Saturday, January 23, 2021

The Kind of Sexual Conduct that God Desires (1 Thess. 4:3)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/6/2014 7:36 AM

My Worship Time                              Focus:  What Kind of Sexual Conduct Does God Require?

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  1 Thess. 4:3

            Message of the verse:  “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality;” 

            We will try and answer this first question from verse three, a question that some may be surprised at the answer, but the answer is given at the end of verse three where Paul writes:  “that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.”

            John MacArthur points out that the conjunction “for” links this command to Paul’s previous exhortation that the Thessalonians strive to excel more from verses one and two of chapter four.  As we read over chapter 1 and verses 3-10 we will be reminded that these people had a desire to do the will of God, and so Paul is explaining more fully this command which is the will of God.  People desire to know what the will of God is and there are different places in the Word of God that tells us exactly what the will of God is for our lives.

            Paul begins by giving a general or broad governing principle of what the will of God is and that is sanctification (hagiosmos), which is the Greek word translated in the NASB as sanctification.  In some other translations it is translated as holy.  MacArthur writes that it is the “process of being separated from sin and set apart to God’s holiness (Ps. 4:3; Jer. 1:5; John 17:17; Acts 20:32; Rom. 6:22; 15:16; 1 Cor. 6:11; Eph. 5:26-27; 2 Tim. 2:21; Heb. 2:11; 10:10; 13:12; cf. 2 Cor 6:17; Eph. 5:7-9; Phil. 2:12-13).  God wants believers to be separated from all that is evil, fleshly, and impure.  The sanctification process is the direct result of salvation, as Paul instructed the Corinthians: ‘Such [sexually immoral] were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.  The apostle’s reference to sanctification points back to one of the requests he had just prayed for the Thessalonians:  ‘that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father’ (1 Thess. 3:13).” 

            Paul now gets more specific by saying that part of this sanctification process is to be sexually pure before the Lord that is we abstain from sexual immorality.  We mentioned in our last SD that these people lived in a very sexual perverse society, something like we live in today in the United States, and I suppose other countries as well.  Paul uses the word abstain and this word means complete abstinence, and in this case , staying completely away from any though or behavior that violates the principles of God’s Word and results in any sexual sin.  MacArthur writes “sexual immorality (porneias) is a term used to describe any form of illicit sexual behavior.  Any sexual activity that deviates from the monogamous relationship between a husband and a wife is immoral by God’s standard.  The Lord does bless the sexual relationship in matrimony:  ‘Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled’ (Heb. 13:4b; cf. Rom 1:24-32; 2:2).”

            Let us look at a couple of verses that Paul wrote on this subject:  “But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; (Eph. 5:3)”

            “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God…. Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.  (Col. 3:3, 5).”  As we look at these three verses we can see the word impurity in two of them and this word is the same Greek Word with the  meaning not only speaks of acts, but also thoughts, which is the beginning of problem of sin.  Jesus said in “Mt 5:28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 

            We can conclude that people who habitually commit sexual sins are not true believers in Jesus Christ.  However Paul does write in 1 Corinthians about a man who was a believer who committed a sexual sin and I think that he writes later on in his second letter that this man had confessed this sin to the Lord and to those in that church. 

            I have tried to describe what God’s standard are for abstaining from sexual sin, and we have to understand that God created sex and therefore knows what the best way is for having a sexual relationship, and that way is with one’s own spouse.  There are some people today who think that this is way too rigid, however God’s ways for us are perfect, and are given to us to protect us not to hinder us. 

I would say that I believe that the most problematic idol we face today is the idol of sex.  Sex is used on TV commercials to sell almost everything and we are inundated with sex almost everywhere we go and this causes believers to be beaten down and to not understand how God feels about this as we can see from His Word.  It is the old story about the frog in the kettle and sexual sin in our country and world has the frog in the kettle getting burned up and not even knowing it.

Spiritual meaning for my life today: I want to be committed to overcoming and abstaining from any form of sexual sin.  It is something that is truly difficult to do in this society, but God is bigger than our society.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Fight the good fight against sexual sins.

Memory verses for the week:  Philippians 2:5-8

5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Legion” (Luke 8:30).

Today’s Bible question:  “Who said ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God?’”

Answer in our next SD.

6/6/2014 8:31 AM   

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