1 Thessalonians 3:10, 12-13 1599 Geneva Bible
10 Night and day, praying
exceedingly, that we might see your face, and might accomplish that
which is lacking in your faith?
12 And the Lord increase you, and
make you abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even
as we
do toward you:
13 To make your hearts stable and
unblameable in holiness before God even our Father, at the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ with all his Saints.
Read Romans 1:10, 15:23, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, 1 Corinthians
1:8
R.P. Woitowitz Sr.
“
This good news, not only comforted their
hearts, and revived their spirits, and filled them with joy and
thankfulness, but also sent them to the throne of grace to pray
without ceasing, continually, night and day, and as often as they
went thither, and that with great fervency and earnestness, in a
multitude of petitions; or, as the Arabic version renders it, "with
prayers exceeding a multitude"; with innumerable requests. the
Lord the Spirit; so that the object of prayer, addressed by the
apostle, is Father, Son, and Spirit, as in. The Alexandrian copy
reads "God". The Spirit is God, equally with the Father and
the Son, and so a fit object of prayer with them, which otherwise he
would not be. The request is, that he would cause these saints to
increase in number, as the first churches greatly did: and in the
gifts of the Spirit, which he divides to men severally as he will;
and in his graces, as in faith, in hope, in holiness, in humility, in
knowledge, in spiritual joy and strength, an increase in all which is
from him. For though they were taught of God to love one another, and
did do so, and the apostle had had good tidings of their love; yet it
was not perfect, there was room for a further exercise of it, by
serving each other by it, in things spiritual and temporal; and he
had his request, for it did abound in everyone of them towards each
other, the men of the world, who were without, were not members of
the church, nor professors of the Christian religion, but enemies to
that, and to Christ, and to them; and yet they were to love them as
men, and pray for them, and do them all the good that lay in their
power.
There is no holiness in men naturally; what is in them
without the grace of God is only a show; true holiness is from the
Spirit of God; and this is a stable thing in itself, and can never be
removed or taken away; but the acts of it, through the prevalence of
corruption, the force of Satan's temptations, and the snares of the
world, are fickle and inconstant; and the saints need to be
established in the discharge of duty, as well as in the exercise of
grace: and whereas the apostle prays, that they might be "unblamable
in holiness", the Alexandrian copy reads, "in
righteousness" so one of Stephens's; it must be observed, that
no man is perfectly holy in this life; no man is without sin in
himself, or lives without the commission of it; holiness in the best
is imperfect; no man, as yet, is in himself sanctified wholly; there
is no unblamable holiness but in Christ; and in him the saints are
without spot and blemish, who is their sanctification and their
righteousness; but in themselves they are full of spots and stains;
yet through the grace of God their hearts may be so established with
principles of holiness, and they may be so assisted in the acts of it
daily, as to give no just cause of blame to men, and so to behave as
to approve themselves "before God", who sees the heart, and
knows from what principles all actions flow: and this the apostle
desires may be at the coming of our Lord Jesus; or unto the coming of
him. Either at death, when he comes into his garden, and gathers his
lilies, and takes his to himself to be for ever with him; or at the
day of judgment, when he comes to judge the quick and dead; and which
coming of his is certain, and will be quickly and suddenly, and with
great glory and power. John Gill
