Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
Christian Behaviour
Sunday, 22 October 2006
So far in chapters 1 to 3 of 1 Thessalonians the Apostle Paul has been looking back to his visit and the events which followed it, and has been defending himself against his critics' accusations. Now in the rest of the letter, chapters 4 and 5, he looks to what was then the present situation of the Thessalonian church and their future. He addresses himself to some practical problems of Christian conduct which were evidently troubling them. In so doing he turns from explanations regarding his own behaviour to instructions regarding theirs.
This sudden shift of theme doesn’t mean, however, that there are no links between chapters 3 and 4. For one thing, his prayer that the Lord would cause them to grow in love and holiness in 3:12-13 paves the way for his teaching about love and holiness in Ch.4.
For another, Timothy must have been the source of Paul's information both about the slanders which he has countered in chapters 1 to 3 and about the deficiencies in the Thessalonians' discipleship which we mentioned last week and which he proceeds to remedy in chapters 4 to 5. It seems likely that Timothy brought with him to Corinth not only his own impressions of the Thessalonian church but also some questions from them.
A weakness that can easily slip into in our evangelical Christianity is to neglect of Christian ethics, in both our teaching and our practice, and concentrate only on bringing people to Christ. We have become known as people who preach the gospel but only to a lesser extent are we are known as those who live and adorn it. We are not always conspicuous in the community, as we should be, for our respect for the sanctity and the quality of human life, our commitment to social justice, our personal honesty and integrity in business, our simplicity of lifestyle and happy contentment in contrast to the greed of the consumer society, or for the stability of our homes.
We are so busy preaching the gospel that we seldom teach the law. We are also afraid of being branded 'legalists'. 'We are not under the law', we say piously, as if we were free to ignore and even disobey it. Whereas what Paul meant is that our acceptance before God is not due to our observance of the law. But Christians are still under obligation to keep God's moral law and commandments. Indeed, the purpose of Christ's death was that 'the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us' as Paul says in Romans 8:4 and the purpose of the Holy Spirit's dwelling in our heart is that he might write God's law there as stated in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and 2 Corinthians. We are so concerned to teach that you can’t get to heaven by being good, we forget to teach that God still wants us to be good.
The apostle Paul presents a striking contrast to our current neglect of ethics. It is not just that his letters are usually divided into two halves, the first concentrating on doctrine and the second on ethics, but also that he gives detailed instruction in Christian moral behaviour, even to very young converts, such as the Thessalonians. The apostolic tradition which he passed on to them, and which they receivedincluded both the truth of the gospel and also moral instruction on 'how to live in order to please God'.
Exhortations to holiness, warnings of suffering and promises of the return of Christ belonged together in Paul's teaching. Within a few weeks or months he had taught the young Thessalonian converts not only the essence of the good news but also the essence of the good life, not only about faith in Jesus, but also about the necessity of good works by which saving faith is authenticated and without which it is dead.
As pluralism and relativism spread through our society there is an urgent need for us to follow Paul's example and give people plain, practical, ethical teaching. Christian parents must teach God's moral law to their children at home. Sunday school and SRE teachers must ensure that their pupils know at least the Ten Commandments. Ministers must not be afraid to expound biblical standards of behaviour from the pulpit, so that the congregation grasps the relationship between the gospel and the law. And right from the beginning converts must be told that the new life in Christ is a holy life, a life bent on pleasing God by obeying his commandments.
What Paul has to say on thise theme to the Thessalonians is divided into three sections. He urges the Thessalonians;
1. to please God (4:1-2),
2. to control themselves (4:3-8) and
3. to love one another (4:9-10), not least in the matter of
earning their own living (4:11-12).
This instruction applies equally to us today as it did to the Thessalonians .
1. Paul urges us to please God 4: 1-2
“Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.”
This general exhortation by Paul, is noteworthy in two respects: first, for its authoritative tone, and secondly for its emphasis on pleasing God as the foundation on which Christian ethical behaviour is built.
Paul was aware of apostolic authority in relation to the gospel and now we observe it also in relation to his ethical directions. When Paul is preaching the gospel and when he is teaching ethics he claims to be speaking with the same divine authority. The gospel is God's word; his instructions are Christ commandments and the foundation of Paul's ethical instruction is the necessity of living in order to please God.
Several points may be made in favour of 'pleasing God' ; a guiding principle of Christian behaviour:
First, it is a radical concept, for it strikes at the roots of our discipleship ar challenges the reality of our profession. How can we claim to know and to love God if we do not seek to please him. Disobedience is just not on.
Secondly, it is a flexible principle. It will rescue us from the rigidities of a Christian Pharisaism which tries to reduce morality to a list of do's and don't. True, we still need to be instructed in how to live in order, to please God, but our incentive will be not so much to obey the law as to please the Law-giver.
Thirdly, this principle is progressive. If our goal is to be perfectly pleasing to God, we shall never be able to claim that we have arrived. Instead, we are challenged to please him more and more.
From his general exhortation to please God, Paul moves on to some specific ways in which we should do so, especially in the areas of sexual self-control, daily work and bereavement. Paul sets out to 'warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak', for these seem to have been the three groups in the Thessalonian church who needed special help. So Paul urged 'the idlers', who were neglecting their daily work, that if they loved each other they would earn their own living. He reminded 'the timid' or 'the faint-hearted', who were anxious in their bereavement about their friends and relatives who had died, of the Christian hope of Christ's return. And to 'the weak', who lacked the strength to resist sexual temptation, he spoke of God's call to purity and honour.
Sex, work and death are still three major human preoccupations, so that Paul's teaching on these subjects is still relevant today.
2. Paul urges us to control ourselves 4:3-8
It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honourable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God .... For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
It is not surprising that the apostle begins with sex, not only because it is probably the strongest of all our human urges, but also because of the sexual laxity - even promiscuity - of the Graeco-Roman world. Paul he was writing from Corinth to Thessalonica, and both cities were famed for their immorality. In Corinth, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sex and beauty, whom the Romans identified with Venus, sent her servants out as prostitutes to roam the streets by night. Thessalonica, on the other hand, was particularly associated with the worship of deities called the Cabiri, in whose rites 'gross immorality was promoted under the name of religion' according to one reference. Whether Corinth and Thessalonica were any worse than other cities of that period is an open question.
FF Bruce, the famous New Testament historian wrote “A man might have a mistress who could provide him also with intellectual companionship; the institution of slavery made it easy for him to have a concubine, while casual gratification was readily available from a prostitute. The function of his wife was to manage his household and to be the mother of his legitimate children and heirs.
One historian wrote “'there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled' than it was under the Caesars.” And in many cultures and countries today, even where monogamy is officially favoured, deviations from this norm are increasingly tolerated. Christians, by contrast, have a reputation for being 'puritanical' and 'prudish, and for having a generally negative attitude towards sex. These criticisms are sometimes just. But in self-defence we also claim to be realists. Although we recognize that sex is the good gift of a good Creator, we also know that it has become twisted and distorted by the fall, so that our sexual energies need to be rightly channelled and carefully controlled.
Paul's first principle is that heterosexual and monogamous marriage is the only context in which God intends sexual intercourse to be experienced, and indeed enjoyed. And the second is that in sexual relationships we are to serve and honour our partner. Here, then, is a sex ethic for 'the weak', namely that according to God's purpose the context for sex is marriage and the style of sex is honour. It is elementary, no doubt. But it is also plain, frank, practical, authoritative, uninhibited - in fact, just what new converts need, especially if they are exposed to pagan standards and pressures.
3. Paul urges us to love one another 4:9-12
Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more. Make it your ambition to lead a. quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, nso that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Paul moves on in this section from chastity to charity, from the control of sex to the importance of work, from the need to 'help the weak' to the need to 'warn those who are idle'.
It seems clear that there was a group in the Thessalonian church who needed a very different kind of instruction and exhortation. Paul says they are to be 'warned' rather than 'helped'. Paul implies that the idle are unwilling, not unable, to work.
It seems possible that the they had misunderstood Paul's teaching about the return pof Christ and had stopped working in the mistaken belief that it was imminent. Their idleness was due to their 'eschatological excitement'or 'Parousia hysteria'.
GLADESVILLE
Paul frames his appeal to them in terms of brotherly love. His argument is that to work for one's own living is a mark of love, because then we do not need to depend on the support of fellow Christians, while deliberately to give up work is a breach of love because then we become parasites on the body of Christ.
Paul has these slackers in mind when he addresses three admonitions to the whole church. lead a quite life, mind your own business and work with your hands.
The Greeks despised manual work as degrading to free men and fit only for slaves. Christianity came into direct collision with this view. Paul the tentmaker reinforced the example of Jesus the carpenter and gave dignity to all honest human labour.
The apostle had two particular reasons for this threefold appeal to the Thessalonians to be quiet, non-interfering and hard-working. The first was that their daily life might win the respect of outsiders and the second that they might not be dependent on anybody. Paul brings together the two communities to which all Christians belong - the world and the church, 'outsiders' and the Christian brotherhood. He is concerned about the Thessalonians' relationship with both. He wants them to command the respect of unbelievers and not to be a burden on their fellow-believers.
Let’s draw all this together:
In 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12 Paul has addressed himself to the two areas of sex/marriage and work. Both are creation gifts, having been instituted by God in Genesis 2. Both are still parts of everyday human experience. And Paul gives us here a Christian perspective from which to view them. Two aspects of this perspective are particularly noteworthy.
The first is the call to unselfishness. We are to please God and to love one another. The apostle reduces our ethical obligation to these fundamental simplicities. Christian morality is not primarily rules and regulations, but relationships. On the one hand, the more we know and love God, the more we shall want to please him. Children quickly learn what pleases or displeases their parents. Husband and wife understand each other so well that they know instinctively what to do and what to avoid. Similarly we are to develop a spiritual sensitivity towards God, through his Word and Spirit, until in every dilemma it becomes safe and practical to ask ourselves 'Would it please him?' On the other hand, love for others leads us to serve them. Whatever we wish others would do to us, we shall want to do to them. It is a wonderfully liberating experience when the desire to please God overtakes the desire to please ourselves, and when love for others displaces self-love. True freedom is not freedom from responsibility to God and others in order to live for ourselves, but freedom from ourselves in order to live for God and others.
Secondly, Paul issues a call to growth. We are to please God 'more and more', and we are to love one another 'more and more'. We must constantly to be on our guard against vanity and apathy. In this life we never finally arrive. We only 'press on towards the goal'. Our justification was indeed once and for all but our sanctification is always more and more, a life long process.
Let us pray.