Living To Please God

by L.A. Hickling | Category: General | Mar 1991

It must have been a great thrill to the apostle Paul to know that people in Thessalonica had received the gospel and turned to God. Indeed it is so with any gospel preacher at any time.

But he was not satisfied with that alone. His commission from the Lord was to preach the whole counsel of God, and he wanted to see his converts pleasing God in their manner of life.

So, in his letter to them he writes:

We dealt with each one of you, as a father with his own children, exhorting you, and encouraging you, and testifying, to the end that ye should walk worthily of God (1 Thes. 2:11,12).

He had given them teaching; he had backed the teaching by personal example. He had instructed them as to how they "ought to walk and to please God" (1 Thes. 4:1). He was delighted when the report brought back to him showed that they were following his teaching. But the Christian life is a walk - a steady moving onward. There can be no complacency or standing still. So in his letter he urged them to continue in what they were doing and to do it more and more.

In the urgency of his care and fatherly love for those disciples he mentions three things in chapter 4 of his first letter to them. The overriding thought in what he wrote was that their lives (and our lives as we take the message to ourselves) should be holy - set apart for God. The first of the three things mentioned is:

That ye abstain from fornication; that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles which know not God; that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in the matter ... For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification (vv. 3-7).

No matter what may be the attitude of those who do not know God, the prohibition God puts on fornication is absolute, and should be observed by His own children. Our bodies are not our own; we were bought with a price and we must avoid using our bodies in the passion of lust in the way that others may do. Sexual impurity brings dishonour and shame, and our bodies must be controlled in a way that is honourable. Besides this, sexual impurity is harmful to others, and it offends the Spirit of God who indwells all believers.

The second thing mentioned is brotherly love:

But concerning love of the brethren ye have no need that one write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another; for indeed

ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you. brethren, that ye abound more and more (1 Thes. 4:9,10).

The love mentioned here is the kind of love that binds together the children of one Father. The Lord Jesus said:

By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another (John 13:35).

It was His wish that love for one another should be something that marked out His disciples. It was one of the distinctive marks of the early Christians, and here Paul encourages them to do it more and more - to do it habitually.

The third thing mentioned is the great hope of the Christian - the coming again of the Lord Jesus, and on that subject he gave them further instructions, allaying fears and giving comfort and encouragement.

L.A. Hickling | Mar 1991
General