The moral climate in the Roman Empire was not healthy. Immorality was a way of life; and, thanks to slavery, people had the leisure time to indulge in the latest pleasures. The Christian message of holy living was new to that culture, and it was not easy for these young believers to fight the temptations around them. Paul gave four reasons why they should live a holy life and abstain from sensual lusts.
To please God (v. 1). Everybody lives to please somebody. Many people live to please themselves. They have no sensitivity to the needs of others. “The soul of a journey,” wrote William Hazlitt, “is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.” That advice may work for a vacation, but it could never work in the everyday affairs of life. Christians cannot go through life pleasing only themselves (Rom. 15:1).
We must also be careful when it comes to pleasing others. It is possible to both please others and honor God, but it is also possible to dishonor God. “For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10). This had been Paul’s attitude when he ministered in Thessalonica. “Even so we speak, not as pleasing men but God, who trieth our hearts” (1 Thess. 2:4).
Pleasing God ought to be the major motive of the Christian life. Children should live to please their father. The Holy Spirit works in our lives “both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). Enoch walked with God, and before God called him to heaven, Enoch “had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Heb. 11:5). Jesus said, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29).
Pleasing God means much more than simply doing God’s will. It is possible to obey God and yet not please Him. Jonah is a case in point. He obeyed God and did what he was commanded, but his heart was not in it. God blessed His Word, but He could not bless His servant. So Jonah sat outside the city of Nineveh angry with everybody, including the Lord! Our obedience should be “not with eyeservice, as menpleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6).
How do we know what pleases God? How do we know what pleases an earthly father? By listening to him and living with him. As we read the Word, and as we fellowship in worship and service, we get to know the heart of God, and this opens us up to the will of God.
To obey God (vv. 2–3). When he ministered in Thessalonica, Paul gave the believers the commandments of God regarding personal purity. The word commandments is a military term. It refers to orders handed down from superior officers. We are soldiers in God’s army, and we must obey orders. “No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer” (2 Tim. 2: niv).
In 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Paul reminded these new believers that sexual immorality did not please God. God created sex, and He has the authority to govern its use. From the beginning, He established marriage as a sacred union between one man and one woman. God created sex both for the continuance of the race and for the pleasure of the marriage partners. “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure” (Heb. 13: niv). God’s commandments concerning sex are not for the purpose of robbing people of joy, but rather of protecting them that they might not lose their joy. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” builds a wall around marriage that makes the relationship not a prison, but a safe and beautiful garden.
We never have to seek to know the will of God in this matter, He has told us clearly. “Abstain from fornication” is His commandment, and no amount of liberal theology or modern philosophy can alter it. Throughout the Bible, God warns against sexual sin, and these warnings must be heeded. God’s purpose is our sanctification, that we might live separated lives in purity of mind and body.
To glorify God (vv. 4–5). This is the positive side of God’s commandment. Christians are supposed to be different from the unsaved. The Gentiles (unsaved) do not know God; therefore, they live ungodly lives. But we know God, and we are obligated to glorify Him in this world. “God’s plan is to make you holy, and that entails first of all a clean break with sexual immorality” (1 Thess. 4: ph).
“Possess his vessel” in 1 Thessalonians 4: probably means “control his body,” for our bodies are the vessels of God (see 2 Cor. 4:7; 2 Tim. 2:20–21). But it can also mean “learn to live with his own wife,” for the wife is called “the weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7). I prefer the first interpretation, for Paul wrote to all Christians, not just the married ones. The Christian who commits sexual sin is sinning against his own body (1 Cor. 6:19–20), and he is robbing God of the glory He should receive through a believer’s way of life.
This explains why God gives such demanding requirements for spiritual leadership in the church (1 Tim. 3). If spiritual leaders cannot rule in their own homes, how can they lead the church? If we glorify God in our bodies, then we can glorify Him in the body that is the church.
To escape the judgment of God (vv. 6–8). God is no respecter of persons; He must deal with His children when they sin (Col. 3:23–25). A church member criticized her pastor because he was preaching against sin in the lives of Christians. “After all,” she said, “sin in the life of a believer is different from sin in the lives of unsaved people.”
“Yes,” replied the pastor, “it is worse.”
While it is true that the Christian is not under condemnation (John 5:24; Rom. 8:1), it is also true that he is not free from the harvest of sorrow that comes when we sow to the flesh (Gal. 6:7–8). When King David committed adultery, he tried to cover his sin, but God chastened him severely. (Read Ps. 32; 51 to see what he lost during those months.) When David confessed his sins, God forgave him, but God could not change the consequences. David reaped what he sowed, and it was a painful experience for him.
“But I am one of God’s elect!” a Christian may argue. “I belong to Him, and He can never cast me out.” Election is not an excuse for sin—it is an encouragement for holiness. “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness” (1 Thess. 4:7). “But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy” (1 Peter 1:15). The privilege of election also involves responsibilities of obedience (Deut. 7:6, 11).
A holy walk involves a right relationship with God the Father (who called us), God the Son (who died for us), and God the Spirit (who lives within us). It is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes our body the temple of God (1 Cor. 6:19–20). Furthermore, it is by walking in the Spirit that we get victory over the lusts of the flesh (Gal. 5:16ff.). To despise God’s commandments is to invite the judgment of God and also to grieve the Spirit of God.
How does the Spirit of God help us live a clean life, free from sexual impurity? To begin with, He creates holy desires within us so that we have an appetite for God’s pure Word (1 Peter 2:1–3) and not the polluted garbage of the flesh (Rom. 13:12–14). Also, He teaches us the Word and helps us to recall God’s promises in times of temptation (John 14:26; Eph. 6:17). As we yield to the Spirit, He empowers us to walk in holiness and not be detoured into the lusts of the world and the flesh. The fruit of the Spirit overcomes the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:16–26).
Paul devoted a great deal of space to this theme of sexual purity because it was a critical problem in the church of that day. It is also a critical problem in the church today. For many people, marriage vows are no longer considered sacred, and divorce (even among believers) is no longer governed by the Word of God. There are “gay churches” where homosexuals and lesbians “love one another” and claim to be Christians. Premarital sex and “Christian pornography” are accepted parts of the religious landscape in many places. Yet God has said, “Walk in holiness.”