Text: 1 Thessalonians 4.1-8
songs available:
Celebrate God highly LIS 7: 1-5
I want to love you, Lord, I love you, LIS 263: 1-5
We are the Lord LIS 281: 1 - 4
O Jesus, our Divine King, LIS 166: 1-3
or
Praise God for He is good AeC 136: 1-10
Oh! take my soul, AeC 602: 1-3
Your will, Lord my God AeC 608: 1-3
Take my hand in yours AeC 619: 1 -3
1 "Now therefore, brothers and sisters, you have learned from us how you have to drive and to please God, and that's what you do, well, we you ask and we encourage you in the Lord Jesus is still growing.
2 You know, in fact, what instructions we gave you from the Lord Jesus.
3 What God wants is your progress in holiness: that you abstain from sexual immorality,
4 is that each of you should know to keep his body in the dedication and dignity,
5 not deliver the passion of desire as members of other peoples who do not know God
6 is that nobody in this area, does harm to his brother or impairs their rights, because the Lord does justice all these instruments, as we have said and demonstrated.
7 Indeed, God does not call us to impurity but to consecration.
8 He therefore rejects these instructions do not reject man but God, who hath also given his Holy Spirit. "
(NASB 21, 2007)
Dear brothers and sisters inhabited by the Holy Spirit!
"What God wants is your progress in holiness! " (v. 3) This way, you probably know better in this form: " What God wants is your sanctification! " is clearly a command, a word of Law.
Ah! well ... But how to match this with this passage: "God wants that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth " ? (1 Tim 2.4) because it is not the Law is the Gospel, Good News to the pure state.
But then, God, what does he finally, that we obey his law ... or that we be saved? ... - Both, of course. But both have the same goal.
The first will of God is that we are all saved consequences of our state sinner. That's why he sent his Son in person to save us from sin, death and the power of the devil. And this "Good News" must "be proclaimed to every creature" (Mk 16.16).
This is the first and vital message that we need to spread, because only "the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation" (Rom 1.16) c ' is "The Gospel" only one we've been "called" and we "guarded through faith for salvation" (2 Th 2.14; 1 Cor 4.15; 1 P 1.5).
The Law of God, she by cons, do not allow us to achieve these goals. On the contrary, one who relies on the works he performs with his efforts to obey God's law, is bound to fail because it would be perfect, without sin, to earn himself God's approval, to be satisfied with us. Hence a certain distrust of the Act because we can not be saved in the following.
A distrust moved well, because "the Act" God "good" (Rom 7.16), there is nothing to repeat. Quite the contrary. The problem is with us who have difficulty to comply. But it has not been abolished for us.
God applied as a barrier, such as mirror and as a rule of life.
As barrier to prevent, to some extent, the gross manifestations of sin as much as possible and preserve order in the world.
God then uses His Law as mirror to return us our image of the sinner.
And he gives us, the believers, as rule of life By showing us how we can live a life that pleases him.
That is - the rule of life - that speaks our text, the holy life of Christians, but in a specific area, that of
SANCTIFICATION
IN SEXUAL
Hey! yes, for God there is no reserved area, which would be removed domain or excluded from his lordship, that would be ignored in his Word.
With this text, the apostle Paul
1. addresses the believers
2. in an environment of immorality
3. to encourage us
to be increasingly devoted
X X X 1 X X X
This call to holiness
in sexual
is for us believers.
Paul addressed by name to its "brothers and sisters (V. 1) at the beginning of our text. First to those "Church of the Thessalonians" (1 Thess 1.1) in Macedonia, northern Greece today. But we know from Paul himself (Col. 4:16) that his letters would then be copied and passed to other parishes, and beyond, to all Christendom. So although he speaks to us as believers of St. Pierre de Châtenay-LePlessis.
As to the Christians of Thessalonica, "God has" to us also "given his Holy Spirit" (v. 8). The action of the Holy Spirit in our hearts is the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to us in this life.
In Corinthians, Paul asks (but this question is to us): "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " (1 Cor 3.16)
Making use of the Gospel, " power of God to save " (1 Rm 1.16), the Holy Spirit came to dwell in us, we " called out of darkness " of disbelief and perdition "the marvelous light" of Jesus Christ our Saviour and his salvation (1 Pet 2.9).
It has regenerated, it has awakened in us the new life of faith, hope and love, or - to speak with Paul in our text - "God has [and] called to the consecration" , "sanctification" (v. 7).
And what God expects there we "dedicate"? In fact, what Paul says here shows that I should rather ask: who God he expects that we "dedicate" ? - "God" , obviously. It is, writes Paul, "please God" . He is to lead a life as everything we do, say and think "please God" and it is "pleasant" .
... But have we not say that for our actions, our words and our thoughts should be perfect, fully comply with the Act of God and that it was impossible for us?
How could we then "please God" ? Hey! Well, just imagine, we can! Or rather: God sees that we do. He accepts our consecration, imperfect as it is, as "pleasant" but "pleasant through Jesus Christ" . The apostle Peter assures us (1 Pet 2.5).
Besides the letter to the Hebrew tells us nothing else. Certainly, it puts it thus: "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11.6). It means: "With faith it is possible," "one who takes refuge in repentance and faith to Jesus, this one is pleasing to God, God accepts his consecration to the love of her Son.
is the way to understand the call to consecration or sanctification that God sent us here.
must admit that
X X X 2 X X X
This call to holiness
in sexual
falls steeply into our immoral world.
If there is a "domain" (v.6) where the world was taken completely away from the Moral Law, c ' Sexuality is who. God had done something "very good" (Gen 1.31), the world has done something smelly. And it's not getting better.
You probably could not miss The new controversy spreads in newspapers around Monsignor André Léonard, Primate of Belgium (a "primacy" is in the Church of Rome, the bishop who has supremacy, at least honor, all the bishops and Archbishops of the country).
Monsignor Leonard said that AIDS is a "kind of poetic justice" happens when you mistreat the very nature of human love. " "When we mistreat the environment, it eventually bully us in turn. And when you mistreat human love, maybe he finally revenge, without the need to make involves a transcendent cause. "Mishandling the profound nature of human love always ends cause disasters at all levels. "
Today we have the right to attack and blame everyone and all behaviors, except for homosexuality. Yet when the Bible speaks she speaks "dishonorable passions" of "sex against nature" , of "outrageous acts" (Rom 1.24 -27).
But this is not the only example of what Paul calls our text "impurity" (v. 7) contrary to "consecration "contrary to the life of a child of God.
Infidelity in marriage is advocated by our world as the standard of healthy people. Loyal only those who are stuck.
And the temptations are everywhere - in the street, in the media, everywhere - "engaging in the passion of desire as members of other peoples who do not know God" (v. 5).
God is not against "desire" and "passion" the couple married. He even created this and said it was "very good" but "very good" in marriage, not elsewhere. This is one reason why he instituted marriage.
No, Paul is here in the diversion of "the passion of desire" ; attacks the misuse of this beautiful thing he attacks those who pervert and dirty sexual intimacy by living elsewhere than in the context that God has set for it.
There, Paul writes, the behavior of those "who know not God " , " unfamiliar " his goodness, his wisdom, his love for us in all that he has arranged and prescribed for us.
And above all, they do not know God as revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So they have nothing to do with his moral law, they have no reason "progress in sanctification" because no reason to "please [a] God they do not know and who they do not believe, who think they owe nothing.
What is unfortunate is that the world does not see that it is destroyed as well, because it "fact [and] harm to his neighbor " and " infringes its rights " (v. 6).
These terms may surprise us. But look at our disintegrating society. The passions unbridled "cause" much "wrong" in couples, in families, between families.
And passions unbridled "violate rights" spouses, children (do not forget the rights of children); they "undermine the right " divine at all.
X X X 3 X X X
In this context
that Paul calls us
to show our dedication
and our rejection of immorality.
Against this backdrop of disintegration - which originally meant: change of bed ... where "being caught" and "object of the offense," under which no longer have that sense today - it is in this context of disintegration that God invites us in our text "keep" also our "body in the dedication and dignity" (v. 4).
We're not two people: one is the soul, the other body: one (soul) would be affected by "sanctification" the other (the body) would not.
No, God created us, saved and sanctified body and soul. Hence the invitation to our text "keep [our] body in the dedication and dignity" .
And what is the big argument that Paul uses to draw us into the path of "sanctification"? Not threats, injunctions, but a revelation. Not the Law, but the Gospel "God gave you His Holy Spirit" (v. 8).
It is useless to brandish the Act: only he who has faith in the salvation of Jesus Christ and him who appreciates and loves him, wants also "pushed by the love of Christ " (1 Cor 5.14), give her pleasure in a life devoted.
This argument, Paul further develops in another of his epistles, the first he sent to the Corinthians. There he wrote:
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? " (1 Cor 3.16)
"Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you and you have received from God. You do not belong to yourselves because you were bought at a great price. Render therefore glorify God in your body! " (1 Cor 6:19-20)
Our " body " the " body " of us who put our faith in Jesus Christ, "is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in [us] and [we] have received from God " . Let us use this "temple of the Holy Spirit" for delivery to "impurity" to turn into a pigsty?
By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit our people - including our bodies - became "a holy temple" devoted to God (1 Cor 3.17). Let us focus on what God our Savior anathema, which horrifies the Holy Spirit? Let us put our salvation escape game by the Holy Spirit?
These are considerations that we submit the apostle.
This is - and is happy, even miraculous, for us! - Jesus died for all sinners, he atoned for all sins whatsoever; forgiveness is available to him for all the blunders, however important they may be.
Remember, Paul also managed to write "Where sin abounded, grace abounded" (Rom 5.20). We've all experienced, we all live through this and this forgiveness in Jesus Christ, some more for this, other more for it.
May the Holy Spirit who was given fill us with joy, faith and love!
it keeps us in a life of repentance and faith everyday and helps us "progress in the consecration , so that our life is becoming more a testimony to his glory alone!
Amen.
Jean Thiébaut Haessig
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