CALLED TO CLEANNESS
1 THESSALONIANS 4:1-8
1 THESSALONIANS 4:1-8
1 Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; 2 for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. 7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. 8 Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.
OBSERVATION:
Paul is stating the case for sexual purity to the church at Thessalonica. Keep in mind that most of the people Paul reached came from very sexually promiscuous cultures.
Paul, writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, urged and exhorted these believers. He did not criticize and condemn them. He was encouraging them to please God by how they lived.
He states plainly that sanctification was the will of God for their lives. Sanctification means to be set apart, a separation to God. So, in their being set apart, they were to abstain from sexual immorality. Sexual immorality would be sex outside of marriage.
We understand Paul is talking about the physical act because he references possessing their vessels in sanctification and honor. Living a separated life, unlike the Gentiles who do not know God. The word vessel is used in the New Testament as a word for bodies. Our bodies being the container of the Holy Spirit.
Verses 7-8 are particularly clear. God did not call us to uncleanness but to holiness. Holiness is the same word as the word sanctification, indicating set apart and separated to God.
Paul must have had some insight that this message was not going to be easily received, so verse eight drives the point home. If you reject this call to cleanness, you are not rejecting man; you are rejecting God. The God who is holy and the God who has given us His Holy Spirit.
APPLICATION:
We live in a culture that is literally bombarded by sexual impurity and sexual messages.
Those who do not know God have often mocked the Church for being backward, prude, repressed, and out of touch when it comes to sex. But we believe that the God who created the heavens and the earth created us. And He invented sex. It is His idea and plan. So He gets to determine the parameters for sexual activity.
He designed sex to be between a man and a woman within the context of marriage which He also designed.
So the message of sexual purity and sanctification is to the Church, to God's children, the ones He has made temples of the Holy Spirit. We live differently because we are different. We are called to cleanness.