What Attainments Christians May Reasonably Expect to Make in This Life

At a glance

Relevant Scripture

“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. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 KJV

UECF.NET summary

This chapter asks what Christians can honestly expect from grace in this present life, and it begins by narrowing the term 'sanctification' to something specific: a heart's whole, willing consecration to God, which Scripture also calls love and obedience to His law. Read carefully, Paul's prayer that God would sanctify believers 'wholly' in spirit, soul, and body is not a wish for some mysterious change in human nature or emotional constitution, nor a request that temptation cease, growth stop, or ordinary human variability disappear. A believer fully consecrated to God may still feel sorrow and joy by turns, may still need daily bread, prayer, and the ordinary means of grace, and will certainly still meet real temptation, since even Christ himself was tempted while wholly obedient. What is being asked for, then, is not an escape from being human but the removal of divided allegiance — a will no longer split between God and self.

Because this is what sanctification means, the chapter argues that expecting it in this life is not presumption but plain reasonableness. A command implies the ability to keep it, at least in the sense that matters morally — a willing heart — otherwise God would be asking for something no creature could ever supply, which His own justice would never do. Paul's prayer supplies the same conclusion from the promise side: he does not ask for partial holiness or hedge his request with 'if possible in this life'; he simply prays it, and adds that the One who calls believers to this is faithful to accomplish it. Much of the resistance to this expectation, the chapter suggests, comes not from Scripture but from unexamined assumptions — that habitual sin is unconquerable, that the church's golden age lies safely in the past, or that admitting the doctrine's truth while quietly expecting never to experience it is a mark of humility rather than of unbelief. Refusing people this hope, the chapter concludes, does not protect them from presumption; it simply discourages them from asking for what has already been promised.

Main theological themes

• Sanctification is the will's whole consecration to God, not a change in the body's constitution or an escape from ordinary human temptation and growth.
• A believer's inability to attain holiness is moral, not natural — a matter of the heart's unwillingness or unbelief, not a genuine barrier God's grace cannot cross.
• An inspired, unqualified prayer for present sanctification (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24) makes the expectation of substantial present holiness reasonable, not presumptuous.

Key ideas

• Sanctification concerns present obedience — the will rightly ordered toward God's glory and others' good — not any alteration of temperament, emotion, or bodily appetite.
• Because Christ himself grew in grace and faced real temptation while remaining wholly obedient, believers should not expect sanctification to erase these features of human experience.
• God's commands imply a corresponding ability to obey in the moral sense; to deny this is effectively to say God asks the impossible, which contradicts His justice.
• The chapter treats settling for less than the full promise, on the assumption that others before us fell short, as unbelief rather than modesty.

Important concepts

• Sanctification (present sense) — In this chapter's use, not a mystical experience or bodily change but the heart's present, willing conformity to God's law of love — obedience considered as an ongoing state rather than a memory of a past crisis.
• Christian warfare — The believer's continuing struggle with temptation (not with indwelling sin as a rival will), which the chapter insists persists even in a fully consecrated life, since Christ himself experienced it without ceasing to be wholly obedient.
• Means of grace — The ordinary channels — prayer, Scripture, the Spirit's help, corporate worship — through which God sustains and deepens holiness; sanctification never outgrows the need for these, since God works through means rather than by force.

Related Bible references

• 2 Corinthians 3:18
• Hebrews 13:20-21
• 1 Peter 1:15-16
• Ephesians 4:22-24
• Philippians 1:6

Practical Christian application

• This week, identify one habitual struggle you have quietly filed under 'impossible to overcome' and bring it to God as a matter of present obedience rather than a lifelong sentence.
• Pray 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 for yourself as Paul prayed it — asking, not merely hoping — and notice whether you actually expect an answer.
• When you fall into old temptation, distinguish in your own mind between being tempted (which even Christ experienced) and yielding to it, so that the fact of temptation does not become an excuse for defeat.

Questions for study