God's Word to the Wise

Pleasing God is the foundation of all our ethical, Christian behavior.

“Finally then, brothers and sisters, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received instruction from us about how you must live and please God (as you are in fact living) that you do so more and more. For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own body in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God. In this matter no one should violate the rights of his brother or take advantage of him, because the Lord is the avenger in all these cases, as we also told you earlier and warned you solemnly. For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. Consequently the one who rejects this is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.” (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8)

Jesus is holy and “set apart” from sin, and His followers are also set apart from sin and are being sanctified for God’s use (1 Peter 1:16). Christians know they are to abstain from sexual immorality (1 Thessalonians 4:3). They understand they have been “called to be His holy people” (1 Corinthians 1:2).

It’s important to realize also that Paul is not penning some of his own peculiar prescriptions. When he speaks about the gospel that he has proclaimed, back in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, he says, “We … thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God.” So they were, and we shouldn’t be in any doubt that when Paul spoke and when Paul wrote, he was giving to them, and us the very word of God.”

How, then, should we live? Well, we should live with a determined approach to pleasing God, for pleasing God is the foundation of all our ethical, Christian behavior. It’s a radical principle, and it is a wonderful principle—namely, that our whole motivation for living within God’s specified parameters is not as a result of seeking to commit ourselves to some pharisaical list of dos and don’ts, but all of our Christian behavior is as a result of seeking to please God. And in seeking to please the Lawgiver, we then determine that we shall keep the law which he has given.