Summary of 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12:
We (Paul and his followers) have instructed you how to live to please God and we urge you to do this more and more. It is God’s will that: you should be sanctified; avoid sexual immorality; learn to control your own body in a holy way and not lustfully; and no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.
The Lord will punish for such sins since God has called you to live a holy life. You reject God himself if you reject His instruction.
Love your brothers and do so more and more.
Lead a quiet life, mind your own business, and work with your hands so you will be respected by non-believers and independent.
1 Thessalonians 5:12-28:
We (Paul speaking again) ask you to respect authority, those over you and who admonish you. Love them. [I see this as an extension of God who admonishes us]. Live in peace with each other. Warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, and be patient with everyone. Don’t seek revenge and be kind to one another.
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will. Test everything (including prophecies) and hold on to the good and reject the evil. Do not extinguish the Spirit’s fire that burns in you and others.
May God sanctify you and you be kept blameless as we wait the coming of Jesus. Pray for us. Grace be with you.
BSF Study Questions Acts Lesson 18, Day 4: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12; 5:12-28
9) Part personal Question. My answer: You should be sanctified; avoid sexual immorality; learn to control your own body in a holy way and not lustfully; and no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. Live a holy life. Love each other more and more. Lead a quiet life, minding your own business and work with your hands so you will not be dependent on others.
Respect authority, those over you and who admonish you. Love them. [I see this as an extension of God who admonishes us]. Live in peace with each other. Warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, and be patient with everyone. Don’t seek revenge, and be kind to one another.
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will. Test everything (including prophecies) and hold on to the good and reject the evil. Do not extinguish the Spirit’s fire that burns in you and others.
I struggle with most of these at some point in live. I struggle to love others, to be joyful and give thanks in all circumstances, to hold onto the good, and to live a holy life.
10) Personal Question. My answer: God helps us by traversing our paths at our side faithfully. He sanctifies us with the Holy Spirit, which helps us in times of our greatest need. But we must pray, be joyful, and be grateful always in all circumstances to God and what He gives and does for us. We must constantly remember His grace, mercy, and presence in our lives if we are to have any hope of keeping His will for us.
11) Personal Question. My answer: Every day is an opportunity to live out His will. This doesn’t have to be specific. I think everything in my life is from Him, and thus, as I live, it glorifies Him and lives out His will. By making Godly choices daily, I live out His will. Specifically, by being a good wife, mother, pet owner, worker, and writer.
Conclusions BSF Study Questions Acts Lesson 18, Day 4: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12; 5:12-28
My favorite part here of Paul’s words to live a holy life is to “hold on to the good.” I think if we all did this, the bad wouldn’t be so bad after all.
End Notes BSF Study Questions Acts Lesson 18, Day 4: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12; 5:12-28
1 Thessalonians 4:1-12:
Christian maturity is never finished on this side of eternity. No matter how far a Christian has come in love and holiness, he or she can still abound more and more.
The purpose of Christian living is to please God and not ourselves.
Paul gave these commands to a first-century Roman culture that was marked by sexual immorality. At this time in the Roman Empire, chastity and sexual purity were almost unknown virtues. Nevertheless, Christians were to take their standards of sexual morality from God and not from the culture.
Paul said this was a commandment (1 Thessalonians 4:2). That word was a military term describing an order from an officer to a subordinate, and the order came from Jesus and not from Paul.
Interesting Cultural Note: The ancient writer Demosthenes expressed the generally amoral view of sex in the ancient Roman Empire: “We keep prostitutes for pleasure; we keep mistresses for the day to day needs of the body; we keep wives for the faithful guardianship of our homes.”
The idea behind sanctification is to be set apart, and God wants us set apart from a godless culture and its sexual immorality. If our sexual behavior is no different than the Gentiles who do not know God, then we are not sanctified in the way God wants us to be.
The older King James Version translates sexual immorality as fornication. “Fornication is used here in its comprehensive meaning to denote every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse.”
Immorality is the opposite of honor because it degrades and debases the self. Those who do not restrain their sexual desires act more like animals than humans, following every impulse without restraint.
Paul meant to encourage each Christian to possess or hold his own body (vessel) in a way that honored God. Sexual immorality is a sin against one’s own body (1 Corinthians 6:18).
Four Reasons for Sexual Purity
- God punishes sexual immorality
- We are to live holy
- Reject God’s call if you are sexually impure
- We have the Holy Spirit to overcome sexual impurity
We should have an aspiration or ambition in life, and that we should aspire to lead a quiet life.
- Aspire has the thought of ambition and is translated that way in several versions of the Bible. Quiet has the thought of peace, calm, rest and satisfaction.
- The quiet life contradicts the hugely successful modern attraction to entertainment and excitement. This addiction to entertainment and excitement is damaging both spiritually and culturally. We might say that excitement and entertainment are like a religion for many people today. When we live the quiet life, we can listen to God and get to know Him better.
Work is God’s plan for the progress of society and the church. We fall into Satan’s snare when we expect things to always come easily, or regard God’s blessing as an opportunity for laziness.
1 Thessalonians 5:12-28:
Pauls tells the Thessalonians to do three things for leaders:
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- Recognize leaders
- Esteem leaders
- Love leaders
Leaders shepherd us (are over us) and admonish us (gently reprove)
- Unruly: The idlers of 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12.
- Fainthearted: Those anxious about their departed loved ones in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17.
- Weak: Those suffering under temptations to lapse into immorality in 1 Thessalonians 4:2-8.
Christians should be patient always and not seek revenge.
Paul will write about more spiritual matters such as prayer, thanksgiving, and worship. But before these spiritual or religious matters comes teaching about right relationships. Jesus made it plain that we should get things right with men before we come to worship God (Matthew 5:23-24).
Rejoice always, pray always (every moment of every day in constant, flowing conversation with God), and give thanks for everything. Prayer can take place anywhere, anytime, in any posture.
Spurgeon: “When joy and prayer are married their first born child is gratitude.”
“‘Quench’ properly applies to the putting out of a flame of some sort, as that of a fire (Mark 9:48), or a lamp (Matthew 25:8). This is the only place in the New Testament where it is used in a metaphorical sense.” (Morris) Thomas says that the phrase could be more literally translated, “Stop putting out the Spirit’s fire.”
We can quench the fire of the Spirit by our doubt, our indifference, our rejection of Him, or by the distraction of others.
Between the time Paul last saw the Thessalonians and the writing of this letter, he had spent time in Berea (Acts 17:10-12). There, the Christians were of a noble character because they heard Paul’s preaching and diligently searched the Scriptures to see if what he said was true. Paul wanted the Thessalonians to have more of the heart and mind of the Bereans.
Completely: “The adjective (holoeleis), occurring only here in the New Testament, is a compound of holos, ‘whole, entire,’ and telos, ‘end.’ Its basic connotation is ‘wholly attaining the end, reaching the intended goal,’ hence has the force of no part being left unreached.” (Hiebert)
Spirit, Soul & Body
Paul’s use of spirit, soul, and body in this passage has led many to adopt what is called a trichotimist view of man, believing that man is made up of three distinct parts: spirit, soul, and body.
One might say that Mark 12:30 divides man’s nature into four parts (heart, soul, mind, and strength), and that 1 Corinthians 7:34 divides man’s nature into two parts (body and spirit). In some passages the terms soul and spirit seem to be synonymous, other times they seem to be distinct and hard to define precisely. It seems that there are indeed these three different aspects to the human person, yet the specific meaning of spirit or soul must be determined by the context.
The great Greek scholar Dean Alford described the spirit and the soul as thus:
- “The SPIRIT (pneuma) is the highest and distinctive part of man, the immortal.”
- “The SOUL is the lower or animal soul, containing the passions and desires which we have in common with the brutes, but which in us is ennobled and drawn up by the spirit.”
God intends there to be a hierarchy within the human person, ordered first with the spirit, then with the soul, and finally with the body.
We are to sublimate the needs of the body to the soul, and the needs of both body and soul to the needs of the spirit.
Holy kiss: “Apparently at this time the sexes were segregated in the assembly and the men kissed the men and the women the women… When the kiss came to be exchanged between men and women it became the occasion for their critics to charge the Christians with impurity. The resultant embarrassments gave rise to numerous regulations concerning the practice by the early church councils.” (Hiebert)
I charge you: Paul used a strong phrase here. It was important that this epistle be read among Christians. This is an unusual statement, unique in Paul’s letters.
It All Comes Down to Grace
Nearly all Paul’s letters begin and end with the idea of grace. This is also true of almost everything God has to say to His people.
Grace is God’s unmerited favor, His bestowal of love and acceptance on us because of who He is and what Jesus has done.
It is appropriate that this letter – the first of Paul’s preserved correspondence to the churches that is full of love, encouragement, and instruction — ends on a note of grace.
“Whatever God has to say to us – and in all the New Testament letters there are things that search the heart and make it quake – begins and ends with grace… All that God has been to man in Jesus Christ is summed up in it: all His gentleness and beauty, all His tenderness and patience, all the holy passion of His love, is gathered up in grace. What more could one soul wish for another than that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ should be with it?” (Denney, cited in Morris)