How You Ought to Walk
For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. 1 Thessalonians 4:7
1 Thessalonians 4:1–12 – … to Serve the Living & True God
Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost – November 15, 2020 (am)
A Life Pleasing to God, that’s the heading over today’s passage in our ESV Bibles (NIV – Living to Please God, NLT – Live to Please God, NASV – Sanctification and Love). And who among us doesn’t want that—a life pleasing to God? I know that [our hearts are] deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer.17:9), that they love self and sin, but there is also something within us that longs to be right with God. As Augustine observed: [You have made] us for [Yourself], O God, and our heart is restless, until it [finds its rest] in [You]. (Confessions 1). Pascal agreed, saying there’s an empty print and trace of happiness in every human heart that needs to be filled, but it can be filled only… by God himself (Pensees 66). Part of us, the deepest part, longs for a life pleasing to God. But the actual state for our hearts makes that impossible.
I remember as a young child, lying awake at night wondering whether it was possible to live a life as [holy] and [pure] as Jesus Himself, then pleading with God to make that possible, to make it a reality in my life. And I can remember falling asleep in hope that the next day would reveal that difference in me. But it wouldn’t take long at all to see that it didn’t. Whether it was an argument with my sister, or an impulse to disobey my parents, or just forgetting about my request altogether until something suddenly reminded me late in the day that [walking] in [holiness] hadn’t even entered my mind since I fell asleep last night.
Jesus said: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (Mat.5:6). But it’s not the [hungering] and [thirsting] that [satisfies] us, or else many a young boy and girl would be [righteous]. No, the [hungering] and [thirsting] is good, but that’s not what makes us [righteous]. That’s what Paul is talking about here. Let’s listen in and hear what he has to say about how [we] ought to walk and to please God (1). Let’s divide his thoughts into three parts.
What Must Be Excluded in Our Walk (1-8)
Paul opens this section with: 1 Finally, then, brothers [and sisters]…, not meaning the end is at hand nearly so much as it’s time for a response. He’s been teaching and reminding them up to this point, but now, as happens in most of his letters, he wants them to do something, to respond in some way. Thus, the plea: 1 … we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus….
We know these are young believers. We know they’re very dear to Paul and that their reputation for [loving] one another is known far and wide. But we also know Paul is concerned that the persecution they’ve been facing could undercut their faith and compromise their relationship with him and their walk with the Lord.
So, here, he turns their attention to action. But he begins with one final, summary reminder. [You know that you heard] from us how you ought to walk and to please God. [And you’re doing that. But I want you to] do [it] more and more (1). You know [that the] instructions we gave you [were from] the Lord Jesus (2), so we really want you to [receive and] walk [in those] instructions. We want you to live a life [pleasing] to God.
So, that’s where he goes next. 3 For, basis to please God, this is the will of God, your sanctification…. He wants you to be [holy], to reflect His character. So, Paul proceeds to list part of what this will entail for this church: they need to 3 … abstain from sexual immorality. With all the positive qualities that characterized them, this area seems to have been a struggle. Surely it was part of the culture they lived in, both secular and religious (Morris 80). It’s characteristic of our culture as well. But it’s not pleasing God. It doesn’t reflect His character or His will for us. Rather, His will is 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. His will is 6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter—that no one [sin against] or [defraud] his Christian brother or sister—because the Lord is an avenger in all these things…. This isn’t the way He wants His children to act or to treat one another. He will address such offenses Personally. No sexual immorality—excluded! He wants His people to walk in holiness, honor (4), and [purity] (7).
What Must Be Included in Our Walk (9-12)
Rather than using one another to gratify yourselves, God’s will for His people to is to give themselves more and more (10) to [loving] one another (9). And similarly to how Paul told them earlier what their sanctification should look like, here he tells them what this love should look like. 10 … But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, here it comes, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you…. These are charges to the church as a whole, not just to individual Christians within it. This is how the church in Thessalonica should behave. These pursuits go hand in hand with [loving] one another.
These charges make it sound like some in this church may have been busy-bodies, perhaps stirring up strife (cf. 5:13) or being idle (cf. 5:14) or maybe even mooching off of others (cf. 12). That’s not certain. But there are two things we can know here: as we increase in our [godly] love for one another (1) life within the church community will tend to become [quieter], more gracious, and more productive and (2) our witness outside the church will better display the sweetest fruits of our faith, the truest heart of it—a life pleasing to God.
And I particularly like the statement, aspire to live quietly (11). Doesn’t that sound nice? J. B. Phillips paraphrased as: make it your ambition to be unambitious (in Morris 85). Leon Morris wrote: seek restlessly to be still (ibid.). Michael Martin thinks Paul may have been encouraging some in this church to step back from interfering with church leaders (136, cf. 5:12-13). But there is also another possibility that could have special meaning to us in these days.
R. F. Hock… argues that the commands “to lead a quiet life” and to “mind your own business” were encouragements to political quietism. By avoiding political activism and working at respectable occupations, the church would gain the approval of their non-Christian neighbors. Some of the terms Paul used [here] were… used by various Greco-Roman philosophers to encourage withdrawal from public life. [This] would make sense in light of [Paul’s] past experience in Thessalonica. After all, [he] was charged with causing social and political unrest [there] (Acts 17:6-7) and might have responded by advising the church to avoid political entanglements (Martin 137).
What Must Be Our Take-Away Today
So, is that what Paul wanted us to hear? I’m not sure of that. It’s interesting that it’s not out of the realm of possibility. But I’m interested in leaving three broader ideas in our minds as we remember our Lord’s death and then disperse to our various places of assignment in the coming week.
(1) There is a [quiet], reserved quality to our love for one another in the body of Christ. It not only sweetens our fellowship but draws the notice of outsiders (12), and therefore displays the uniqueness of our faith (Gal.5:6), persuading the world of its authenticity (Joh.13:35). That’s how our love works. That’s how our faith works. We don’t go out it the world pounding our chests and shouting about the superiority of our beliefs so that some will give us a hearing. We love one another earnestly from a pure heart (1Pe.1:22) and we let that testimony spread like a sweet-smelling savor (Eph.5:2; 2Co.2:14), we let it be seen by outsiders as the relational wonder it is. We looked at Psa.131 a few weeks ago. 1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. 2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother…. Paul is talking similarly here. This is the [quietness] of trust and peace and rest in the Lord.
(2) Such [quietness] does not flow front the strength of our will but from the [gift] of the Holy Sprit (8). We don’t just decide to [quiet] ourselves no matter how much we want it! We can’t make ourselves [quiet] (11) or holy (4, 7) or [pure] (7) like Paul is talking about here any more that we can make ourselves [righteous] like Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount (Mat.5:6). This is a work of God in us, just as we see here in v.8, which we left out earlier: 8 … whoever disregards this, meaning God’s [call] to holiness, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. That’s how this happens! God in His sovereign grace causes us to be born again by his Holy Spirit, made alive in Him through the life-[giving] Spirit, such that we are divinely enabled to live and grow in holiness, in a life pleasing to God! [Receiving] that holiness is [receiving] God’s [gift]. Rejecting it is rejecting Him and His enabling of how [we] ought to live (1). So, when we receive it, this [gift] is recognized to be the answer to my childhood prayer! It just doesn’t come all at once!
But it does help us hear the most remarkable affirmation that appears in this passage, giving us hope and assurance that holiness and [purity] and honor and this trusting, resting, peaceful [quietness] is really is our inheritance and will be our possession forever. (3) This remarkable affirmation comes to us in v.3: 3 … this is the will of God, your sanctification….
Throughout the pages of Scripture we encounter both law and gospel—the standard of God set and the standard of God met, the requirement of God issued and the satisfaction of God accomplished. And each time we read a declaration of Scripture, a command, a promise or a warning, we need to discern whether we’re hearing law or gospel, judgment or blessing, bad news or good news. Are we being told once again what we can’t do, or what God has done for us?
When we read 1Th.4:3, it is almost irresistibly tempting for us self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-asserting Christians to read it, undiscerningly, as law, when it is placed here as gospel! And we can clarify whether we are by discerning our response. When we hear the will of God here, are we comforted or concerned? Do we hear encouragement or exhortation? Does it land as joy or as job description? Hearing that this is the will of God, [our] sanctification tends to sound like God is standing apart from us demanding something that we’ve long known we’re entirely unequipped to do when in context this is something God is acting our behalf to bring about! How tragic when we hear the will of God and think it’s working against us when all along it is working for us! How tragic when we’re being told about the gospel that we’re almost irresistibly tempted to hear the law!
Law is the revelation of the perfect standard of God that we can never meet, no matter how much time and effort we put into it—when we even remember to do so! Gospel is the good news that God’s perfect standard has been perfectly met in Christ for all who place their trust in Him.
Conclusion
For them, this is the will of God, your sanctification. And Paul finishes this letter saying: 5:24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. This is our inheritance! So, why not enter into it early? Abstain from sexual immorality. Control [your] body in holiness and honor. [Don’t] transgress and wrong [your] brother [or sister]. Love one another more and more. Aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, to work with your hands—to engage yourselves in activities that are worthy of God—so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one else to carry that responsibility on your behalf.
[Give] yourselves to these things that the Holy Spirit has been [given] to you to enable, and so know the joy of the Thessalonians, the joy of the Lord. [Give] yourselves to them so that you will know the joy of a life pleasing to God.
What is it that holds you back from holiness today? Is it sexual immorality, whether in body or in mind? Is it some other form of self-gratification, or some other form of faithlessness—looking to this world or the possessions in it to satisfy that empty print and trace of happiness that can be filled only… by God himself? Where are you so discouraged that you’re tempted to hear the word sanctification more as an exhausting impossibility than a promised reality, as a work that depends more on you than on God?
That is where each of us needs to spend a few moments in prayer before we celebrate communion today. Our season of intercession today will be used for silent prayer in response to God’s Word—in thanksgiving to Him that [our] sanctification is secured by His will, His eternal plan and purpose secured for us in Christ.
Now let’s come to the Table of the Lord.
Next Sunday: Steve Leston will be preaching from 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18