A Study in 1 ThessaloniansSýnishorn

More Holiness. Less Naughtiness.

Christianity started out largely as a Jewish movement with a handful of non-Jews (Gentiles) who adopted the Jewish language, customs, and cultures. There was little debate about what was right and wrong behavior because the Old Testament was the center of life for everything from personal morality to family systems, the legal system, entertainment, and even government. All that changed when Gentiles started worshiping the Jewish Jesus and wanted to learn the Bible. The Gentiles brought a flood of new questions to be answered, ones that had been long settled among the Jewish people. This is the backdrop for this section of Paul’s letter to the church at Thessalonica as he says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God...” (4:3-5)

The passions of sex are like a fire, and marriage is the hearth that God created to contain it. Whenever it is taken out of the hearth of marriage, sex starts burning down our relationship with God, marriage, family, health, and culture.

Some things are legal with the government but sinful with God. In the Bible, there are many manifestations of sexual sin defined. In the 21st century, we can expand this list to include homosexuality, erotica, bestiality, bisexuality, fornication, friends with benefits, adultery, swinging, prostitution, incest, rape, polygamy, polyandry, sinful lust, pornography, pedophilia, sexually touching someone else (besides your spouse) in any way with or without clothes on, and sexually viewing or talking to someone else including via technology. The Bible includes many uses of the Greek root word “porneia,” from which we get our English word pornography, as a bit of a catch-all category for various sexual sins. The Bible does this because sinners tend to find new ways to sexually sin, and God wants us to deal with our hearts honestly because they lead our hands sinfully. Anything outside of one husband with one wife is a sin. God’s divine design for married sex is solely one husband and one wife. Anyone else involved in any way is sinful and harmful. God made our bodies male and female for sexual pleasure, and for the Christian, God is the authority over our bodies and what we do, and do not do, with them. Worship is not just the songs we sing in church, but decisions we make with our bodies. Elsewhere, Paul writes in Romans 12:1-2, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed...”

The Bible is not anti-sex. The Bible is pro-marriage and pro-sex within marriage.

If you want to learn more about what the Bible says about sex, my wife Grace and I wrote a book called “Real Romance: Sex in the Song of Songs” that you can find, along with a sermon series at RealFaith.com. In that book, we explain that people see sex in one of three ways:

1. Sex as god – For some people, they lack sexual boundaries and control and their sexual urges rule over them like their functional god – what they sacrifice their body and energy to as a form of worship. In this section of 1 Thessalonians, Paul is explaining this very sin.
2. Sex as gross – For some people, because of prudish, unhealthy Bible teaching, an overly conservative upbringing, and/or sexual addiction or abuse, sex is seen as something gross, off-putting, and base.
3. Sex as gift – According to the Bible, sex is a gift from God to be enjoyed by a married couple within the confines of the Scriptures and limits of their conscience.

In closing this section, Paul encourages believers to “love” in a world filled with hate (4:9), “live quietly” in a world filled with conflict (4:11), “mind your own affairs” in a world filled with gossip and busy bodying (especially online) (4:11), “and to work with your hands” instead of being entitled and a burden to others expecting them to pay your bills and provide for your needs (4:11). The goal of Christians and their churches is to “walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” (4:12) If we are dependent on God, and care for one another as God’s church family, the results will be freedom and health. We will be free to live our lives as God instructs, and healthy because we are not following the same self-destructive patterns in the greater culture that lead to what is skyrocketing addiction, depression, brokenness, mental health, debt, and hopelessness. If we live as God’s countercultural people, the goal is not to look down on lost people who do not yet know Jesus, but to invite them into our homes, lives, and churches to see that there is a better and healthier way of life that is made possible only by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

Reflection:

How would people simply become healthier if they followed the wisdom in this section of Scripture? Practically, in what ways would our culture and the quality of people’s lives simply improve dramatically?