J03 Keep it clean

I Thessalonians 5:23: "May the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it."

Origen: (1) "In the wicked sin reigns over the soul, being settled as on its own throne in the mortal body, so that the soul obeys its lusts...but in the case of those who have become perfected [alternate trans: completed], the spirit has gained the mastery and put to death the deeds of the body. It imparts to the body of its own life and there arises a concord of the two, body and spirit, on earth... But still more blessed is it if the three [i.e., body, soul, and spirit] be gathered together in the name of Jesus, that this may be fulfilled."

Reflection: How wonderful to know that when the great three-in-one said "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness..." he gave his children their own three elements. Not exactly similar in roles in unredeemed man, but perhaps more so in the transfigured man (that is, the resurrected one). The body is not in itself wicked, as the Manicheans would have us believe, but is drawn to unrighteous behaviour by the spirit of this world. Can we consider the soul to be our individual unique consciousness? And the spirit to be that which motivates and enables us, either for selfish deeds or for sacrificial ones? How I long for the day when God replaces my carnal heart completely with one in which His righteousness has sole sway! In the meantime, like Paul laments in Romans 7, I suffer the internal strife between my worldliness and His other-worldliness.

My prayer today: Thank you Jesus for the Holy Spirit, without which I would not only be disarmed in battle, but usually unaware of the war at all. Help me heed His guidance and overcome the mis-leading promptings of my culture, my own flesh, and the enemy.

(1) "Commentary on Matt 14:3" Ancient Commentary NT IX, pg 100.

11/16/2018, 8/19/24