The Hope of the Gospel (Present: Purity)

 To give a little context for this passage, we need to go back to 1 Thessalonians 3, where Paul is describing his ministry at Thessalonica. He ends with this prayer for the church: “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”

This echoes what we've seen throughout our study. This was a church full of love, but Paul wanted that love to grow and abound, both for one another and for all men. And the end purpose of all this was that they would be ready to stand before God at the second coming. That leads us into this passage:

(1 Thessalonians 4:1-8) Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.

If you wanted, you could separate verse 1 and make it the proposition for all of the ethical side of 1 Thessalonians. Paul both beseeches and exhorts them. The NET Bible translates it: “we ask you and urge you.” He appeals to them as brethren and points to Jesus, who is the reason for this exhortation. He reminds them that they had heard from him how a Christian is supposed to live; he had taught them about the kind of life that is pleasing to God. Interesting to note in passing: Paul is the apostle most noted for preaching salvation by grace, but he also made a point of preaching about Christian conduct. During his time in Thessalonica, he had instructed them—this passage seems to be more about reminding them than about teaching them something brand new. Anyway, the Thessalonians knew how they ought to live, and so Paul is imploring them to abound more and more in that way.

Once again we have this idea we have encountered several times in the Thessalonian letters. Becoming a Christian is the beginning, not the end. Having love, faith, or righteousness is not enough in itself. We should always seek to go further in the things of God.

One of my favorite pictures of salvation comes from Pilgrim's Progress when Christian stands before the cross and his burden slips off his back and rolls away. That is a striking picture of the deliverance from sin and guilt. But it happens comparatively early in the book. From that point, Christian has to continue his journey, and continue learning and strengthening his faith; sometimes getting off the path and having to find his way back. Once he becomes a pilgrim, he must continue making progress.

Paul isn't rebuking the Thessalonians. He seems to have had confidence in them for the most part. But he did want to encourage them to go further and become more and more in line with God's will. On this verse, Adam Clarke comments: “God sets no bounds to the communications of his grace and Spirit to them that are faithful. And as there are no bounds to the graces, so there should be none to the exercise of those graces. No man can ever feel that he loves God too much, or that he loves man too much for God's sake.”

All of which brings us to the more particular subject of this passage. It is not clear whether Paul knew there was a problem within the church that needed correcting, or whether he was just warning them about something he knew to be a perennial danger.

Paul is approaching a very personal subject, and a subject on which the Christian stance was very divisive in the world of the 1st century; coincidentally, equally divisive today. For this reason, Paul makes it clear that this is something that comes from God. This isn't just Paul's personal opinion. In verse 2, Paul reminds them of the commandments that he had given them; but these commandments hadn't been given by Paul's authority or wisdom but by the Lord Jesus. Paul may be referring in general to all the instructions he gave them, but most likely the commandments had to do with the subject matter that follows. In verse 3, he bases his teaching of the will of God; in verse 7, on the call of God, and in verse 8, on the gift of God and the nature of God.

There is a keyword found three times in this passage, though it is translated with two different words in the KJV. In verse 3 (and again in verse 4) we have the word sanctification. The English word comes from the Latin word santus, meaning holy. It is the root of our English words saint (a holy person), sanctuary (a holy place), and sanctum (which referred originally to the holy place in the tabernacle and then by extension to any hidden or secret room).  So sanctification means the state of someone or something holy or the process by which it is made so. (The word is translated simply as 'holiness' in verse 7.)

And this word or idea is key to understanding Christian theology. “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) This is one of the foundational ideas of Christianity—the idea that God is holy; that God is purely good without any evil. To the Christian, the words 'good' and 'God' are almost synonymous. And because God is good, all moral imperatives trace back to God. We must live in a certain way because God is a certain way. “But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:15-16)

As God's people, we seek to be like God which means being morally good, pure, clean, holy, righteous. That is a very familiar principle to us, but in the world of the first century, it would have been much stranger. 

Most men recognize that we, as humans, are in a moral battle. We are tempted to do wrong. And sometimes we do it. We are inspired to do right. And sometimes we do it. Mankind, taken as a whole, is neither purely good nor evil, but pulled between the two, doing sometimes the good and sometimes bad; seldom being completely and without mixture on one side or the other. But for most of the pagan world, they also saw the gods as being in this state of moral tension—sometimes good, sometimes bad. For most of the Thessalonians, before they became Christians, this would have been their background; this would have been the religion they knew. For them, this concept of God as pure and holy would have been something new.

That is why Paul made certain to establish this principle: “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” This is God's command, desire, purpose, plan for you—that you will be holy. 

Think of people living in an area that becomes the battleground for two larger nations. They have no stake in the battle and no side. They may prefer one side or the other, but they have no loyalty to either and might help or oppose either side as it seems best for them in any given situation. That is how many people in the world see the battle of morality. Most would say, in theory, that 'right' is the better side, but they are willing to choose either side as seems best at the moment. And to the heathens, as I said before, they saw even the gods as being in this middle ground.

But the Christian view is that there is no middle ground; there are no neutral parties. God is purely good and our loyalty by definition belongs to Him. I was going to say 'as Christians' but this is true for all people, even those who don't recognize or admit it. As humans, we belong to God. We are fighting in his army, or we are deserters from it. For a conscious adult, there is no other choice. There is no no-man's-land.

So this is the general principle that lies at the heart of all discussion of Christian conduct: God's will is for us to be holy, to be on the side of good and against evil. Amos put it simply with this command: “Hate the evil, and love the good.” (Amos 5:15a)

This general principle has specific applications as we deal with specific issues. If we apply it to the inner life of an individual, it leads to the necessity for pure thoughts, sincere motives, and entire sanctification. If we apply it to the commercial or political life of man, it leads to the necessity for justice, honesty, and integrity. If we apply it to interpersonal life—especially life in the church—it leads to brotherly love and everything that goes with that as we talked about in our last article. But here Paul applies it specifically to the sexual life of man, where it leads to purity or chastity.

This is the second half of verse 3. Paul explains that God's will of holiness means specifically that they should abstain from fornication; this is a catch-all term for any kind of sexual impurity. 

It might seem odd to give such strongly worded admonition on this topic to a church like the Thessalonian. But we have to remember the context. William Barclay points out that this was a very new church. Some of these people would have been converts from Judaism. Jews, in theory, held a very high view of marriage, but in practice, at this time, divorce had become very common. And many, perhaps most, would have come into the church from Paganism. And the pagan Greco-Roman world of the first century was a very immoral place. Marriages were often very short, and chastity was almost unknown. It wasn't just that vice was practiced; it was that society, generally speaking, didn't see these things as vices, at least not serious vices. The idea of a high standard of personal purity was almost unheard of.

Barclay concludes by saying: “It was to men and women who had come out of a society like that that Paul wrote this paragraph. What may seem to many the merest commonplace of Christian living was to them startlingly new. One thing Christianity did was to lay down a completely new code in regard to the relationship of men and women; it is the champion of purity and the guardian of the home. This can not be affirmed too plainly in our own day which again has seen a pronounced shift in standards of sexual behaviour.”

In verse 4, Paul explains his meaning from a different angle. That holiness which is the will of God comes down to the idea that every person should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor. There is some debate about what Paul means by 'vessel' in this verse, but we are assuming that he is referring to the body. This is the positive precept that forms the backbone of the prohibitions which surround it.

And at the back of this precept is a reality that is at the heart of Christian ethics. To understand what I mean, we need to look back at the creation of man in Genesis 1:27-28: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

We have here, in the very beginning of creation, the statement that God created man; that he deliberately and consciously made mankind. Our existence is not an accident or a byproduct or a mistake, but it is part of God's plan—a very large part, to all appearances. And all the way back at the creation of man, God created the human race as a sexual race, as a race divided into male and female. One of the very first commands he gave to the first humans was to procreate.

All of that means this: the fact that we exist as physical beings, with bodies that have the needs and feelings that they have, is not something incidental or unrelated to our spiritual life. That fact is founded on the same reality as all of our most spiritual and mystical experiences—the reality of God. That is why we can, why we must possess our bodies in holiness because they are something given to us by God. One of the ideas of the word 'holy' (or 'sanctification') is 'belonging-to-God'. We must treat our bodies as belonging to God because they do.

Paul also says to possess the body in 'honor.' The base idea of the Greek word is 'value.' To treat something with honor means to treat it as something valuable, something important, something of worth. The human body is not a prison or a playhouse, but a precious gift of God and should be treated as such.

Paul dealt with this same issue in writing to the Corinthians, and there he said this: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) Notice the two things Paul says there. First, the Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit—our lives, not just our spiritual lives, but our physical, mundane, human lives become a dwelling place for God. Second, therefore, both our body and spirit may and must become a place of worship, a means of glorifying God. 

Paul will carry this idea to even more commonplace and mundane parts of life later in 1 Corinthians. In chapter 10, he has a discussion of food and gives this general principle: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Nothing in human life is so small or common that it is unimportant to God; no aspect of life is so mundane that it may not become something spiritual to one who belongs to God. That is an inspiring thought. But we can't forget the other side of this reality. Any part of the human experience can become a path to Heaven—and by the same token, they can all become paths to Hell. Every opportunity comes with a danger. Every stumbling block can become a step-up; and every step-up can become a stumbling block. It all depends on how much you watch your step.

And with the sexual aspect of human life, there is a special need to watch your step. Paul points to this in verse 5. After speaking of how we should live—that we should live in holiness and honor—he points to the opposite possibility, the way we SHOULDN'T live. In the KJV, we have: “not in the lust of concupiscence.”  The Greek words translated 'lust' and 'concupiscence' both have the idea of lust or desire. The coupling of the words seems to have the idea of an overwhelming and controlling desire. The NET Bible translates the phrase: “Not in lustful passion.” Jamieson-Fausset-Brown comments that the phrase: “implies that such a one is unconsciously the passive slave of lust.”

The implication is that those desires are for that which is forbidden or excessive, but it is more fundamentally a question of who or what is making the decisions of our life. We have these two alternatives; living in holiness dedicated to God, or living based on the dictates of our own desires. It is the question of whether we are fighting on God's side or trying vainly to create our own one-man army.

Paul ends verse 5 by speaking of the “the Gentiles which know not God.” That is the real issue here. Do we know God and are we living in the light of that? Are we children of the day or of the night? Of course, many of the Jews didn't have a personal knowledge of God. Many people today who come from a Christian background do not live like Christians. But I think the significance of this phrase may be this. Remember I said before that much of the Gentile world of Paul's day had a religion where the gods were also morally ambiguous like men. And this is especially true of these issues. Half of Greek mythology wouldn't have happened if the gods had exercised chastity. That was the kind of thing they saw when they looked to the heavens; they had gods who were no better (in some cases worse) than men. They did not know God. They did not know a high and holy standard. We, as Christians, who know God, do have that standard.

All of this has been very personal. Paul has been speaking of our personal responsibility for own lives and actions before God. In verse 6, Paul speaks of the duty and obligations we have for others, though still before God. We are still in the sentence Paul began in verse 3: God's will is our holiness which means that “no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter.”

There is some debate about the phrase “in any matter.” Some believe that Paul is moving on to more general topics. Certainly, a life of holiness forbids greed and deceit in any area. However, the phrase can also be translated “in this matter,” connecting this verse to the rest of the passage. The NET Bible translates it: “In this matter no one should violate the rights of his brother or take advantage of him.”

All sin is wrong before God and can cause a division between God and man. But God also cares about how our actions impact one another, how sin can cause a division between man and man. And sins of this kind, perhaps more than any other, cause division. We are dealing with what is at the same time the most personal and the most interpersonal aspect of humanity. God cares about how our actions impact one another. And those who sin against their fellow man will be punished. Paul had made a point to warn and testify to the Thessalonians that God is the avenger; He will be the one to bring justice, even when human justice can do nothing. 

And while we are still under the specific issue of sexual ethics, this really does apply to all interpersonal relationships. In the OT, we have the story of Ahab and Naboth. Ahab wanted to gain control of Naboth's vineyard, so his wife framed Naboth for a crime and had him executed and Ahab took control of this land. But when he did, the prophet Elijah appeared. This is their meeting: “And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the LORD.” (1 Kings 21:20) Ahab may have thought his crime was hidden; certainly that it was safe. He was the king after all. But God's prophet was able to find him, was able to uncover the truth. And when he came, it was to proclaim judgment. God is the unseen, unsilenced witness to every crime and the unstoppable avenger of every wrong.

Paul summarizes his whole appeal in verse 7. He began by saying that God's will is our holiness. He ends by saying that God has not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. More literally, it would be: God has not called us TO uncleanness but IN holiness. And no, I don't know what the significance of that distinction is, but I thought I'd mention it.

This is the will of God and the call of God. This comes from God; and “he therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God.” The word translated 'despiseth' means 'to set aside, i.e. (by implication) to disesteem, neutralize or violate:--cast off, despise, disannul, frustrate, bring to nought, reject.' (Strong) Paul knew that what he was saying here would seem strange to some of his readers; it would seem unpleasant and inconvenient to most. Many people would be tempted to ignore what he had to say; so he made sure to make them understand that if they did ignore it; if they did throw these principles away, they were not ignoring and throwing away the words of Paul. All of this came from God, and if they rebelled against it, they were rebelling against God.

He ends by connecting all this to the fact that God has given us His Holy Spirit. There are three things this might mean: (1) As Christians, we have God's Spirit. As we saw earlier, we are temples of God's Spirit. That is why we must live a holy life because our life belongs to God. (2) As those who have God's spirit, we have a way to know God's will. Paul was writing down these words, but if the Thessalonians were honest before God, His Spirit would witness to the truth of them. (3) Some think that when Paul says that God has given 'us' the Spirit, he doesn't mean all Christians, but himself specifically and that he refers to inspiration. This is Paul saying that what he is writing is the word of God given to him by the Holy Spirit.

In any event, the sum of all this is that God has a call for us, a call to live a life of holiness. And this general call works down to even the most common and mundane parts of our life. Anything in our life can be a hindrance to our walk if we let it, and anything can be a means of worship if we give it to God.