the Reformed faith, and I want to just take a couple of minutes to talk about this.

And I’m going to quote first of all from the Canons of Dort themselves. Now, just by way of review, the perseverance of the saints is, as you probably are aware, one of the five points of Calvinistic soteriology. And what that means is that the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in salvation was over time in terms of the Reformed teachings distilled down to this five-part formula.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed at all or not, but our new 29 cent stamp has a tulip on it. And many Reformed people made note of that—we now have a Calvinistic stamp because TULIP is the acronym given to the five points of Calvinistic soteriology. Now, it’s kind of interesting though. These things were really formulated by a synod that was convened at Dort in the 1600s. From 1618 to 1619, the Synod of Dorrecht met to consider the teachings of a man named Jacobus Arminius. And they refuted his teachings and instead said the Orthodox faith is this. And they listed five heads of doctrine.

And these five heads of doctrine are summarized by some in this acronym TULIP: T, Total depravity. U, unconditional election. L, Limited atonement. I, Irresistible grace. And P, Perseverance of the saints, which is the doctrine I want to talk about this afternoon.

It’s interesting to me that I think I’ve explained this to you before, but that’s not the way—that’s not the sequence that the Synod of Dort laid out these five parts in. They didn’t begin with total depravity. They began with unconditional election. The first head of doctrine was the divine election and reprobation affected by the will of God. I bring that up because in a way the TULIP thing has made it easier to think of the five parts, five points of Calvinism. But in a way too, perhaps this stressing of total depravity first instead of divine election is not right in terms of the teachings of the Scriptures.

We don’t start with man. We start with God and his election. And in a way Calvinism has been sort of seen as really stressing man’s depravity. And I don’t know if that’s totally unrelated to the fact that somehow this begins with total depravity now instead of what the Synod came up with, which began with God’s divine election. So I think it’s important to recognize that the order is not the original order and it may actually be better to change the acronym to ALTIP, which is the original order of the heads.

But in any event, the perseverance of the saints was the last head of doctrine presented by the Synod of Dort. And I’m just going to read through several of these articles. They had actually a series of 15 articles in which they spelled out the doctrine of perseverance and then they had a series of paragraphs which were essentially the rejection of the errors of Arminianism—nine paragraphs. I won’t read all these things but I do want to read some of them because it relates very much to what Paul prays for here.

After all, he prays that God may cause them to persevere and abound in their love, that they might be established in holiness before God and the Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus. So it deals with the perseverance of the saints. Here’s what some of the things said by the Synod were that will give you a basic handle on what this means.

Okay. Article number one: “Those whom God according to his purpose calls to the communion of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ and regenerates by the Holy Spirit, he also delivers from the dominion and slavery of sin. Though in this life he does not deliver them altogether from the body of sin and from the infirmities of the flesh.” That was the first article—that were delivered from sin.

Article number three: “By reason of these remains of indwelling sin and also because of the temptations of the world and of Satan, those who are converted could not persevere in that grace if left to their own strength. But God is faithful who having conferred grace mercifully confirms and powerfully preserves them therein even to the end.”

And so while the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints implies or says the saints will persevere in their growth in holiness and will abstain from sin as a general condition of life, it doesn’t mean that you will be able to reach perfection. That’s the other side of this that is not taught by this doctrine. Perfectionism is not taught. And the second thing that’s very important that they point out here is that it is God himself who preserves us in that growing grace that he gives us. So it’s not our own efforts that cause us to persevere in holiness. Rather, it’s the grace of God that preserves us in that holiness.

Okay, so it stresses very much the work of God.

Article 4 says that sometimes we do fall into grievous sin and it cites the example of the lamentable falls of David, Peter, and other saints described in holy Scripture. These demonstrate that indeed believers can fall into sin and definitely will sin and may sometimes fall into very grievous sin on occasion.

Article six says: “But God who is rich in mercy according to his unchangeable purpose of election does not wholly withdraw his Holy Spirit from his own people even in their grievous falls. Rather it says that he permits them to be totally deserted and plunge themselves—excuse me, let me read the whole thing here. I was going to try to shorten up but I won’t. He does not wholly withdraw his Holy Spirit from his own people even in their grievous faults nor suffers them to proceed so far as to lose the grace of adoption and forfeit the state of justification, or to commit the sin unto death or against the Holy Spirit. Nor does he permit them to be totally deserted and to plunge themselves into everlasting destruction.”

So part of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is that the saint will not so fall away from holiness and righteousness and obedience that he will lose his salvation or lose the grace of salvation.

Article nine: “Of the preservation of the elect to salvation and of their perseverance in the faith, true believers themselves may and do obtain assurance according to the measure of their faith, whereby they surely believe that they are and ever will continue true and living members of the church and that they have the forgiveness of sins unto life eternal.”

Now, that’s a very important implication of the doctrine of the perseverance of saints. The Scriptures teach that the saints persevere as this prayer of Paul’s is answered. And it’s this doctrine of perseverance that is a doctrine of great comfort to believers. It is the doctrine that contains the assurance of salvation as well. Because as we see our own selves persevering over time in obedience to God’s law—certainly falling short, knowing we have a mediator through Christ our Savior and striving ever to increase in holiness and increase in obedience to God’s Word—these are evidences to us, not of our own will ultimately but of the grace of God unto perseverance.

And so that very perseverance, the fact that we have known each other, many of us in this church for 5, 10 years, and we have consistently tried more and more to reform our lives, we have fallen, we have stepped, we have stumbled, we have fallen down, we have sinned, but we have gotten back up and moved on in holiness and persevered—that very thing is an evidence to us of God’s grace in our lives. And it’s a doctrine of great comfort to us that we grow in grace in this way. And it provides us with the assurance of salvation that Scriptures say we definitely have. So it’s a very important aspect of this doctrine.

Article 13: “Neither does renewed confidence of persevering produce licentiousness or disregard of piety in those who are recovered from backsliding. But it renders them much more careful and solicitous to continue in the ways of the Lord which he has ordained that they who walk therein may keep the assurance of persevering, lest on account of their abuse of his fatherly kindness, God should turn away his gracious countenance from them, to behold which is to the godly dearer than life and the withdrawal of which is more bitter than death. And they in consequence thereof should fall into more grievous torments of conscience.”

So article 13 says that while it teaches that the believer will persevere in his walk in terms of God’s Word, this is not a doctrine which produces licentiousness or a falling away into sin on the part of the believer. Because after all, the believer, the true believer, his spirit wants more than anything else in life to be satisfied by God’s presence in his life and his interaction in his life. And so to the believer, this is not a doctrine that will cause them to fall off into more and more sin.

Article 14: “And as it has pleased God by the preaching of the Gospel to begin the work of grace in us, so he preserves, continues, and perfects it by the hearing and reading of his Word, by meditation thereon, and by the exhortations, threatenings, and promises thereof, and by the use of the sacraments.”

The means of God’s causing men to persevere in the faith are cited here as his Word, the sacraments, and exhortations. And so Paul—we talked about that last week. The way we fill up faith ultimately is through the Word being taught to us and us being exhorted in terms of the Word by other men. And that’s an important part of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.

And then they go on to reject various errors in terms of perseverance as well. And I’ll read a couple of these rejections of errors or at least sections of them. Let’s see. We—excuse me—who teach that God does indeed provide the believer with sufficient powers to persevere and is ever ready to preserve these in him if he will do his duty. Now this is being rejected. People who teach this are rejected. Anybody that teaches that God does indeed provide the believer with sufficient powers to persevere and is ever ready to preserve those in him if he will do his duty—but that though all things which are necessary to persevere in faith and which God will use to preserve faith are made use of, even then it ever depends on the pleasure of the will whether he will persevere or not.

So they’re saying that perseverance is not ultimately dependent upon the believer and his will. Perseverance is ultimately dependent upon the grace of God ministered to us. If it rests upon our ability to be constant in our obedience to God, it rests on a shaky foundation and will fall. And so perseverance instead rests upon God’s grace and his preserving us in our walk of faith.

They also reject those who teach that the true believers and regenerate not only can fall from justifying faith and likewise from grace and salvation holy and to the end, but indeed often do fall from this and are lost forever. The other side—the teaching of Arminius that they were rejecting in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints—is that people can be regenerated by God, brought into saving faith by God, and then because of their lack of constancy fall away from the faith into damnation, that you can lose your salvation in other words.

And so the teaching of the Synod of Dort said, “No, you cannot lose your salvation. Those whom God has brought to salvation, he will also cause to persevere in the faith.”

Okay, that’s basically one overview. And I’m going to give you a much shorter overview now as I read through the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is a much shorter summation of this. The Westminster Confession of Faith in the chapter 23 dealing with the perseverance of the saints says the following:

“They whom God hath accepted in his beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved.”

Very simple summation of the doctrine. Secondly: “This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father, upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ, the abiding of the Spirit and of the seed of God within them, and the nature of the covenant of grace, from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.”

Okay, so the first thing they said is true saints will persevere to the end. The second thing they said is the means of doing that is not ourselves. It’s the grace of God, mediated through his Spirit, through the Son, through the covenant of grace, etc. And then finally: “Nevertheless they may through the impetuousness of Satan, of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sin and for a time continue therein whereby they incur God’s displeasure and grieve his Holy Spirit, come to be deified with some measure of the graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened and their conscience wounded, hurt and scandalize others and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.”

So the saying, in spite of this doctrine, this doctrine also teaches that men, true believers, can for a time fall into sin and indeed grievous sin as we mentioned earlier, the examples of David and others as well.

So that’s the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. And you’ll notice it’s framed in very language always relating to our ability to withhold ourselves from sin.

Now, this doctrine is obviously exceedingly found in an exceeding number of passages throughout the Scriptures, and I will just read a couple of them for you. First, in Ephesians 1:4, we read that “according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” So there it links God’s election of us before the foundation of the world and it links that to the fact that we then should be holy and without blame before him in love. That is part of his electing grace—that indeed we will persevere unto holiness.

Ephesians 5:27 later in that same epistle, we read that “he might present it to himself, that is the church, a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.” And so God says that indeed the whole purpose of us, unto salvation, is that we might become without spot or blemish and presented to the Groom, Jesus, in that way.

And so the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is seen in these and other Scriptures.

Additionally, in 1 Peter 1:5, it speaks of those who “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” And that really is a summation of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. We are kept—true saints are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

Jude verse 24: “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,” and goes on to sing forth then the praises of God. The point is that it says that God is the one who is able to keep us from falling and to preserve us—present us faultless rather before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. All of which echo really verse 13 of our text, that “to the end that God might establish our hearts unblamable in holiness before him at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”

So the perseverance of the saints is taught, and Paul’s prayer I think relates very closely to this. And it shows through three aspects that we’ll now talk of in terms of the perseverance of the saints.

The first thing we want to speak of going off from this prayer, then, in terms of its relevance to this doctrine, is that the perseverance of the saints is related to God’s active involvement in the details of our lives. God’s work in our lives is working in a very detailed fashion. That work causes us to persevere in the faith as demonstrated by works, we avoid sin increasingly, and that is taught by verse 13.

But then third—and this is the thing I really want to stress as we get to it—is that as we also grow in love, the keeping of the commandments, we then further the growth of the kingdom. And so the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints has not just a defensive implication that we’re kept from sin but it has a positive, offensive implication that we further the kingdom and that we’re called to persevere through to the abounding of our love in verse 12. And that has implications relative to the growth of the kingdom.

Okay, first implication then: the perseverance of the saints and God’s active involvement in the details of our lives.

Verse 11: Paul prays that God himself and our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ may direct our way unto you. Now, you remember early on in chapter 2 he had talked about the hindrances thrown up to those who are trying to preach the Gospel—himself and the other Apostles—by the Jews and ultimately by the agency of Satan. And now he prays to God that God would direct or straighten out his path to the Thessalonians.

Now this shows quite clearly that God is involved in the details of our lives. Here Paul is talking about an actual journey that he wishes to make, and he prays that God might indeed direct his path unto them. Paul prays in this prayer for the means to the ends that he prays for in verses 12 and 13. He wants their love to increase. He wants them to be established and to persevere in the faith as it were, to grow in holiness. And he prays in verse 11 here for the means to accomplish that. And that means would be that he would be able to come to them and actually encourage them and develop them face to face.

Now, it’s interesting that apparently this prayer in its clearest sense is not answered by God in the affirmative. It was answered with a “no” by God. It’s true that many years later Paul did return and encourage the saints in Macedonia. But by then the church had become basically established through this epistle and through his second epistle and through their own internal growth. A direct visit from Paul was not part of God’s providence for causing the development of the ends that he prayed for, and that would surely happen in the lives of the Thessalonians—their abounding in love and their increasing in holiness.

But Paul prayed for it, and that was a correct thing to pray for. Again, this teaches us in our prayer life that we should pray for ends—what we want to see accomplished in somebody’s life in terms of their growth and grace. But it is also proper to pray for means. But God may or may not answer the prayer for means. He will definitely answer Paul’s prayer for the end here. But in any event, I think it’s very important to recognize in this that Paul is praying for the detailed involvement of God in the small things of life in terms of a journey.

This is repeated in James chapter 4. Basically the same thing is taught in the book of James chapter 4. Very important verse to teach our children as they’re growing up about involvement of God in our everyday aspect of life.

James in his epistle 4:13, “Go to now ye that say today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, ‘If the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that.’”

So James correcting them in terms of their cavalier attitude toward the small things of life says that even in terms of making plans to go to a city or for instance to drive to church this day, we should say, “If the Lord will, we will be at church on the Lord’s day.” Now we say that, but it must always be in our minds that God’s involvement in our lives includes the details of all of our life. God meets us in every aspect of our lives.

This last couple of weeks, I’ve had this in my life demonstrated by God in a very marked way in a couple of areas that I want to just mention briefly. First, what’s been going on in Salem—it is getting to the point, for those of you who don’t know, our homeschool bill was passed out of the Senate Education Committee Friday morning with a due pass recommendation. The vote was 5 to 1, and we definitely almost surely will pass the Senate with a good majority this week.

The bad news, if you want to look at it that way, the only negative news on the horizon, is that Barbara Roberts, the governor, sent a letter to the committee members urging them to vote no on our bill the day before their committee vote. And while it didn’t apparently faze them at all, she now has the option of vetoing the bill once it’s passed by the Senate. And she may well do this.

Now, the reason I bring it up, though, is because as this thing has progressed, I increasingly am cognizant of the fact that I am simply riding a chain of events over which I have no control. We do our work. I go down and I do the work that I’m supposed to do. And we’re going to ask some of you this afternoon again to make phone calls to the governor’s office. And it’s important that when we’re asked to do this sort of thing, we take those things seriously and we put our effort in.

But ultimately the hearts of these legislators on these committees and in the House and the Senate and ultimately the governor’s heart—it’s in the hands of God, and God meets us. What we’ve seen over the last few months in Salem with HB2820 is big enemies keep coming up every step of the way. At the House Education Committee hearings, the Senate Education Committee hearings, people don’t want to pass this bill, but God continues to roll over all the opposition that comes up.

It miraculously passed the House unanimously. Passed the Senate Education Committee with only one dissent vote last Friday, even though we had big trouble—it looked like just a couple of days before the vote, it looked like we had big trouble with amendments and Governor Roberts’ intervention, etc.

I think Roy mentioned it when we were going to Seattle a couple of weeks ago for the meeting up there—God meets us in these things. We see God’s intervention actively in these affairs, both in the Seattle situation and in the Salem situation. And in the Salem situation, it’s one unto victory. And it’s important that these little details, these little votes by these legislators and the little things of life—God’s providence is always at work. And it is part of this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. His grace is being ministered to us individually and corporately as well.

So that’s a positive example. Now, last week I had another example that I won’t give you the details of, but I had a test last week, one of the many we get from God. And it was a test that I failed. I fell into sin in a particular matter in which I was considering, and I don’t want to give you the details but it was a remarkable set of events in the timing of God in terms of my receipt of a piece of mail—is what it specifically was. And I won’t tell you the details and please don’t ask me for the details. But in any event, within just a couple hours after me failing this test, I received this other piece of information in which everything was cleared up for me, and it became very apparent to me that God is at work in my life in this particular instance.

Now, it was a great joy to me even though I failed the test and even though I had to do some repenting. It was a great joy to me because I know the truth of what Hebrews says and the Psalms say and the Proverbs say—that those whom God loves, he chastens and he disciplines, tests and evaluates. He wants us to be seeing the areas in which we need to grow, and it is a good thing when the presence of God is with us correcting us because his presence is what we want in our lives. It is the thing that assures us that indeed we shall persevere.

And so God meets us in these everyday details of our lives. And I think just like the example that I used oh 6 months ago or so of the archer who shot by chance as it were, and yet the arrow came down and killed the one whom God had destined for punishment—these things are demonstrated in the Bible. It’s not as if God is away from us most of the time and only comes near during these special times, these special moments when we can see God’s hand upon us.

I think God wants us to see them as demonstrations of the truth of what the Scriptures say—that his providence is involved in every aspect of our lives and he is constantly at work in our lives. It is in him that we live and move and have our being, and God’s activity is always present in every detail of our lives.

And when we see these moments, when we can see it very pointedly that God was upon me during this particular incident for blessing or for chastisement, it should build our faith and fill up our faith that indeed it is God who’s at work, at us, with us in all things of life. And it should be a joy to us. The big events should teach us to realize that he is involved in the small events as well.

So the perseverance of the saints in this prayer shows God’s active involvement in the details of our lives.

But secondly, the perseverance of the saints relates to some defensive implications from the text. Not only is God at work in our lives in a very detailed fashion, but that work of God causes us to persevere in the faith as demonstrated by works, we avoid sin increasingly in our growth in grace. And that’s demonstrated by verse 13.

Paul prays that God is involved in these minute things of life to the end that he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

Now, I am not going to deal a lot right now with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. Probably there are some of you who want a big exposition of this. I’m not sure what the text means here. I’ve got to be honest with you. I can give you some options. I can tell you some things that various people think about what coming this is. I’ll just spend a couple of minutes on this and get back to the point of perseverance.

The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ—the word for coming is parousia, which does not mean “coming” really. It means the presence, the making aware of the presence and the rule of Jesus Christ at a particular point in time. And it can refer to the final consummation of all things at the final coming of our Lord when all things are brought to completion. We’ve said before that it can also refer to, and does I think in various parts of Scripture, the coming of Jesus Christ in judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70. That’s a very important event. We’ve said this before. I’ll stress it again. That was the prophecy that our Savior made relative to him and his coming, over and over again throughout the Gospels.

He talked about the destruction beginning with John the Baptist and then the words of our Savior himself—the destruction that was coming upon Jerusalem for their rejection of Messiah and the transfer of the kingdom as it were from the Jewish nation to the Gentiles and to the new body of Christ, the church. Very important transition is described there. And that parousia, the coming of our Lord, can refer to that as well.

Now the phrase here “with all his saints” is a cause of some consternation for commentators. There are three options to what that means. The word “saint”—”with all the saints”—can mean with angels. It can mean with the dead in Christ, those who have already died in Christ, or it can mean both those things together.

There are various verses that demonstrate that Christ’s coming, his parousia, is accompanied by a host of angels. There’s a lot of references from the Old Testament. I think I put them on your outline. No, I didn’t. I’ll read you off some references then. Daniel 4:13, Daniel 8:13, Zechariah 14:5, Matthew 25:31, Mark 8:38, Luke 9:26, 2 Thessalonians 1:7. These verses seem to be saying primarily that Christ at his parousia is accompanied by angels.

Now the word that is translated “saints” here is never, except perhaps in the book of Jude, never does refer to angels. It always refers to departed saints. However, the same Greek word that is used here is used in the Septuagint where it does talk about the coming of God in judgment with his angels, to refer to angels. So it refers to—this particular Greek word that’s translated “saints” here does refer to angels in the Old Testament in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, but every other place in the New Testament it seems to refer to the dead in Christ. And that’s why commentators are confused about what it means.

Additionally, there’s some discussion over what the phrase modifies. Does “with all his saints” refer to the parousia of our Lord? Does it modify that, or does it modify “them,” the Thessalonians, becoming unblamable in holiness?

Lensky, one of the best Greek commentators that you can read, thinks it actually modifies the perfection of the Thessalonians—not perfection, the growing grace of the Thessalonian saints when they become unblamable in holiness “with all his saints.” So the idea is that when Christ appears in his presence, either at the Jerusalem judgment in AD 70 or at the final consummate judgment of all time or at various comings in judgment, that these believers would become unblamable in holiness along with all the rest of the saints as well—that they’d be part of that congregation.

Those are some of the options. I think that no matter what it is, it really is very important to see that no matter what the timing of that is, the prayer is the same and is repeated in various other portions of Scripture without the reference to the time reference. And so that is not necessarily important from the understanding of the verse. I think the important thing that this verse teaches us is that saints grow in holiness as they mature, and that Paul prays that God might accomplish this, and indeed God does bring it to pass.

I wanted to read one quote by Lensky. Lensky says that this verse says nothing about the coming either of the saints or angels in company with Christ. Parousia is the Lord’s presence, not his coming out of heaven. See, it doesn’t really mean “coming.” It means the presence of the Lord. Remember, we said before it’s a technical term that would describe when a Roman general or a Roman Caesar would come to a town, but not his coming—it was his presence as ruler that was established by his parousia.

And so I have a book written by Isabelle Warren in the mid-1800s on the parousia, and Warren believes that the parousia refers to the establishment of Christ’s reign in AD 70 with the judgment upon the Jewish nation. But that parousia is not a point of action, a point in time rather, but it refers to all of the reign of Christ, all of his presence as ruler, mediating upon earth in all things, judging unbelievers and casting them into judgment and exalting or affirming those who are righteous in the faith.

So I don’t want to get into all that, but I just wanted to sort of give you an overview of the various options to that phrase. And we are going to deal with this again in chapter 5. We’ll probably focus more upon the coming aspect, the parousia, at that point. But for this afternoon, what I want you to see is that the perseverance of the saints includes this defensive implication—it’s the implication really that was pronounced in those various quotes I read from the Westminster Confession and from the Canons of Dort relative to the believer’s perseverance essentially being an abstaining from sin over time, that they might become unblamable in holiness.

Now this phrase does not mean—this being unblamable in holiness does not mean perfection. In fact, this term “unblamable” is what Paul referred to himself as in another epistle before he was a Christian. It means he essentially without spot, without any major blemish. It actually was used for instance of the lamb who was without blemish. And Paul could say he was unblamable in that sense before he was a Christian.

But what’s important about this unblamableness is that it’s linked to holiness before God. Now the concept of holiness before God means that the believer is set apart or consecrated to a task. And so to be unblamable, to have no moral imperfections in you, must be combined with a holiness, a consecration to God and a service in Jesus Christ to be legitimately Christian. And that is what Paul prays for the Thessalonians—that they would become increasingly devoted and consecrated to God, and as a result clean out moral imperfections in their lives increasingly on a perpetual basis.

And so Paul really is praying here for the perseverance of these particular saints—their growth in grace and their movement away from sin in their lives.

Turn to 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1, and we’ll see kind of what can be seen as a parallel text in some ways to this. 2 Corinthians 6:14 starting in verse 14. You’re familiar with part of this, but it’s important we read it in context: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?

For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”

See, this is really an extension of what Paul prays for with the Thessalonians. And this shows the other aspect of it—that we have a job to play in this perfection of holiness that Paul prays that God might accomplish in their lives. Paul says on the basis of these promises that God will be in the midst of us and God is a holy God, he essentially repeats and expounds upon Leviticus where it says, “Be ye holy for I am holy.” The holiness here spoken of has reference in the Old Testament only to God. And so ultimately our holiness stems from the fact that we are in the presence of God and he is dwelling amongst us.

And as a result of that then we are to grow in grace by driving out the uncleanness, the filthiness of the flesh and spirit, and that is the way we perfect holiness in the fear of God. So we have reference in these verses to a cleansing of our mind, our vocation, our volition, our will, our sense of dominion or government—all these things are referenced in this passage in terms of not being unequally yoked in all these areas in our intellectual understanding and what we do and the consecration of our lives and how we govern ourselves.