Standing Out in a Pagan Culture
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
In this part of the letter Paul is writing to the believers in Thessalonica and asking essentially, “In what ways are these Christians going to look different from the culture?”
I think it is interesting to ask, “If Paul was writing ch4 today, what would he say…?”
I suspect there would be some differences.
One of the things he talks about here is work.
V11,and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you
That is, stop taking advantage of people’s kindness and get back to work.
For some of us today, maybe that is the message we need to hear, but generally speaking probably not. Bearing in mind here that Paul is not talking about unwanted unemployment but those who can work but choose not to.
Today Paul might say “work less” not work more. Instead of stop abusing brotherly love and start working, it might be work less so you can invest more in the relationships that count.
There might be other things that Paul would say today that he did not say then, and things he said then that do not directly apply to us now.
That is fine. The overarching principle is v1, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.
How are we to live and walk in a way that pleases God? How are we to live and walk in a way that God says, “Yep, that’s the right thing to do”, and thus live according to his revealed will? I think some of what Paul said here would be exactly the same.
You know from living in this world that sexual immorality is a huge problem. I do not have to convince you that we live in a culture flooded with sex. You can find it in shops, in songs, in sport, on billboards, on the beach, on the movie screen, on YouTube, on your iPhone, in catalogues, magazines, and just about anywhere else you look.
In the Old Testament, when a good king would take over from a rotten king in Israel or Judah, he would rid the land of idols and false religion, and God would be pleased. Often, even with the good kings, we find that despite much progress (we read several times in 1 & 2 Kings) “the high places were not taken away.”
What were these high places? These were the various sites in Israel where people would do various sacrifices and rituals – the kinds that other nations did. The high places were a symbol of Israel’s compromise. The high places were so entrenched in the culture, that they just seemed so normal. Even the good kings did not think to remove them. If they did, they could not muster up the courage to act on their convictions.
The high places were blind spots. They were so common, so ordinary, so much in keeping with the way things were, that the kings did not tear them down and the people did not stop worshipping there. Sexual immorality is one of our high places. We do not have the eyes to see how much the world has squeezed us into its mould.
If we could transport Christians from almost any other century to any of today’s ‘Christian’ countries in the West, what do you think would surprise them the most? Perhaps apart from our phenomenal affluence?
I wonder if what would surprise them the most would be how at home Christians are with sexual impurity. It does not shock us. It does not upset us. It does not offend our consciences. In fact, unless it is really bad, sexual impurity seems normal, just a way of life, and often entertaining. This is a far cry from how the Bible views sexual sin.
More often than not, when the Apostle Paul lists behaviours not fitting for the Christian, sexual immorality is at the head of the list (Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 5, Ephesians 5, Colossians 3). One of the first things new Gentile converts had to accept, when they went from not knowing God to knowing God, was a radically different sexual ethic.
V3,For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 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; 6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.
The big idea of vv3-8 is to abstain from sexual immorality. This begs the question, what exactly is sexual immorality?
The word Paul uses is the usual word for sexual sin in the New Testament (porneia). It refers to the broadest category of sexual sins and includes more than simply adultery. One commentator said that the term “can be found in Greek literature with reference to a variety of illicit sexual practices, including adultery, fornication, prostitution, and homosexuality. In the OT it occurs for any sexual practice outside marriage between a man and a woman that is prohibited by the Torah.”
As Kevin DeYoung says, “the simplest way to understand this term, ‘sexual immorality’, is to think about the things that would make you furious and heartbroken if you found out someone was doing them with your husband or your wife. If someone shook your wife’s hand you would not be upset. If someone gave a casual side hug to your husband it probably would not bother you. A kiss on the cheek or even a peck on the lips in some cultures might be appropriate, but if you found out another person had sex with your wife or saw her naked or touched certain parts of her body you would be furious. If you found another person made out with your husband or talked about sexual activities or made certain gestures you would be heartbroken.”
Why? It is because these are all activities that are appropriate for a married couple but are inappropriate when practised outside of the God-given relationship of a man and woman in marriage. Any sexual activity between those who are not married, or between two men, or between two women, or among more than two persons, or between family members, or between those married to other people – any sexual activity in these contexts is sin and can be included in the prohibitions Paul is talking about here. In simplest terms, sexual immorality, as Paul and Jesus and all the biblical writers understood it, is sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and a woman.
It is about all this that Paul says, abstain, or in other places he says, flee (1 Corinthians 6:18). Or in other places, it is not even to be named among you (Ephesians 5:3)
In fact in Ephesians 5, Paul says, Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place.
Do not reason with sexual sin, just run. Do not dabble. Do not peruse. Do not experiment. Do not “find yourself”. Do not test your resolve. Do not mess around. Just flee. Avoid the mistakes of the foolish man in Proverbs 7 who hung around sexual immorality, listened to its siren song, followed it through town, and ended up losing his life.
God does not ask us to get familiar with sexual immorality on the big screen, TV screen, or smart phone screen so that we can engage the culture. He commands us to get away. John Stott said, “Where things are evil the Christian attitude is necessarily one of abstention and not of moderation.”
How do you feel about that?
There are at least two negative reactions people might have to this. And I think they are both answered in the passage.
One negative response is:
IT’S MY BODY
“Hang on, this is my body and you can’t tell me what I should and should not do with it.”
It is popular in our day to think our bodies belong to us: “This is my body, and I’ll do with it what I like. No one can tell me what to do with my body!” In fact, in our culture nothing is more essential to our identity as human beings, it seems, than the freedom to express ourselves sexually and use our bodies as we choose.
Now in other places in the NT Paul would say, actually that is not right. There are two other people your body belongs to before it belongs to you. First, if you are married, your body belongs to your spouse. And second, your body belongs to God, especially if you are a Christian because we are temples of the Holy Spirit and members of Christ. However, Paul does not go there in this passage. He says, this is what you need to do with your body – control it! Your body does not control your brain. Your brain controls your body.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honour, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God
What is more, I think when Paul says “control his own body” he is thinking about certain body parts in particular – your sexual organs. Learn how to control them.
Here we have an answer to a second negative response to the prohibition of sexual immorality, and that second negative response is:
I COULD NOT HELP IT
“Well, I couldn’t help it. She seduced me. It’s just a natural desire. We got caught up in the moment. What’s the harm in just a look? Didn’t God make us to appreciate beauty anyway?”
“It’s alright if you’re a John Stott or Billy Graham, but for the rest of us mortals this is beyond ability.”
We excuse what we do by blaming it on “instinct” or “nature”, or even worse, God and how he made us.
I do not know if Paul is thinking particularly of men at this point when he says, know how to control his own body. He probably was so let me give a word to the men.
They are lame excuses men. “I couldn’t help myself.”
What are we, just a bunch of uncontrollable urges? Brainless passions?
Paul says, “Well that’s not right either”.
Paul is not saying the urges do not exist. Paul is not saying that sometimes they can be strong, but what he is saying is that they do not master us. We need to master them. Yes, God has given us bodies with sexual desires. But God has also given you a brain. Use your brain.
The body is no longer for self-gratification but for God-glorification.
These are challenging verses. What do they mean for the things we laugh about? What do they mean for the way we dress? What do these verses mean for the television we choose to watch or the movies we see for fun or the songs we listen to because, “Well, the tune’s catchy”?
Can we really justify all the innuendo, or let us call it for what it is, all the sexual sin made to look normal, attractive and amusing? “I know there are a couple of songs on that album that aren’t that great. But I can handle it, it won’t affect me. Sure a couple of scenes in that movie are not great, but it’s just innocent relaxation.”
Kevin DeYoung:
I remember one night in seminary a bunch of us got together to watch the third Indiana Jones movie, the one about the Holy Grail. If you’ve seen it you may remember that, in this instalment, Indiana Jones fights the bad guys with his father. At one point in the film there is a surprising line from the senior Dr. Jones which reveals that he and his son had just slept with the same Nazi woman. It’s meant to be a funny scene, and most of us laughed out loud. But an older, respected student called out the group. ‘Guys, they are talking about fornication and incest. It’s really not funny.’ I think most of the people in the room were annoyed with such sermonizing. But the more I’ve thought about that incident over the years, the more I think the older man was right. A man and his father fornicating with the same woman? This kind of immorality was not tolerated even among the pagans in Paul’s day. But we laugh.”
Perhaps we should get into the habit of saying “not funny” rather than laughing. We must be more vigilant. If not for our sake then at least for our kids’ sake. It is growing up in this sexualised world that makes me worry most about our children. I do not worry if they are going to fall off their bike and graze their knee. How are they going to navigate such an immoral world? To state the obvious, it starts with us.
Are we any different from the culture? Have we made a false peace with ourselves whereby we have said, we will not do the things you do or be as sensual as you are, but we will gladly be entertained by them?
The kinds of things Paul would not even mention, the sorts of sins he would not dare joke about, the behaviours too shameful to even name – we hear about them in almost every sitcom and every popular song.
Have we become numb to the poison we are drinking?
When it comes to sexual immorality, sin looks normal, righteousness looks very strange, and we look a lot like everybody else.
I know it is easy to be overly dogmatic when talking about matters the Bible doesn’t directly address, like movies or music or what clothes you wear. We have to encourage good Christians to make different choices for themselves. The overarching principle is not a list of do’s and do nots, but aiming to please God.
I do not want to minimise the reality of Christian liberty and the role of the conscience. What you need to consider is whether your conscience is functioning as well as it should. How often do we even ask the question, what is going to please God in this situation? The world is no friend to us in our fight for sexual purity. Every day we inhale sexual air, are bombarded with sexual images, and are made to believe sexuality defines who we are.
“Sexual immorality is everywhere to see, and too few of us with the mind of Christ are bothering to close our eyes.”
What IS going to help us?
I have got five minutes to talk about what would ordinarily take five sermons. What is going to help us? Two brief things.
The first is each other. Or what Paul calls here “brotherly love”.
V9,Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more
There has probably been a fair bit written about it in recent times, on how healthy plutonic relationships actually help people struggling with sexual immorality. Especially for, but certainly not limited to, those who are not married. I am not suggesting that Paul is making a link here between purity and brotherly love. I think he is just responding to different things that have been reported to him. In reality, the two are connected.
John Stott, who himself remained single his whole life, in his commentary on 1 Thessalonians, wrote this regarding those who are single:
“We shall not become a bundle of frustrations and inhibitions if we embrace God’s standard, but only if we rebel against it. Christ’s yoke is easy, provided that we submit to it. It is possible for human sexual energy to be redirected both into affectionate relationships with friends of both sexes and into the loving service of others. Multitudes of Christian singles, both men and women, can testify to this. Alongside a natural loneliness, accompanied sometimes by acute pain, we can find joyful self-fulfilment in the self-giving service of God and other people.”
I am not saying that to put the onus (responsibility) on those who are single, come on what are you going to do about it? I think the onus is on those who are married to be cultivating healthy, appropriately affectionate relationships who are not married, but, it is a two-way street.
We have a great opportunity to help each other. If the world is not going to be our friend on this one, who will be?
Is our brotherly love going to be conditional (my efforts will be directed only towards those who are at the same stage of life as me, because that is easiest), or is our brotherly love going to be more sacrificial? What is going to help us is when we have healthy, deep, serving-other-people relationships.
Remember God’s calling:
V7,For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. 8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
Now that may sound like bondage – “Now I have to do what God wants.”
Yes, it is true that loving God means living by his commands. Jesus said, “If you love me you’ll seek to obey me.” You cannot separate those two things. Belonging to Jesus means freedom, not slavery. Do not think of Christianity as having to do what a peevish (irritable) God wants. Think of it as now being able to do what a good God delights in.
Tell me, which one sounds more like slavery: by God’s grace being able to say no to that which displeases God; or having nothing better to say than I could not help myself, it was just my natural uncontrollable urges? It is no wonder Jesus uses terms like “slaves to sin”. We have been called not for impurity but from impurity. Why would we want to go back?
If the Gentiles behave as they do because they do not know God (v5), then the flipside is that Christians can behave in a completely different way because we do know God, because he is a holy God, because he is our God whose grace is always more controlling than our sin, and because we want to please him.
It is a wonderfully liberating experience when the desire to please God overtakes the desire to please ourselves, and when love for others displaces self-love. True freedom is not freedom from responsibility to God and others in order to live for ourselves, but freedom from ourselves in order to live for God and others.