SANCTIFICATION AND HONOUR
‘That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour.’
Here we have a call unto holiness.
I. The contrast.
(i.) Holiness is eternal and Divine—the everlasting God is the holy God.
(ii.) Man was created in the image of the holy God.
(iii.) By the first transgression holiness was lost; the flesh became prone to all uncleanness.
(iv.) Uncleanness was in the world before the flood, in the Gentiles, and in Israel.
(v.) Uncleanness, public and private, is in this professedly Christian land.
(vi.) The world winks at uncleanness, and tries to justify it. Not so God (Ephesians 5:6; 1 Thessalonians 4:7).
II. The call.
(i.) To Israel and the Church (Leviticus 20:7; 1 Peter 1:14-16).
(ii.) Holiness was taught by outward purifications under the law (Exodus 28:36).
(iii.) The reason for the call: God’s purpose is to make His children like Himself, to renew their lost holiness (Ephesians 1:4; Ephesians 4:22-24).
III. The grace.
(i.) The God of holiness is the God of grace.
(ii.) Grace to cleanse from uncleanness, by the atoning blood of Christ (1 Corinthians 5:11; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 1:5).
(iii.) Grace to sanctify, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
(iv.) Grace to strengthen, by the Holy Spirit enabling us to keep under the body.
IV. Warnings and exhortations.
(i.) The Word written uses great plainness of speech on this subject; so should the Word preached.
(ii.) The judgment recorded in Holy Scripture on the unclean. In one day God gave twenty-three thousand proofs of His hatred of uncleanness (1 Corinthians 10:8).
(iii.) To despise the call is to despise God, and to bring down His wrath here and hereafter.
(iv.) Secret sinner, your sin will find you out. He who exposed David’s sin will expose yours.
(v.) The effects of despising the call and doing what the Holy One hates are defiling, debasing, deadening, destroying.
(vi.) Your body is the temple of God. Guard it for Him against all profanation.
(vii.) Strive by prayer to be like Jesus—like Him in holiness now, that you may be like Him in glory hereafter.
Rev. Dr. Flavel Cook.
Illustration
‘The human body is elsewhere in Holy Scripture compared to a tabernacle or tent, here it is spoken of as a vessel. The two figures convey some common ideas, both represent that which contains the true life, and both refer to its temporary and not to its permanent occupation. Both also have their proper uses, but whilst a tent’s use is chiefly confined to its occupier, that of a vessel relates more to its owner. Regarding our bodies as tents provided for the time of our pilgrimage, we are bidden to use them aright in our own interest. But regarding them as vessels in the household of God, we have a higher view of them brought before us, and are reminded that those vessels are not only to be used by Him, but to be kept by His servants for Him, “purified and meet for the Master’s use” (2 Timothy 2:21).’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
KEEPING THE BODY
Everything has been done on God’s part to cleanse this vessel of our body, to fit it for a place in the many-mansioned home. We are shocked at the impiety of the heathen king who used the vessels which he had taken from the house of God in wanton revelry and sacrilegious blasphemy; but we are guilty of even greater impiety when we dishonour our bodies and make them instruments of sin.
I. By sanctification we understand a readiness to feel and cherish the motions of the indwelling Spirit, resulting in a continual restraint upon the corrupt desires of the flesh, and a more complete dedication of the whole being to its proper Lord. By honour we understand what we may call the proper self-respect due to the body, as a vessel of grace and glory; as the redeemed property of the Lord of Hosts, designed to contain heavenly treasure, destined to occupy a position of honour in heavenly places. There lies thus before us the service and the destiny of the vessel of the body, the charge of which is committed to us by Him to Whom we belong. Oh, that we may fulfil the trust by possessing them in sanctification and honour!
II. Not only Scripture, but nature itself cries out against their abuse.—We are told that in some countries a kind of glass was used for drinking-vessels, which cracked when certain common poison was put into them. In a similar way is it with our bodies; the poison of sin produces flaws in them, and abuse of their organs finds its natural result in pain, in disease, in death. Yet these results of sin may have a purifying effect if the true antidote be applied in time; and in the furnace of affliction our bodies may be so purged as to become again vessels unto honour sanctified and meet for the Master’s use.
III. We believe in the resurrection of the body; and we know that Jesus Himself has taken His human flesh, as the firstfruits of that resurrection, into heaven itself. This glorious prospect should surely stir our minds and move our hearts. It should remind us that our bodies are a precious gift, to be put to holy uses, destined for a glorious future. Let us then learn to set a right value upon them, and endeavour to possess them in sanctification and honour, remembering that we are pledged to keep them in temperance, soberness, and chastity, and that unless we do our best by God’s help to fulfil that pledge, we cannot hope to inherit His everlasting kingdom.
—Rev. G. Cecil White.
Illustration
‘If the Apostle selects only one example, and that chastity, of the duties we owe to ourselves, is not the reason clear that unchastity was just one of those vices to which a community like that of Thessalonica would be most prone? Think of the state of our great maritime and commercial centres in this land! Is not licentiousness a prevailing and damning sin? But the heathen knew nothing of that command, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” Their very worship was the seat and home of unchastity, their very gods being pleased with the most horribly impure rites. If the Old Testament warned the Jews against these sins, must not an apostle of the pure and holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ warn Christian men against these sins? And so the Apostle teaches us our body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, or, as the words here used will at least bear interpreting, a vessel, our own vessel, of the Holy Spirit, which is to be kept in sanctification and honour. It is only under the Cross that we can learn that we, who belong to Christ, must “crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof.” ’