Strengthen Your Grip on Purity
Finally, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God, as we have taught you. You live this way already, and we encourage you to do so even more. For you remember what we taught you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor—not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways.
(1 Thessalonians 4:1–5)
During Paul’s second missionary journey, he traveled to Europe, a region of the world that had not heard of Christianity. In metropolitan cities like Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, and Corinth he proclaimed the message of salvation, holding out hope and forgiveness to all who would listen. Later, after having had time to think about his ministry among them, he wrote letters to most of those places, desiring to clarify as well as intensify what he had taught them.
An example of this is found in 1 Thessalonians 4. Examine carefully the first five verses. Read them slowly—preferably aloud—and imagine they came in the mail from a mentor you admire.
Like a pastor concerned with his flock among whom he ministers, Paul encourages them to do more than give a casual nod to sexual purity. Rather, he exhorts them to “excel still more” (NASB). He comes right out and commands them to “abstain from sexual immorality” (NASB).
The Roman world of that day was a climate much like ours today. Impurity was viewed either with passive indifference or open favor. Christians back then (and now) were like tiny islands of morality surrounded by vast oceans of illicit sex and promiscuity. Knowing the current of temptation that swirled around them, he counseled them to “abstain”—an open and shut case for total abstention from sexual immorality. For Christianity to retain its role as “the champion of purity,” the Christian is expected to be above reproach. This is as true today as it was in the first century.
In our gray, hang-loose, swampy world of theological accommodation that adjusts to the mood of the moment, this passage of Scripture stands out like a lonely lighthouse on a stark, rugged hill. Interestingly, the verses go on to talk about the process of maintaining a pure lifestyle . . . that is to say, how to strengthen our grip on purity.
