Next Paul turns his attention to our response, not to where God has placed each of us, but to what God says to us.
First, don’t quench the Spirit. Don’t hinder what the Spirit is trying to do in you. So what is that? If we confine ourselves for the sake of time to categories found in this letter, we see three things. From 1:5, the Spirit accomplished justification when we believed. Paul said that there was full conviction that their faith was genuine. This comes from the Spirit of God. It is what Paul says in Romans 8 where God’s Spirit testifies to our spirit that we are children of God.
So one way we quench the Spirit is by refusing to rely on God’s grace and instead think we have to do something to earn God’s favor. But the Spirit doesn’t just stop at the act of justification. For the second role of the Spirit comes from the very next verse: 1:6. Here we see that the Spirit brings about joy in the midst of tribulation. So we quench the Spirit when we refuse to set our minds above but remain doggedly fixated on our troubles. This goes back to the idea of rejoice always.
The third thing the Spirit is tied to in this letter is our sanctification. When we reject God’s will for us in terms of our sanctification, we’re rejecting the Holy Spirit’s work in us. In other words, choosing disobedience toward what God commands is quenching the Spirit.
That’s the first response we have to how God speaks to us. The second is that we are not to despise prophetic utterances. We might say, “Don’t think that God’s word is worthless.” We are to give value to his word. All Scripture is God breathed. Do I think little of it? Do I value the message of the Word more than the message from the world? Or do I value the message of the world more than God’s word? If you looked at my life could you tell that I value God’s word over the ways of the world?
In the days before a completed Bible, Paul says to evaluate everything carefully—mainly in terms of the Old Testament and the teachings of the apostles. Today we have a fuller picture by which to evaluate the words of others. There are a lot of people today who claim to speak for God. Do you evaluate what is said carefully? Are you like the Bereans in Acts 17, who “searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so”? There is so much nonsense out there. Do we know the Bible well enough to be able to ignore what needs to be ignored, and as Paul says at the end of verse 21 and in verse 22: hold fast to that which is worth holding fast to and abstaining from evil. The idea he’s trying to communicate here is that we are committed to God’s word and estranged from everything else.
Finally, Paul sums up really the whole letter by reminding us that God is working: He will sanctify you entirely. So don’t give up. You will be presented complete. So don’t give up. He will bring it to pass. So don’t give up.
And in the meantime there are three final admonitions: Pray for your friends, treat them like family, and speak the word to one another.
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