1 Thessalonians 5:23

Αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης—. But may the God of peace Himself …: cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:11 (see note), and 2 Thessalonians 2:16, where a like contrast seems to be implied, under Αὐτὸς δέ, between human wish or effort and Divine power. Philippians 2:12 f. (“Work out your own salvation, for God it is that worketh in you”) illustrates the connexion between 1 Thessalonians 5:22-23 : “Keep yourselves from … evil. But may God … sanctify you.” Ὁ θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης, a favourite designation with St Paul in pious wishes (see 2 Thessalonians 3:16; Romans 16:20, &c.), found also in Hebrews 13:20. For εἰρήνη, see note on 1 Thessalonians 1:1 : God’s distinguishing gift in the Gospel, that by which he signalizes His grace in the hearts of men; as the Christian God is ὁ θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης, so the Christian peace is ἡ εἰρήνη τοῦ θεοῦ (Philippians 4:7). The epithet recalls 1 Thessalonians 5:13, εἰρηνεύετε ἐν ἐαυτοῖς; the directions of the previous context, from 1 Thessalonians 5:12 onwards, are τὰ τῆς εἰρήνης κ. τὰ τῆς οἰκοδομῆς (Romans 14:19); when the Church is at peace, the work of sanctification goes on. As from this gift of Peace, so God is specifically named from other of His χαρίσματα in Romans 15:5; Romans 15:13; 2 Corinthians 13:11; 1 Peter 5:10; in each place suitably to the wish expressed. The prayer for Sanctification in 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13 above had love for its basis; this prayer rests on the thought of peace.

ἁγιάσαι ὑμᾶς ὁλοτελεῖς, sanctify you to full completeness,—peromnia (Vulg.), ganz und gar (de Wette), nach eurer ganzen Person (Schmiedel). Ὁλοτελής, hap. leg. in N.T., is a coinage of late Greek, found occasionally in Plutarch, and in Aquila’s rendering of Deuteronomy 13:17 (for כָּלִיל). It does not appear to be qualitative, as though denoting the completeness of sanctification by way of degree, but quantitative as signifying its range and unlimited comprehension; ὁλοτελεῖς is expounded by ὁλόκληρον … τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ κ.τ.λ. in the sequel; thus Œcumenius, ὁλοτελεῖς· τοῦτʼ ἔστι σώματι κ. ψυχῇ· Ὁλοτελής and ὁλόκληρος are closely synonymous, both insisting on the wholeness of the process: the former is collective, the latter distributive—the one implying a totality from which no part is excluded, the other an integrity in which each part has its due place and proportion (vollständig and vollkommen respectively, Hofmann); for ὁλόκληρος, see Trench’s Syn. § 22, and cf. James 1:4; Acts 3:16. In the LXX and in Philo, ὁλόκληρος (rendering the Hebrew שָׁלֵם) is regularly used of the sacrificial victims, which were required to be sound and perfect in every part, ὁλόκληρος κ. τέλειος or παντελής. The doubling of ὁλο- sustains the rhetorical effect of the seven times repeated παν- of 1 Thessalonians 5:14-22.

For ἁγιάζω, cf. notes on ἁγιωσύνη, 1 Thessalonians 3:13, and ἁγιασμός, 1 Thessalonians 4:3. The readers are already, by their calling and relations to God as believers in Christ, ἅγιοι, ἡγιασμένοι; what the Apostles ask in this closing prayer, up to which all the exhortations and warnings of the Epistle, and especially those of the last eleven verses, lead, is a sanctity impressed on the readers by God Himself, of such thoroughness moreover that it shall embrace and gather up into the integrity of a complete manhood every element and function of their nature, in which, that is to say, the soul and body shall participate no less than the spirit.

So the parallel clause, carrying forward the sanctification into preservation (note the reverse order in the prayer of John 17:11-19), runs καὶ ὁλόκληρον ὑμῶν τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ σῶμα … τηρηθείη, and in full integrity may your spirit and your soul and your body … be preserved! Ὑμῶν, standing in the Greek at the head of the triple subject and belonging to each member of it, we represent by the repeated “your,” in order to bring out the distinctness, marked by the tripled article, with which the three several subjects are stated. The verb at the end is singular, in consonance with ὁλόκληρον at the beginning; there is one “keeping,” embracing the totality of the man, but a keeping in which each of the three constituents has its place and share.

Over this passage the Trichotomists and Dichotomists wage war, who maintain respectively that Scripture distributes man’s nature into three or two elements—spirit, soul, and body, or spirit and flesh (body). For the former theory, see Heard’s Tripartite Nature of Man; Ellicott’s The Destiny of the Creature, &c., and the note in his Commentary on this passage; or Delitzsch’s Biblical Psychology: for the latter, Laidlaw’s Bible Doctrine of Man, or Beck’s Biblical Psychology; also the art. Psychology in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible, and Cremer’s Biblico-Theological Lexicon s. vv. The nature of this passage forbids our finding a logical analysis in the three terms; they serve to make the wish exhaustive in its completeness.

The Apostles begin with the inmost—τὸ πνεῦμα, nearest to God who “is spirit” (John 4:24); for with man’s spirit the Holy Spirit directly associates Himself (Romans 8:16, &c.), and it is the primary object of Divine salvation (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:13; also 1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Corinthians 15:45). They end with “the body,” the vessel and envelope of the spirit (see 2 Corinthians 4:7; 2 Corinthians 5:1, &c.; if not 1 Thessalonians 4:4 above), the man’s outer part, through which he belongs to the κόσμος and communicates with it. “The soul,” poised between these two, is the individual self, the living personality in which flesh and spirit, common to each man with his fellows, meet and are actualized in him. When St Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:1 bids his readers “cleanse” themselves “from all defilement of flesh and spirit,” that phrase covers the same ground as this, but contrasts the man’s inner and outer relations; while the expression of 1 Peter 1:22, “having purified your souls,” fastens upon the individual man and his personality in its distinctive impulses and habits; here the entire man is surveyed, with his whole nature in its manifold aspects and functions, as the subject of sanctifying grace. The πνεῦμα is “kept,” when no evil reaches the inner depths of our nature or disturbs our relations to God and eternity; the ψυχή, when the world of self is guarded and every personal motive and activity is holy; and the σῶμα, when our outward life and participation in the material world are sacred. The connexion between sanctity and safety lies in the fact that what is sanctified is given over to God, to be “kept” by Him for His own uses. The thought that Christ’s disciples, οἱ ἐν Χριστῷ as St Paul would say, belong to God the Father and are therefore cast upon His almighty protection, is at the basis of our Lord’s parting prayer in John 17. (see also John 6:37-45; John 10:26-30); it comes out in the πιστὸς ὁ καλῶν of the next verse: cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Ephesians 1:18 b; 2 Timothy 1:12, also Psalms 121; Isaiah 27:3; “He will keep the feet of His saints,” 1 Samuel 2:9.

Between subject (τὸ πνεῦμα κ.τ.λ.) and verb (τηρηθείη) comes in the adverbial adjunct, ἀμέμπτως ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ: (may your spirit, &c., be preserved) without blame in the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ qualifies ἀμέμπτως: the blamelessness (“in holiness,” 1 Thessalonians 3:13; see ἁγιάσαι ὑμᾶς above) is to be manifest “in,” certified at, “the παρουσία” (cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:13, also 1 Thessalonians 2:19 and parallels); “the day will disclose it,” 1 Corinthians 3:13. For παρουσία, see notes on 1 Thessalonians 2:19, &c.; and for τοῦ κυρ. Ἰ. Χ., 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:3, &c. The grammatical attachment of ἀμέμπτως is not so obvious. The Apostles do not write ἄμεμπτον, which would give the “preserved blameless” of the A.V., as though they were defining the state in which the readers should be kept “unto the coming” (a gross misrendering of ἐν), but ἀμέμπτως, “blamelessly,” using the adverb of manner. Now this qualification can hardly apply to τηρηθείη by itself (for the writers could not think of blame as attaching, conceivably, to God’s keeping of His saints); it defines the foregoing ὁλόκληρον, which is grammatically dependent on τηρηθείη as its secondary predicate, but logically dominates the sentence. The interjected adverbial adjunct indicates the manner in which the desired integrity of sanctification, for whose maintenance prayer is made, is to be realized at last. We may render the whole sentence thus: “In full integrity may your spirit and your soul and your body be preserved,—found blamelessly so at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” From 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 it might be inferred, as 1 Corinthians 15 abundantly shows, that in St Paul’s teaching the body, along with the spirit, of the saints participates in the glory of the Parousia; see Philippians 3:20 f.