When, by the grace of God, he rises and resolves no longer to indulge the passions, but henceforth to live according to God’s will, and when he begins actually to do so, the passions receive no food. They begin to weaken more and more, until they are completely extinguished.
By contrast, the natural functions of his powers are freed from the corrupting action of the passions. Under the action of grace, ascetic labors, and pious exercises, they begin to receive their original goodness.
This is the goodness for which they were appointed in creation, and in which they came forth from the hands of the Creator.
When everything in the Christian becomes pure and perfect, then he becomes holy. While he is still moving toward this measure, he is being sanctified.
God leads His chosen one toward this perfection, though not without the man’s own efforts and the exertions of his spirit, which is zealous for salvation.
Therefore St. Paul prays to God for this. Of course, by doing so he also teaches the Thessalonians themselves to sigh unceasingly for it before His goodness.
With a burning spirit, fulfilling every known good and withdrawing from every shadow of evil, the Christian sets himself on the path toward perfect purification.
Whoever is so disposed stands at the threshold of holiness. St. Paul sees the Thessalonians in this state. Having, as it were, equipped them for the good way, he sends them onward with a good wish, that God may help them reach the end.
He expresses this in prayer to God, from whom comes every good thing and every perfect gift.
"Now may God Himself..." Do not place your hope in your own efforts and labors. They will not bring you to the goal unless God Himself takes you under His protection and care.
Yet be assured that, when you apply every effort on your part, God Himself will not abandon you. He will come to your aid and, by His cooperation, will crown your labors with success.
When He Himself acts in you in this way, do not doubt that you will attain what you seek. He is "the God of peace."
Sanctification begins with the establishment of the first beginnings of inward peace with God and with the conscience. As sanctification matures, it strengthens this peace.
This is the chief fruit of sanctification. It is customary to magnify benefactors by the titles of the blessings received from them.
The Apostle knows that the highest good from the salvation arranged in us by God is peace. Therefore he calls Him the God of peace, not only here, but in many other places (Rom 15:33; Rom 16:20; Phil 4:7, 9, and others).
"May He sanctify," that is, may He make you holy, blameless, and irreproachable before Himself (Col 1:22). May no stain, blemish, or anything of that kind remain anywhere in you.
Rather, may you be holy and blameless in all things (Eph 5:27), cleansed from every defilement of flesh and spirit (2 Cor 7:1).
"Wholly perfect," from the Greek, means "in all parts," ολοτελεις, as also in Slavonic the parenthetical phrase means "in everything."
Just as sin and the passions penetrated all parts of human nature and became interwoven with them, so the Apostle desires sanctification also in all parts.
The grace of God must be accompanied everywhere by man’s own efforts. It must fill all things with itself, cleanse everything sinful from everything, and transform all the members.
Those members were formerly slaves to impurity and to lawlessness unto lawlessness. Grace transforms them into slaves of righteousness unto holiness (Rom 6:19).
The following words explain what all-sided sanctification in all parts means: "and may your whole spirit," and so forth.
"Whole," from the Greek ολοκληρον υμων, means the whole of you, everything that is yours, your entire composition.
What, then, is this whole that is yours? It is spirit, soul, and body. May all these constituent parts of human nature be preserved in blamelessness at the coming of the Lord.
When someone has acquired an estate, he must still preserve it. So too one must preserve the purity and freedom from passions gained by labor with the help of grace.
At every moment there is danger of enticement and falls. Only the help of God can preserve a man from them.
For this reason he does not say, "preserve," but "may it be preserved," by the same God of peace who produces all-sided sanctification.
Whatever degree a man may stand upon, fear of falls does not leave him. Therefore he needs help from above to guard him.
This remains so until the very departure, or until the coming of Christ.
"Spirit and soul and body" is a God-revealed indication of the composition of human nature.
As a little world, man contains within himself all the kinds of life manifested in those that came before him on the ladder of creation.
In him there is vegetative and animal life. There is animal-psychic life together with psychic-human life. There is also spiritual life, which belongs to him alone and characterizes him.
These are signified by the words body, soul, and spirit.
The body is our animal-vegetative organism, with all its functions and needs.
The soul is the principle of those conscious phenomena within us which begin with sensory perceptions, impulses, and sensations. They end in scientific constructions, wide-ranging undertakings and enterprises, and works of taste.
The spirit is the organ of communion with God, the power that knows God, seeks God, and lives by God.
Its essential features are consciousness and freedom. Its moving principles are faith in God, the feeling of complete dependence on Him, and assurance in Him.
The manifestations of its life are the fear of God, the actions of conscience, and thirst for communion with God. Outwardly, this thirst is expressed by dissatisfaction with anything created.
This is that breath of Godlike life which God breathed into the first-created man at creation.
When it was joined in man to the animal soul, it transformed it into a human soul. Therefore, in its actions, the human soul reveals a fundamental kinship both with animals and with the spirit.
Since the spirit is man’s distinguishing feature, this spirit was granted the dominant position in man over the soul and the body. This was under the condition of its own complete submission to God.
The normal order of man is this: the spirit is in God, the soul is under the spirit’s governance, and the body is under both.
When man fell away from God, the spirit lost authority over the soul, and the soul lost authority over the body.
The life of fallen man became chiefly fleshly and sensory, with weak psychic life and still weaker spiritual life.
The prevenient and calling grace of God draws near to man and acts directly upon his spirit. It gives life to its elements: the fear of God, conscience, and thirst for communion with God.
By giving them life, grace turns the spirit toward the Lord and Savior. The Lord then joins grace to it forever in the mysteries, and again restores to it the dominant position in man.
From that moment, the grace-filled spirit begins to govern the powers and actions of the soul authoritatively. Its aim is to transform the whole soul according to its own principles, or to spiritualize it.
The psychic man has become accustomed to occupations and tastes of another kind, and he does not yield at once. Hence there is warfare, an inevitable feature of truly Christian life.
The body is the passive instrument of psychic-spiritual life. Fallen life, being sin-loving, passionate, and sensory, chiefly establishes in it its throne, settlement, and stronghold.
The grace of God guides the spirit in the labors of restoring man from the fall. Above all, it teaches the spirit to take this fortress.
All that is sinful and passionate hides in this fortress and receives reinforcement from it.
For this reason, immediately after conversion, strict bodily ascetic labors begin: the crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and desires. Their purpose is to drive out every corruption from there and deprive it of support.
The aim of the labor is to sober the body and make it a submissive instrument of the spirit in its aims and strivings.
From this it is clear to everyone when spirit, soul, and body are blameless.
The spirit is blameless when it is wholly in God, does not submit to the soul, but subjects the soul to itself, directs it, and orders it according to its own manner.
The soul is blameless when it suppresses every passion within itself and follows in all things the contemplations, inspirations, and tastes of the spirit.
It allows nothing contrary to this in the sciences, the arts, or undertakings. It also rules the body, without submitting to it, but making it its own instrument.
The body is blameless when people do not make provision for it in lust, but keep it within the strict measure of nature, cutting away everything lustful.
St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, St. Damascene, Oecumenius, and Theophylact understand by "spirit" the divine grace communicated to believers in baptism.
They understand the prayer that the spirit be preserved blamelessly as a prayer that this grace be preserved unextinguished, since it makes us blameless.
This does not refute the thoughts presented above.
The spirit of fallen man, by itself, cannot act according to its purpose. It receives strength for this from the grace of God descending upon it.
Without this grace, its actions are not visible, and it is as though the spirit were not there.
Thus, to preserve the spirit is the same as to preserve grace. To preserve grace is the same as to preserve the spirit.
St. Chrysostom confirms this when he says: "When we preserve the gift of the Holy Spirit entirely within ourselves, then our spirit too will remain unharmed."
Oecumenius expresses the same thought when he says: "If we do not extinguish the grace of the Holy Spirit by evil deeds, then it will be preserved whole within us, brightly kindling our own lamp, that is, our spirit.
If the spirit in us remains safely whole, then the soul and the body also will be kept blameless."
When grace enters us, it does not create new powers. It restores those that have fallen and become disordered.
If, by grace, spiritual actions are manifested in us, they come only from our own spirit restored by grace.
Grace itself is not something separate from God. It is the restoration of communion with God, which was broken by the fall and is now returned again.
This return follows the turning of the spirit toward God, produced by God Himself, and its surrender of itself to Him.
The elevation of grace in us is the widening and deepening of communion with God.
The Savior indicated its summit when He said: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him" (Jn 14:23).
The Holy Spirit disposes a man to keep the word of the Lord and gives him strength for this. Therefore He prepares a temple fit for God’s indwelling.
This highest good is directly joined to the blamelessness of spirit, soul, and body.
Having expressed such lofty good wishes, the Apostle hastens to remove every wavering of hope concerning their fulfillment. He restores in their consciousness confidence in God’s faithfulness to Himself.
THEOSIS