Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
– 2 Corinthians 7:1
Wow, what an exhortation from Paul. Since we have these promises. And he’s just at the end of 2 Corinthians 6, just list it out. Promises about how God will make his dwelling among us, and he will be our God. We will be his people, and we will go out and be holy as our Father is holy.
2 Corinthians 7:1 Spurs Us Toward Holiness
2 Corinthians 6:18 says, “I will be a father to you, you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” And then you get to 2 Corinthians 7. He says, “Since we have these promises, beloved,” yes, “let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit.”
Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to live cleansed from every defilement of your body and spirit? To live cleansed and to bring holiness to completion? Oh, isn’t that what we long for as followers of Jesus? To be freed, totally free from sin? Unstained by sin, completely holy in the fear of God? There’s a whole nother trail we could go down there that we don’t have time to do. But what it means to have fear of God as our loving Father, as the Lord Almighty.
2 Corinthians 6:18, “Who is a father to us and we are sons and daughters of his.” So, can we just pray this over our lives today? God, our Father, God, the Lord Almighty over all. The God who has made so many promises to us of your love for us, you’re dwelling in us as temples of your Holy Spirit, your care for us, your provision for us.
2 Corinthians 7:1 Leads Us to Honor God by Cleansing Ourselves from Sin
God, we love your promises. Since we have these promises, God, we pray to you to help us, to cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit. God, we are all tempted. We confess to all kinds of different defilement of our bodies and our spirits, and we want to be cleansed. God, we want to be cleansed. We want to be totally clean from sin. God, we want to be totally clean from sin. We want to be unstained by sin. We want to be holy as you are holy.
So, help us God, just as you promise in 1 Corinthians 10, “To resist temptation to overcome the attempts of the adversary, to pull us away, to defile us in body and spirit.” God, guard our hearts and minds, our thoughts, our desires, our words, our actions. God, we pray, make us holy. Bring holiness to completion in our lives in the fear of you.
God, teach us to rightly fear your name, to walk with you in reverence and in awe, and in fear of doing anything that brings dishonor to you because we love you and want to see you glorified in our lives. Oh God, we pray all of this in our own lives. We pray this for the followers of Jesus around us. We intercede for brothers and sisters in Christ that you would cleanse them from the defilement of body and spirit today. You’d help them to be holy.
Prayer for the Lezgin People
And God, we pray for the Lezgin people of Ukraine and Russia, they would be reached with your promises. That they would be reached with your Word about how much you love them. That they would be reached with the promise that whoever believes in your son will be forgiven of all their sin, cleansed of all their sin and restored to relationship with you for eternal life. God, we pray that the Lezgin people, almost a million of them in Ukraine and Russia, especially amidst the war going on there.
Lord, please cause the good news of your grace and your love to spread to the Lezgin people. That they might hear and believe your promises, be cleansed from sin, and be brought to holiness in relationship with you as Father. God bring Lezgin men, women, and children to become your sons and daughters. We pray all this according to your Word in 2 Corinthians 7:1, in Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
