1 Thessalonians 3:11 - 4:8

Teacher: Rusty Kennedy
​Series: 1 Thessalonians (Acts)

Rusty's Notes

• We left off last week with Paul encouraging the Church through persecution they were experiencing.

 
PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH
1 Thessalonians 3
11 Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you.

• At least four times Paul has told them this.
• Military reference from 2:18 – our way has been blocked (by satan/evil one)
• May the Lord clear the way/path so we can get to you.

12 And may the Lord cause you to increase and overflow with love for one another and for everyone, just as we do for you. 13 May he make your hearts blameless (strengthen) in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Amen.[1]

• That verbal phrase “strengthen your hearts” provides a link to what Paul has said earlier in 3:2.
• There Paul talks about how he sent Timothy to the persecuted church in Thessalonica in order [to do] exactly the same thing, “to strengthen [your hearts].”
• So this is a way in which the second prayer anticipates this discussion that Paul is going to have, not love for God and/or Jesus, although that surely was part of the parcel, but here he’s concentrating about the love that the Thessalonians ought to have for one another, and that’s found in the second prayer.
• A second theme in the prayer is this concern for holiness.
• A third topic or concern in the prayer which looks ahead is a reference to what is a temporal reference to the coming of the Lord Jesus “with all his holy ones.”
• May he make your hearts blameless (strengthen) in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
• He has already made our hearts blameless through his blood.
• He is referring to us learning how to live out of the holiness.
• May we be strengthened in the understanding of our holiness and choose to live out of that strength.

 

• Well, we’re at that middle point. We’ve finished our careful study of the first half of the body of the letter, and now Paul, with the help of his transitional prayers, has nicely echoed and concluded the concerns of the first half, but he’s also prepared us well to anticipate the discussion he’s going to have now in the second half of the letter.[2]

 

• Do you believe that we live in a sex saturated world? (TV, movies, internet, etc)
• Do you think it is the worst it ever has been right now?
• Your perspective is maybe 2-4 generations old.
• This letter was written to the Gentiles. The ones who worshipped so many different gods.
• These pagan gods were sexual in their characteristics.
• Man-made gods… why wouldn’t they be sexual?
• Understand the culture during that time:
• We can see that, first of all, in marriage in that time.
• Marriage back then was not a choice but most often an arranged marriage between a man in his twenties and a girl barely in her teens.
• And given the arrangement of the marriage and given the difference in age, it was actually expected that the husband would have a sexual partner who was different than his wife;
• and evidence that that indeed happened, and happened widely, can be seen in grave inscriptions.
• Prostitution is something that you and I wouldn’t want in any way to be associated with, but in the ancient world it really wasn’t a big deal at all.
• In fact, there were many leading and important citizens, people of the upper class, who made money off of men and women in prostitution, and there was no sense of shame or embarrassment about that at all.[3]
• Cicero gave this statement in response to the habits of men who were engaging in the services of affairs with prostitutes. He wrote:

“If anyone thinks that young men should be forbidden to have affairs even with prostitutes, he is very strict indeed … for his view is contrary not only to the law of the present age but even with the habits of our ancestors and what they used to consider allowable. For when was this not a common practice? When was it blamed? When was it forbidden? When, in fact, did that which was lawful become that which was not lawful?

• Cato is a Stoic philosopher who lived a little bit before the time of Paul, and he gave this advice to men. He said, [in effect,] “Men, in order to satisfy your sexual desire, don’t do that with another man’s wife. Make use of a prostitute instead.” That was his practical advice about how men should handle their sexual desires.
• So it’s not surprising that this predominantly Gentile church, who were still relatively new in their faith, would need further instruction from Paul about, well, what [it means] to turn from idols and to serve the living and true God [and how they can] more faithfully live lives in which they do indeed serve that living and true God.
• In English we have this expression “old habits die hard.” So, again, to newbie Christians—to believers who are young in the faith; to Christians who are experiencing pushback and opposition—the apostle Paul is concerned that these Jesus followers might revert back to their former inappropriate behavior.
• And so there is a need—and Timothy informed Paul about this need—to encourage and to equip the Thessalonian Christians to [be holy] in their sexual conduct.[4]
• So the second half of the letter is going to share with the Thessalonians how they can do just that.[5]

THE CALL TO SANCTIFICATION
1 Thessalonians
4 Additionally then, brothers and sisters, we ask and encourage you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received instruction from us on how you should live and please God—as you are doing—do this even more. 2 For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is God’s will, your sanctification:

• Paul says this: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified.”
• We could equally translate it, “It is God’s will that you should be holy.”
• The words “sanctified” and “holy” are two different English words for the one Greek word that lies behind them both (hagiasmos), and this is a key word occurring four times in the paragraph, holding this paragraph together and revealing its primary theme.
• It’s a passage about being holy—and, especially, holy with regard to your sexual conduct.[6]​

that you keep away from sexual immorality,

• The first of the three commands is the shortest and the most general, and it goes like this. He says, in verse 3b, “You should avoid sexual immorality.” The verb that Paul uses here (“avoid”) is actually a rather strong one in the original Greek language, and it has the idea of not just avoiding something but keeping away from.
• You know, there is a strong sense of “don’t come anywhere near.”
• The word porneia is typically understood as referring to any form of sexual misconduct.
• this first command is quite countercultural. And the challenge is also for us today[7]

4 that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not with lustful passions, like the Gentiles, who don’t know God.

• Paul is talking about how each person should learn to control their own vessel; that is, they should control their own body; that is, they should control their own sexual desires.[8]
• He says here, in the second command of verses 4 and 5, “that each of you should learn to control.”
• Now, I am not naïve. I recognize how there are other things that are influenced by our genetic makeup that are not easy to control.
• For instance, some of us are prone to anger; we fly off the handle just like that. It’s not easy to fix, but yet we are still called upon to correct our behavior. Some of us struggle with food; somehow we’re wired in a way that we react to food differently than other people do.
• Yet we are still called upon—it may not be easy, but we’re still called upon—to, well, to learn to develop control.
• And in a similar way, Paul says that when it comes to our sexual desires, even though we’ve been created with these desires, we have to learn how to control them.
• And how do we control them? For the second time in the passage, he talks about the word “holy,” that we control our body in a way that is holy and honorable, “not in passionate lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”[9]
• The same thing comes up with another important Old Testament text from Lev 20:23–26. God says this to His covenant people:
• “Do not follow the practices of the nations whom I am driving out before you.… I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from all the nations.… And you will be holy to me, because I, the Lord your God, am holy, the one who separated you from all the nations to be mine.”
• Again, I hope you heard the connection between the two references to “holy” and the words “separated” and “separated” because, again, we are getting this idea that the meaning, the concept of the word holy and holiness, is the idea of being unique, being set apart, being distinctive, being separate.[10]

6 This means one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner, because the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses, as we also previously told and warned you.

• The third command says that to be holy in our sexual conduct means you act in a way in which you don’t bring harm to others.
• Paul says, “The Lord will punish people for all such sins.”
• Now, he adds, at the beginning, the little word “because,” which is omitted in most translations, but it’s important because it shows that this statement is meant to give a justification for the commands that come before it.
• Why should the Thessalonians, and why should we, be holy in our sexual conduct?
• And the first reason has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ and something that He is going to do in the future, Paul says, “because …”; and a more literal rending of the verse is “because an avenger is the Lord concerning all these things.”
• The first reason, for being holy in one’s sexual conduct has to do with the future return of Jesus.[11]

7 For God has not called us to impurity but to live in holiness.

• He’s saying, “You guys who live in a sex-saturated society, God’s will is that you be holy; that you be separate; that you be set apart; that you be distinct; that you be, well, peculiar when it comes to not only attitudes toward sex but also practices toward sex.”
• And if you’re keeping track, and I am, this is now the third of four occasions within the paragraph of verses 3–8 where Paul uses this keyword and key concept of “holy” because the big theme of the whole passage is the challenge and the call for the Christians not only of the ancient world but us today to live what kind of life with regard to our sexual conducts?
• To live a holy life. And Paul reminds us that God has called us—God has appointed us—to live just that way.[12]

8 Consequently, anyone who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

• Paul doesn’t really write “God gives you his Holy Spirit”; he writes, “God gives you his Spirit who is holy.”
• Is there a difference between the two? Yes, there is.
• The second reading puts an emphasis on the character of the Spirit that God gives.
• Paul is stressing that God is giving not any old spirit to us His people; He is giving us a Holy Spirit.
• So the reason we can live a holy life is because we have the Holy Spirit living within us.
• Now, Paul is not teaching this, but this verse reveals his indebtedness to the Old Testament. Paul is a thoroughly trained Jew who knows the Old Testament inside out. And here he is reflecting—again, not teaching, but he is reflecting—in his statement beliefs and convictions that the Jewish people had about the future, about how one day God would pour out His Spirit.
• So, if we imagine an Old Testament perspective for a moment, we say, “O God, how we love your law. Out of all the people in the earth, we are the only ones with whom you’ve entered into a covenant relationship.
• We are the only ones to whom you have revealed your will. But although we’re glad for the law, we are struggling with the attempt to obey it fully, so we are appreciative of the sacrifices, which don’t pay for our sins but give us an opportunity to express our true penitence for our failures and our true gratitude for your grace in our lives.”
• We nevertheless are looking to the future, a future time that Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel talked about, a time when God would, well, enter into a new kind of relationship with us His people, a new covenant; and part of that new covenant is that God will pour out His Spirit. And we want that Spirit. Why? Not just because we have the Spirit for the Spirit’s sake. No, the Spirit will empower us to do and to be what God has always called us to do and be, and that is—already, at Mount Sinai—“a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
• So God’s will for His people doesn’t change. He has always called His covenant people to be holy as He is holy.
•  The key to living such lives of holiness is the present and ongoing presence of God’s Spirit.
• So here, as elsewhere in Paul’s letters, the Holy Spirit is the power that enables believers to live holy lives.
• What Paul is promising the Thessalonians, and what God’s Word is promising us here in this third cause is that we who are members of God’s people [have] been given the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, which ultimately is a gift of power, power to overcome sin and to live the holy life that God has always called His people to live.
• So how can we be holy in our sexual conduct?

Well, we can’t do it on our strength, [and] we can’t do it by our own abilities, but we can do it with the present empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. That’s the good news of the gospel that Paul shares with the Thessalonians, and that is also good news for you and me.[13]


[1] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Th 3:1–13). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[2] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[3] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[4] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[5] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[6] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[7] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[8] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[9] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[10] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[11] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[12] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[13] Weima, J. A. D. (2020). NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.