For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. (1 Thessalonians 4:7, 8 ESV)
We are called to cast off this impurity and live for God, and it's often easy to forget that when we disobey, we aren't disobeying man but God. When we sin, we are choosing something else over the living God who is in us. It's much simpler when we forget this and think that our actions only affect other people rather than having the ability to affect our relationship with the eternal God. I hope and pray that we will put him first and choose him over whatever else today and every day rather than being lured in by sinful pleasures and temptations.
"For this is the will of God, your sanctification..." 1 Thessalonians 4:3
ReplyDeleteEven though this only a small excerpt of a verse, I thought it pretty well summed up the meaning of the chapter. This is basically a summary of our entire spiritual journey. Once we have been saved by Christ, our goal is to become evermore like Christ, who lived the perfect life. This is not a test by means of passing or failing, because surely we would all fail. Rather, the best thing we can do with our lives is to live with thankfulness, and becoming the "living sacrifice" that Paul writes about in Romans 8. I so often forget that my life can have this much meaning to God. He really does love our affection, and the thought of bringing joy to God, the everlasting and above-all-things, is pretty awesome.
"This is the will of God, your holiness: that you refrain from immorality, that each of you know how to acquire a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion as do the Gentiles who do not know God"
ReplyDelete1 Thessalonians 4: 3-5
"Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not a human being but God, who [also] gives his holy Spirit to you."
1 Thessalonians 4: 8
We read earlier in Ephesians that it is the will of God for us to enter into heaven as perfect humans: pure, blameless, and holy. We attain holiness by refraining from immorality.
Here we can read in the letter that it is the will of God also that each of us would know how to acquire a wife in holiness and honor; specifically stating that we should not find a wife in lustful passion. I think a lot of individuals look at marriage lustfully. People desire someone to hold them. People desire sex. People desire security. People desire acceptance and guidance. People want to love and be loved.
These are all things that can only be fully accomplished through God, yet people strive to have these desires filled by other people. The result being that men are using women, women are using men, men are using men, and women are using women. Individuals are using each other for their own personal gain. Men and women are treating each other like objects and NOT like the chalices of God that we are. In doing so, like we are warned in the 8th verse, we as a society are not disregarding each other by using each other; we are in fact, disregarding God.