Willing the Walk (07/04/22-07/05/22)

Our passage begins with an exhortation as to lifestyle, how we live and interact with those around us.  But it doesn’t leave things there.  It drives home that our manner of life is connected to and directed by the will of God.  This isn’t just some philosophical pursuit.  It isn’t the latest in healthy living fads.  But it is indeed the healthiest way of living, indeed, the only healthy way of living.  And what is that way?  It is the Way of Christ, a manner of living which seeks always, as a consistent and constant defining feature of life, to please God.

But we need to come to an understanding of just what that means.  Obviously enough, when we seek to please somebody, there is a sense of accommodation.  We seek to do that which aligns with that somebody’s interests and desires.  This is such a central aspect of married life, isn’t it?  I mean, in any situation where one must share living space with others, that need to at least account for the interests and desires of those who share space with us must come into play if there is to be anything like a peaceable and harmonious result.  But in marriage it is particularly the case.  And that particular case, it seems to me, plays a central role in this passage.

We enter into marriage, most of us, thinking we are well-prepared for this new phase of life.  And I suspect most, if not all of us, discover that was not really true, after all.  This relationship takes work.  It takes change, a willingness to give up a little of our prerogatives in the pursuit of harmony.  It doesn’t mean capitulation, or at least, if it does, then something is still rather wrong.  The married life is not a call to personal martyrdom in the interest of preserving the peace.  But if it is to be a healthy marriage, there cannot but be this aspect of seeking to please one another.  And this aspect truly presents an aspect of the act of pleasing which Zhodiates brings out in his lexical entry.  This matter of pleasing is first and foremost a matter of relationship.  It is, we might say, a result of relationship.  Yes, it is a needful preservative of that relationship, but relationship comes first, and the behavior, the walk of pleasing that other individual, comes as the natural outflow of relationship.

When Paul advises us to walk so as to please God, that matter of pleasing is presented as an infinitive.  It gives purpose to the business of walking.  It points us to the result of that walk, and the reason why it should have our attention.  We walk to please, and the One we would please by our walking is, in this instance God.

I mentioned how this matter of pleasing others must have its place wherever we share space with another.  Well, wherever we may find ourselves, and whatever our marital status, there is assuredly One other with whom we share space, and that is God Himself.  As David observes, there is no place one could go that He is not there.  There is no escaping His presence.  And we have been brought into His family.  We are in familial relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth!  You know, we can’t allow that realization to become a commonplace with us.  This is shocking.  This is unbelievable.  Almighty, all-wise, self-perfect, holy God has opted to bring us into a place of particular cohabitation with Himself!  What sort of God is this that would do such a thing with the likes of us?  How does perfect Holiness even permit of such a thing?  For like Isaiah and like Peter, we cannot but recognize that whatever holiness we may manage, it is very far from perfect.

But there it is.  We are, in a very real sense, wed to this God of ours.  He has declared us His bride.  That’s a bit uncomfortable for those of us who are male, I think, because the term doesn’t fit our sex.  But it’s not the sex that’s in view.  It’s the chain of command and responsibility, if you will.  God, of course, is in charge.  How could He not be?  But that was true without this new dimension added to the relationship.  Were we studying a different epistle, I might take longer to explore the teaching regarding husband and wife, but there is that clear sense that the husband has a significant responsibility to care for and cherish his wife.  He is her protector, whether she appreciates that or not.  He is to see to her provision and well-being.  He is to nurture her even as she in turn nurtures whatever children may adorn the family.  He is to care for her as for a weaker vessel, but one more highly prized for all that.  And this is the relationship in which we find ourselves with Jesus.  He cares for us, and we are quite clearly the weaker vessel.  And His care for us comes as demonstration of how highly He values us.

We, in our turn, demonstrate just how highly we love and appreciate Him in that we seek to behave in a fashion which gives due attention to our relationship.  We seek to be agreeable with Him, to act and function in ways which accommodate His interests and desires.

You know, in the workplace we have this same dynamic, if on a significantly different level.  What is work, after all, but an accommodation of some other’s interests?  Now, in that relationship, we exchange our willingness to seek another’s interests for the wages we receive.  But we relinquish our rights in so doing, not entirely, but in degree.  I cannot, for example, pursue my own design ideas on company time.  I cannot use their resources to pursue some patent I might claim for myself.  Likewise, the scientist working for a pharmaceutical company does not have right to whatever compounds he may discover.  That right was traded for the benefit of reasonable and reliable wage.  In accepting that wage, one has promised to accommodate his work to the desires and interests of the one paying the wage.

I wander a bit afield.  There’s a surprise.  Let me return.  We are in a relationship.  For those inclined to the use of social media, your status has changed.  And it has changed permanently.  We are in this relationship, and as I have often observed, the One Who has brought us into relationship with Himself does not let go.  God does not lose sheep, as I have put it.  God does not divorce.  There is no effective exit from this relationship.  It’s not a case of being trapped.  It’s a case of being secure.  And secure in this relationship, we can now happily pursue the business of pleasing this One Who has made us His own.

This infinitive is given us in the present tense.  It is a constant activity.  It is a state of being, if you like.  Now, here’s an interesting thing:  The matter of walking is likewise an infinitive, and likewise in the present tense.  This, too, is a matter of purpose or result.  We must fetch farther back.  If this is the result, the goal, what is it the result or goal of?  I would suggest it is the result of having received instruction.  This is why we instructed you:  In order that you could so walk and could so please God.

This brings us to another point of understanding which needs to be firmly established in us.  Writing to the Colossians, Paul has this to say:  “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him” (Col 2:6).  It seems that in our thinking we take that matter of receiving Christ as pointing back to that moment when we came to recognize saving faith.  And that moment is momentous indeed!  It is the moment without which there can be no hope for us.  But that moment, as utterly necessary to life as it is, is not sufficient in and of itself.  God does not call us to get these admissions of faith from those we would reach and then leave them to get on with life as best they may.  He didn’t do that with us.  He doesn’t expect us to do that with others as His representatives.  No.  He instructed us.  He left us with a user’s manual, if you will.  And He gave us teachers.

He gives us, first and foremost, the Holy Spirit.  But if we look at Jesus’ message about the Spirit and His mission, it is one of reminding.  He will bring to mind, says Jesus, all that I taught and did.  But He cannot bring to mind what has never been installed in the mind, can He?  I mean, yes, on one level He assuredly can.  At some point, the revealed matter of Scripture had to have come to somebody’s mind for a first time.  Understanding had to develop.  We see it with Peter, with Paul, with the others.  They didn’t just get it right at the start.  They had to learn.  They had to come to understand what they had learned.  They required the elucidation of the Spirit to make the lessons penetrate.

And what are the lessons He teaches?  They concern the will of God.  That’s what Paul is about to set forth in these verses.  Here is the will of God.  It’s not as though he had forgotten to mention this while he was with them.  No, he makes clear:  We told you this before, but it needs reminding.  There’s a reason we are instructed by our Lord to come back to church week by week, to hear again the text of Scripture and be reminded again of its instruction.  We are, as Peter observed, a forgetful people.  Just think how quickly the devotional you read this morning slipped from memory.  Or last week’s sermon, what was that about again?  What was the takeaway?

But we have come into this loving relationship with our Lord, our sworn Protector, and loving Him as we do, it is natural that we desire to please Him.  And how do we please Him?  By doing those things He tells us are pleasing to Him.  That’s the function of will which we have in this passage.  Yes, Paul conveyed to them, and conveys to us matters of what Christ commanded.  Here is how He instructs you to live.  Here are the things you should be doing, and here are the things you should cease from doing.  Why?  Because these things express His inclination; because these are things that please Him.  This matter of will, if we are to accept Zhodiates’ distinction of terms, is the result of the will.  It is not a demand made of us, but an indication of what He likes.  It is thelema, and that ma tells us it is the effect of will.  It is, if you like, what God Himself likes to do, or what He desires to see done.

I recall that description of the servant in the palace, the slave, really, but a slave of relative honor.  He sets himself to be so keenly aware of the king’s ways that the slightest indication of an inclination already has him in action, seeking to do as his lord inclines.  It might be no more than a look.  It might be some seemingly insignificant gesture, as others would perceive it.  But this slave of the court knows his master.  He knows how he thinks, and he knows all his idiosyncrasies.  No sooner does that look, that gesture come, than he is off to his task.  That’s kind of what we’re looking at here in this discussion of God’s will and our walk.  That’s why relationship is such a key part of the process.  We might look at that court slave and recognize that indeed, there is a relationship here, between slave and lord.  It may be a bit lopsided in our view, but it is a relationship.  The lord sees to his slave’s needs and care, and the slave sees to his master’s interests.  That attentiveness to indicators is a relational matter.  It expresses a certain amount of intimate knowledge.  If we know our spouses, one hopes we have learned to discern those sorts of coded expressions.  They are not coded as something they hope to keep from us, but rather they are, I suppose we could say, tells.  I know that look.  Something’s troubling you.  I know that signal.  It means we should get going.  Or whatever other signals may apply.  And so, as we seek to please one another, we learn each other’s body language.  We may not read each other like a book, but we truly know one another.  Things don’t stay hidden well.  We’ve known each other too long for that.

I keep wandering between the relationship that develops in marriage, and that which develops in the life of the Christian.  That is by design.  God is constantly setting forth our relationship to Him in the language of marriage.  And that includes matters of spiritual infidelity.  We are married, betrothed at present, to the Lord of all heaven and earth.  Our sanctification is, if you will, the purifying rite by which we are prepared for our wedding day.  And if, rather than pursuing sanctification and following the program of actions laid out for us to that end, we go after our own desires, our own passions, our own lusts, it is as if we have chosen to play the harlot.  That in itself is a phrase we find quite often in Scripture, when it comes to the straying of God’s people.  Clearly, if we would go and worship before other deities, attend services to some other supposed god, we have done exactly this.  If we have allowed other facets of life to crowd God out of our thoughts, and to direct our habits or define our character, we have done no less.

Understand that the system of ethics which is built upon any other foundation than those commandments we have in Scripture, by the authority of the Lord Jesus (and yes, that assuredly includes all that was written in the Old Testament, as well as the New), we are practicing spiritual immorality.  It matters not what sort of pious name we may apply to that.  It matters not how we may seek to minimize the issue, to insist that these little actions don’t matter.  There is no little infidelity.  There is no little violation of the covenant of marriage.

Now, clearly, the primary focus of Paul’s instruction here pertains to physical acts of sexual gratification outside the confines of a marriage between one man and one woman.  And how aggravating that one feels constantly the need to specify the sex of those two individuals thus covenanted to one another.  But such is the world we occupy.  I suppose we should further qualify that each is both so by birth and so by continued practice and being.  But it just gets tiresome.  And it gets tiresome for exactly the reasons that Paul is setting before us.  Each added notice on what defines a proper marriage indicates a propensity for sexual immorality that has become widely accepted in the culture, or at least loudly insisted upon.  But the claims of culture, as I said, cannot be allowed to define our standards.  We answer, as has often been said, to a higher Authority.  We answer to the One to Whom we are betrothed.  And in light of that, it must be the case that His standards define our own, and that however the pressures of society may bear down upon us and seek to reshape us in the world’s image, we will not have it.  No.  Far better, that we, by our fidelity to Christ, should once more reshape the world’s image after His.  Thus it shall be in due course, but how blessed the people where that shaping of life after God’s good pleasure is already the rule.

Now, part of our reshaped habit of life in light of Christ must surely be that we seek to share this grace which He has shed within us.  What, after all, was Paul doing in Thessalonica?  He was sharing grace with those in need of grace.  He was pursuing the Lord’s good pleasure in doing so.  Dare I say that if we are not gladly sharing abroad this love of God which He has caused to well up in us, we are failing to pursue His good pleasure!  It may very well be that there are occasions where we rightly opt to refrain, refusing to cast our pearls before swine in keeping with Christ’s teaching.  It will almost certainly prove to be needful on many occasions to shake the dust of the place off our feet, and receive our peace returned to us.  But to cease entirely because society is too far gone?  To withhold the Gospel from one because in our estimation he or she is beyond hope of receiving grace?  That sets us back amongst the Jews of Jesus’ day, of Paul’s day, satisfied in our little fortress of spiritual solitude, and looking down in judgment on all those we deem to be outsiders.  And yet, Jesus rescued Paul, a confirmed outsider, and did so most forcefully, most spectacularly.  And having done so, He assigned Paul the task of bearing this great good news to those he had been trained to view as outsiders and hopelessly beyond reach of the grace of God.

Can you imagine?  Think of the irony in this.  Here was Saul, set out to forcibly correct those who, in his estimation, had strayed from the fold of sound religious purity.  He, Pharisee of Pharisees, would see that those Israelites who had gone off after this other god, as he saw things, were brought to justice, either restored to Mosaic purity or purged from the land.  And now, here he was, doing pretty much the same thing, although it looked entirely different.  In going to the Gentiles with the message of Christ, he was in fact restoring strayed sheep to the fold of faith.  Some of them had been strays from birth, most of them.  Indeed, the strayed sheep of Israel by and large refused his message, and in particular because it sought to include the Gentiles.  You’re not keeping God’s Israel pure, Paul, you’re polluting it with your open door policies.  How dare you?  And yet, from the outset, Abraham had been told he would be a blessing to the nations.  From of old, God had proclaimed that light would shine upon those nations that sat in the darkness of sin and ignorance.  And so it had.  Paul was restoring the lost to the true kingdom, the true Israel.  And in so doing, he was also causing those who refused the kingdom to be clearly defined.  He was doing, in fact, what he set out to do.  But now he was doing so upon the true course of God’s good purposes.

And doing so, he would encounter, repeatedly, those who reject God’s offered grace.  He would encounter those who heard the message well enough, and perhaps even nodded their agreement, said the sinner’s prayer or whatever the equivalent was at that time, and looked to be redeemed.  Yet, by their actions, their rejection of God in habit and belief became clear.  They persisted in functionally opposing God’s revealed will, and what was the Apostle to do in such a case?  What are we to do?  Well, here it is!  Stand fast.  Walk so as to please God.  Knowing the commandments, and that these commandments represent before us the will of God, that which He finds pleasing, do them.

We cannot allow the promiscuous world around us to convince us of the acceptability of promiscuity.  Whatever society may think, it’s what God thinks that matters to us now.  And so, we are warned, and warned repeatedly, that we dare not fall into the habits of the fallen.  This was hard enough for Israel, a nation that had raised its children in Torah, that lived and breathed Torah, we might say.  Yet we see them going after other gods, other practices, and doing so repeatedly.  Look!  The nations around us all do things differently.  Why can’t we be like them?  Why shouldn’t we seek to fit in?  And look at their religious services!  Why, they’re having all manner of pleasures in there.  How could it hurt if we do likewise?  What harm could there be to join them?  Well, the harm was terrible.  It was, after its fashion, the death of a nation.  And it would be hard to look around us today and fail to notice the similarities.

We are surrounded by a populace that finds every manner of sexual immorality to be not merely permissible but demandable.  Name your perversity and you can find support for it around you.  It approaches the point that life is wholly unordered, that the goals of anarchy through the ages, that the lawlessness of Lamech, who killed a man for wounding him, killed a boy for striking him, taking vengeance into his own hands (Ge 4:23-25), have reached their full fruit.  And as it happened then, so it must surely happen again, that God will purge the land He created of their evil.  And all those who have been lured in by their seeming self-determination will likewise be purged.

We have just celebrated once more the holiday we call Independence Day.  This has been, historically, a day of great significance in America, and rather sums up the American psyche, whatever is left of it.  We are an independent lot.  We’re not the only ones, certainly, but it’s there in the very foundations of our country.  We will not suffer to be ruled.  We will not be governed against our wills.  Anymore, it seems, we will not so much as obey traffic rules unless it happens to suit us to do so, safety be damned.  But, dear Christian, you must resist this mindset, this ethos.  You are not independent.  Far from it!  You have awoken to the reality that you are so utterly dependent upon the good graces of God that indeed, as Paul told the philosophers of his day, in Him we live, in Him we have power to move, in Him alone have we existence (Ac 17:28).  Or, if you would have it another way, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).

So, what shall we do in this present disaster of a world?  The same as Thessalonica and the Church in every place was called to do in the disaster of theirs.  Walk so as to please God.  Excel at pouring out His love upon an unlovely people.  Abstain from sexual immorality.  Maintain.  Do not fall into the habits of the fallen.  Yes, I know.  It’s harder for you, because you had a lifetime of those very habits.  It’s what you were raised in.  It’s what you were trained in.  And now, you’re being told to set all that aside, to break with that society forcibly and set off on a very new, very exposed, very different course.  And in spite of all the pressures to conform, the call continues to be that we shall possess our vessel in sanctification and honor.  We shall continue to live in monogamous relationship with that spouse whom God has been pleased to fashion as our partner.  We shall refrain from the temptations set before us in every form of media, no matter how the world tells us it’s fine.  We shall, in short, allow God to define for us what is good and what is evil, and we shall not accept the claims of a deluded world when they insist it is otherwise.

This will not be easy.  It never was.  It wasn’t easy for Thessalonica.  There’s a reason Paul needed to insist on this point.  It wasn’t easy for Corinth.  We have seen in the letter to that church just how hard it proved to be for them to resist the temptations down the street, even with all their spiritual gifting.  We see it repeatedly in our own day, as religious leaders succumb to the temptations that come along with success.  Fame and power have their way of corrupting even the most devout, and a reputation for holiness can readily convince one that he is beyond reach of such temptations.  He is not.  Take heed, then, when you think you are standing fast, lest you fall (1Co 10:12).

It will not be easy, but in Christ – and only in Christ – it is possible.  It will assuredly not be possible, though, if we give it no effort, if we give it no thought.  The path of least resistance, in this case, will ever prove to be the path of sin.  But resist we must, and walk pleasing to our Lord, we must.  Acceptance by the world may seem tantalizing, particularly to those of us who have known rejection in the past.  But that tantalizing offer is in fact a lure unto death.  Seek instead to be acceptable to your Father in heaven.  Seek to be pleasing to your Husband, Jesus Messiah.

Sex and Sanctification (07/06/22)

The core of this passage is quite clearly concerned with the matter of sexual sin, of porneia, fornication.  Exactly how these verses should parse may be a question, but its subject matter is not.  God’s will is your sanctification.  This is His good pleasure.  And your sanctification is intrinsically connected to your abstaining from this porneia.  Your sanctification is seen in that you practice self-control in regard to your body, and in particular your sexual organs, rather than longing for and chasing after what is forbidden.

Well, what is forbidden?  In simplest form, any sort of sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage.  And, given the current moral climate, let us also add the caveat of such practices as involve one who is genetically and physically male, one who is genetically and physically female.  We know from the instruction of our Lord that it is not merely the physical act from which we must strive to abstain, but even the world of thought and imagination.  What, after all, does the modern growth industry of pornography supply?  It does not, in general, supply consummating acts.  It fuels imaginations.  It generates thoughts and longings which must needs find some outlet.  And that is exactly why Jesus strikes at the world of the mind.  Every action begins with a thought, and arguably every thought leads to an action.  So, we are to take every though captive.

I have already discussed, I think, the nature of the society from which this church in Thessalonica had been drawn.  It, like Corinth, like most any population in the Gentile world of that day, was a region steeped in promiscuity.  Their pagan practices celebrated the idea.  Their religions promoted such things.  And why not?  It was profitable trade, kept the temple coffers full far more readily than craft fairs and the like.  The world in general had very loose views on matters of sex.  These views would continue to plague the church, and in point of fact, still do.  But we saw those who would insist that Christianity was so much a matter of spirit that what these physical bodies did was of no consequence.  While there might have been some grain of truth in that deception, as there usually is, it was so distorted as to be utterly false anyway.

These bodies, as we shall see Paul teaching later in this letter, or as we can discern more clearly from his teaching elsewhere, such as 1Corinthians 15, are yet in need of reformation, and will remain so until that day when we are caught up to the heavens to be with Christ forever.  This mortal frame is wholly unfit for immortality.  The parts wear out, for one thing.  Can’t have that if we are to go on forever.  But we might also assign this whole business of sexual interaction to the realm of this mortal frame.  The angels in heaven, we are informed, do not so participate.  We might take the hint from that reality that our heavenly bodies, our reformed bodies, shall lack those organs and urges which so bother and distract us in this present form.

But while we remain in this present form, we are undergoing the process of sanctification, and that process, coming back to the passage at hand, requires that we should abstain from these things, and learn to control ourselves.  Were somebody to argue that this is the hardest of sins to tame, I don’t know as I could disagree.  Pride is there as well, so it’s not an open field, this competition for hardest sins.  But sexual temptations are right up there.  There’s a reason it’s always been an issue.  There’s a reason for the depravities we see, it seems, daily in the news.  Sex sells, and the devil knows it.  Sex sells, and we’d best know it, too, lest we be sold on it ourselves.

Lust, that longing for what is forbidden, feeds our worst instincts, and we have a world all around us supplying us with material to lust after.  And God says, “Control yourselves!”  Know how to maintain your body in sanctification and honor.  Don’t get sucked in.  Don’t turn your thoughts in that direction, and don’t let them turn your thoughts hence.  This is a battle, and these enticements are the assaults of the enemy.  Understand that.

So, while we see attempts to soften these verses somewhat, and generalize them to be concerns with business dealings and the like, no.  This is an urgent call to action in the heat of battle.  I’ll take the CJB’s offering of verse 4.  “Each of you, know how to manage his sexual impulses in a holy and honorable manner.”  That’s what we’re dealing with here.  That’s what we’re still dealing with when we arrive at verse 6.  Paul isn’t jumping topics here.  He’s on point and staying there.  Writing later, to the church in Corinth from whence he writes this epistle, Paul says, “Flee immorality.  Every other sin one might commit is outside the body, but immorality is sin against one’s own body” (1Co 6:18).  That’s what we’re dealing with.  Control this body.  Don’t sin against it.  And whether those actions involve another, or whether they involve only the self and the world of one’s imagined partnerings, the issue hasn’t changed.  It is sin against one’s own body.

Worse yet, let me jump to the end of this passage and notice that you have this gift of God’s Holy Spirit indwelling you.  You cannot, then sin against your own body without in some sense dragging Him into it.  No, you cannot possibly force God to participate in your sins.  That’s not happening.  But the criminality of seeking to have Him do so is there.  How appalling should that idea be to us?  How greatly should this realization serve to help us with this very issue of self-control and setting aside of every lustful thought?

Now, let’s clarify just a bit.  There is no sin in being attracted and aroused by one’s spouse.  Indeed, I should think that something utterly to be desired.  That doesn’t grant that we may, in that case, dismiss all concerns for propriety and just go for it whenever and wherever.  But there were those movements within the realm of faith that began to think that maybe even here, sexual relations were to be for the matter of child-bearing and that alone.  I don’t buy it.  Marriage was given, at least in part, in order that we might have a proper outlet for such things, and that much more thoroughly enjoy our united existence.  But marriage is presented to us as a one-flesh relationship.  Part of that pertains in the very matter of sexuality.  There can be no more intimate interaction between two beings, and that takes us far beyond the momentary pleasure of the animal kingdom.  There is a giving and receiving in this activity as we practice it which I don’t think one can find displayed in nature more generally.  If there is not, then again we must check.  Are we enjoying the gift of wedded life, or are we practicing porneia even in that setting?

The CEV suggests one of the other interpretations we find common in this passage.  “Respect and honor your wife.  Don’t be a slave of your desires or live like people who don’t know God.”  Now, that might be taken as suggesting our concerns here are only with the men, but that simply is not the case.  Women have just as much of an issue in this area as do men.  So, perhaps, respect and honor your spouse.  And yes, that certainly enters into the equation.  How is it you defraud your brother?  Well, if we take your brother as representing any who may be accounted your fellow believer, your brother may very well include your own spouse.  Indeed, we should hope it does.  So, if you are finding your gratifications with some other, or with your imaginary partner, are you not defrauding your spouse?  For all that, if you are withholding your favors from your spouse, are you not thus contributing to his or her sexual frustrations, adding to the pressures upon them to succumb to temptation, and thus defrauding them as well?

Certainly, if one were to seek out intercourse with another’s spouse, there is no question but that you have defrauded your brother.  And again, I think we must stress it’s not just the consummated act, but the lustful thoughts that drew one off in that direction.  What the mind has imagined, the body has already committed itself to doing.  The sin is already present, and the need for repentance and a true change of direction already severe.

“For God has not called us for impurity, but for sanctification.”  There is the dividing line.  There is the only dividing line.  The Jews had their division between themselves and the Gentiles – all other nations.  The Greeks had a similar mindset as regarded the civilized Greeks and the barbarians of the nations round about.  We, too, have our dividing lines, those we account like-minded members of the tribe, and all those others who are not of the tribe, and therefore inferior in every way.  It might be nationality.  It might be political party.  It might be denominational pride.  It might be just about anything, but the lines are there.  And God says, no.  There’s only one real dividing line, and that is the line between faith and unbelief.

If you have been called, you have been brought across the dividing line, out of the camp of unbelief and into the tribe of the elect.  That tribe is called to live differently, to live in accordance with the instruction of its Lord and King, Jesus Christ.  In that instruction, we are taught to possess these bodies as temples of the Living God.  We are called to live life as a nation of priests unto our God.  And our God, He Who called us, is holy – perfectly Holy.  In Him there is no shadow of turning.  In Him, there is no changeability of character.  There is no altering of Truth from one day to the next.  And there is most assuredly no winking at sin, not theirs, not yours.  He is Holy, and He has appointed you and I to holiness.  That is what this process of sanctification is about.  It is the slow shedding of sinful practices, and the adopting of holy practices.  It is learning how to be truly set apart for God’s exclusive use, no longer allowing the members of these bodies to be slaves to sin.

Are you of this camp, the tribe of the elect?  I pray it is so, and I pray you know it to be so.  And if it is, then this must be a chief concern for us:  That we indeed learn to possess these vessels in sanctification and in honor.  That is a tall order, and indeed, I would argue (and often do) that in our own strength and will it is utterly impossible to us.  But, with God all things are possible.  And as I shall consider more fully in the last portion of this study, God gives you His Holy Spirit to this very end, that what is impossible to us in our own strength may in fact be realized through His power and assistance.

May our God be at work in us most powerfully today and in coming weeks, that we might indeed know victory over the enticements of sexual immorality.  May we be granted to know victory over the temptations set before us daily in every form of media, and know how to comport ourselves as exemplary emissaries of Christ.  May we, with Job, make covenant with our eyes, that we should not look upon another to lust after their nakedness, but rather, may we look upon our Lord and Savior, our Husband and soul delight, and be wholly satisfied in Him.

Appointed to Holiness (07/07/22)

We have this one rule set before us:  to ‘abstain from sexual immorality’, as the NASB presents it.  This is your sanctification, and your sanctification is God’s will for you.  To this end He has commanded this thing.  This one thing, more, perhaps, than any other, sets apart the community of God’s people from the rest.  This is your dividing line, then, that marker that declares one is of God’s covenant people.  I may push the point a bit too hard, but it feels a reasonable surmise at the moment.

As I noted above, and as I was reminded this morning, reading through the BBE rendering of our passage, there is that attempt to make verse 6 about some separate issue.  They present the concern as being that ‘no man may make attempts to get the better of his brother in business’.  But nothing in the underlying language suggests a change of subject, nor that ‘these things’ are anything other than what has already been under discussion.  So, I would have to say the Phillips translation gives a better idea of how to perceive this verse.  “You cannot break this rule without in some way cheating your fellow-men.”  That’s the point.  Sexual sin is never a victimless crime.  It’s never just a sin against one’s own flesh, although it is always that.

Then, too, as I have stressed in the previous considerations, this sin – any sin, really – is something we cannot enter into except we have made attempt to drag God into it.  God, our Holy God, Who cannot abide even the sight of sin in His presence, has made His abode in you, rendered you, by His calling and His sanctifying work, a temple unto Himself, in which temple the Holy Spirit has taken residence – the Holy Spirit of Christ, Who died for you for the express purpose of delivering you from these sinful proclivities.  So, let me take Phillips a step farther.  You cannot break this rule without cheating God.  You cannot break it without in some way seeking that God might join you in that cheating of your fellow-men.  And that is utterly reprehensible, utterly revolting.

How we need to feel the power of this crime.  How we need to internalize just how heinous is our sin, even when we contain our sin to the realm of thought-life.  Our thought-life, after all, is still within the confines of the Temple, still in the presence of God, Who knows our every thought.  How dare we?  I mean, I know we do, but what remorse ought there to be that it is so?  How ought we to be driven to our knees, Luther like, crying out in repentance, seeking the unwarranted boon of forgiveness from the very One we have so offended?  And yet, we convince ourselves it’s no big deal.  It’s just human nature, nothing we can really do anything about.

Well, yes.  You in your human nature cannot hope to resist or change human nature.  Oh, to be sure, a man can change.  Personal improvement is a possibility, even for those apart from Christ.  But holiness?  No.  That’s beyond us.  It’s too late, anyway.  Our debt, even before we noticed we had one, was already beyond us to pay.  But that’s no cause to give up.  That’s cause to pray, and to give thanks for the enormity of the gift that has been given us in salvation.

Hear this.  God chose you!  That’s the opening clause of verse 7.  And He chose you to a purpose:  To be holy.  The NASB, following the order of the Greek, presents us with, “God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.”  I rather appreciate, however, the altered emphasis of the ERV.  “God chose us to be holy.  He does not want us to live in sin.”  Now, I have to grant that the NASB is right to preserve the emphasis given in the original.  Not for impurity did God call you.  And there’s good cause for such emphasis.  As we have already observed, sexual sins were so much a commonplace that they weren’t really seen as sinful.  They were just the cultural norm.  You might as well tell us to cease from eating or sleeping.  But no, it’s not like eating or sleeping, is it?  Cease from eating and you must eventually perish.  Cease from sleeping and again, you must eventually perish.  These are things needful for the continued functioning of the body.  Sexual sins do not meet that same degree of necessity.  We may feel like they do, but they don’t.  Cease from sex, and you shall continue to live.  This is not a necessity for your vital function.

So, then, this, in particular, is a matter God wants us to deal with.  We cannot proclaim our sanctification and continue in our lusts.  These two are wholly incompatible, and we cannot pursue the latter without cheating the former.  Your sanctification is God’s good pleasure, and to that end He is calling you to take ownership over your body, to keep His temple sanctified and honorable.  Show that you are His.  Show that indeed you are one who has been called by Him, and to refer back to Isaiah, called by name.  He knows you.  He knows you intimately enough to know you by name, to call you by name.  And as I have often observed in these studies of mine, when God calls you by name, it is a matter of asserting His right of determination over you.  It’s not all that different from when our mother used to call us by our full given name.  When you heard that, you knew you’d best straighten up and give attention to what is being said.  You were reminded that beyond all possibility of debate, this one had right of command over your behavior, and the power to enforce her determinations.  And chances are, you were hearing this because you had already transgressed.

God called you.  And He called you for a purpose.  Having called you, having fulfilled what He purposed from before the first moments of Creation in the reality of His Son, His Person, coming to live as man, to live in perfect holiness as man, and to die an unwarranted death on behalf of His sinful brethren, He has made possible that which He purposed in you:  Your sanctification.  This call to purity is not some unattainable goal, some tormenting requirement we can never hope to fulfill.  No, God called you to sanctification, and, in pursuit of His goal, gave you His Holy Spirit.

Now, here, Paul is clearly bringing up the Holy Spirit as cause to receive this message rather than to reject it, or set it aside as mere opinion.  You can’t violate this, but that you are rejecting God.  And let me stress yet again, it matters not whether you are considering the consummated sinful act, or merely the entertaining of immoral imaginations in that regard.  Same crime.  Same guilt.  Same underlying reality.  You are rejecting God – God Who called you, Who, in His calling, reminds you that He has right of rule over you, being your Creator.

Here is that dividing line again.  There are those who are the called, those to whom God has made Himself known in His grace, and then, there are those whom He has not thus called.  Go back to His self-description when He met with Moses.  “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Ro 9:15, Ex 33:19).  This was Him making His goodness pass before Moses.  I will have mercy and compassion on those whom I choose to have it.  There is camp number one.  But that choosing rather insists there is a portion of the populace that is not chosen.  Over and over, Scripture speaks of God’s chosen as a remnant.  God will preserve for you a remnant in the earth, keep you alive by a great deliverance (Ge 45:7).  There it was, presented to Joseph.  More critically, “A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.  For though your people, O Israel, may be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant within them will return.  A destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness” (Isa 10:21-22).  If it was thus with this nation created by God first-hand, how much more for the world at large?

There is a dividing line, the Christian divided from the non-Christian.  It cannot be otherwise.  There are those who are called, and those who are not, those who are undergoing the process of sanctification, and those who are reprobate, determined to continue on in their depravities without regard for God or man.  Does this continue the Jewish perspective?  Well, in some degree, sure.  But then, there is that within man which does so anyway.  It’s pretty near impossible to escape some form of an ‘us and them’ mentality.  We can pretend that we are now so enlightened as to escape it, but then, that pretty quickly devolves into the very same thing, with ‘us’ being the enlightened few, and ‘them’ being the great unwashed who continue in their tribalist ways.  Oops.

But Scripture never presents us with an idealized humanity.  Its heroes remain utterly human, with all their failures and short-comings intact.  What it presents is an offer, though; an offer that we can in fact improve, can in fact be redeemed from the futility of this way of life we have known.  The dividing line has moved, yes.  It is no longer Jew versus Gentile, Greek versus barbarian.  It is not Roman citizen versus conquered nations.  It is not American versus European, nor black versus white, nor any other such contrived distinction.  It is called versus uncalled.  And we, dear ones, being of the called, have a duty towards the uncalled, to make certain they have had opportunity to hear that call of God by presenting them with the clear message of the Gospel, the great good news that in spite of our lifetime of sins, there remains hope, there remains the possibility of redemption.

And to those whom God calls, He gives His Holy Spirit.  Note that this is set before us as a present participle.  This is a stative matter.  He didn’t give the Spirit for a moment, to get you through that first step of election.  It wasn’t a momentary matter so that you could hear the Gospel receptively, accept Christ, and then be left to get on with it on your own thereafter.  No.  He gives, shall we say, constantly.  And I must insist that there is no room here for multiple classes of believer, where some hear the Gospel but receive not the Spirit, but some both hear and receive.  There is no separating the two.  Where the call has come, the Spirit has come, and where the Spirit has come, He has taken up His abode in the one who as called.  Were it not so, that one who was called would never have perceived and welcomed the call.

God has set you apart as consecrated, devoted to God, sharing in His purity and undefiled by earthly pollutions.  By His calling, you have been set apart.  But that which was set apart required sanctification.  It was ever so.  Aaron and sons were set apart before ever they entered the priesthood.  The materials from which the tabernacle were to be made, or the incense to be formulated, were set apart long before they took the forms in which they would serve as God’s tools of worship.  But before they could fulfill purpose, they must needs be sanctified.  Before the priests could hope to serve a holy God, they must be rendered holy.  So, there were rites and ceremonies to attend to, in order that the priest would not simply be a stench and an offense before the God he would serve.

So, too, with us.  And sanctification is that cleansing process.  Sanctification is our rite, but it’s one we cannot do for ourselves.  Instead, in us, it proves to be the outworking of that very One Who has been given us:  the Holy Spirit.  He, being very God of very God, is in fact utterly, perfectly pure, entirely undefiled by any earthly pollutions.  And given the course of these notes of mine, let me stress that this remains so in spite of the inescapable implications of our continued sins.  They may seek to drag God into our crimes, either intentionally or through negligence of thought, but they cannot succeed.  God is Holy.  Full stop.  His holiness is absolute.  It is no less so in the Person of the Spirit than in the Person of the Father.

Returning to the Phillips translation once more, “It is not for nothing that the Spirit God gives us is called the Holy Spirit.”  He’s not some cuddly plushy to comfort us.  He is Holy.  I might even say that He is terrifyingly Holy.  It is terrifying because we, for all that the ongoing work of sanctification proceeds, are not.  We are still with Peter in the boat.  “Depart from me!  For I am a sinful man.”  We are still there with Isaiah, “Woe is me, I am undone!”  But, being with both of them, we are with Christ, and that coal from the altar has touched our lips, rendered us clean, acceptable before the court of heaven.  Oh, we still have need of further improvement, but the end-product is determined already.  God will see it done.  God already sees it done.  Recall that He dwells outside of time, knows the end from the beginning.  Even as the Holy Spirit indwells and works upon us this work of sanctification, He simultaneously perceives us as we shall be, for from His perspective, we already are.

This indwelling Spirit of God is, taking from Thayer’s lexical entry, ‘full of majesty, adorable, utterly opposed to all impurity’.  And let that last clause inform how we understand His being adorable.  He’s not a cute little kitty for us to pet.  He’s not a puppy to play with.  Oh, isn’t He just adorable?  No, that’s not it.  He is full of majesty, utterly opposed to all impurity, and as such, to be adored, venerated, held in highest regard.

So, why, I asked in preparing for this study, is the Holy Spirit brought in at this point?  Well, there is the obvious point which Paul makes:  He is the one you reject in continuing in your sexual immorality.  He is the one you offend, not Paul, not Timothy.  He is the one who insists on this shift in lifestyle and mindset, not Paul, not Timothy.  But that, I think, is only half of the answer.  The other half is that His indwelling presence, and His ongoing work in us are the motive power for sanctification, the assurance that yes, this seemingly impossible goal is in fact attainable.  Paul, God through Paul, is not asking the impossible here.  He is telling you what He intends to see done in us.

This is not to say we don’t have a part in this.  We remain moral agents.  We remain agents with a choice of aligning ourselves with the purpose of God in us, or fighting Him.  I could again bring up the example of mother and child.  That child, hearing his name called in that stern, thou shalt pay attention, way that parents possess, still has a choice between complying and changing his ways, or stiffening his resolve to continue on just as he pleases.  Now, where the parent is clear on his or her role, that resolve will not get the child very far, but the choice remains:  Comply or rebel.  And the consequences remain for that decision.  The loving parent will do all that is in his power to see that child restored to his good graces, but there may come a breaking point, a point at which love requires rejection.  Oh, we don’t like that.  We don’t want to be the ones having to take such a course.  It breaks our hearts.  But sometimes, love must.  Even God, to be very clear, has His breaking point, a point beyond which all attempts at reconciliation shall cease.  I must maintain that there is a distinction to be made in this, though:  That as concerns the called, that point shall not be reached.  The Holy Spirit, given us as a down-payment of our future inheritance, sees to it that we do not.  He speaks to us, reminds us, turns our attention to the wrongs we have done, and stirs us to repentance, lest we be destroyed.  For He remains perfectly, utterly Holy.  But, as I said, He sees the finished work in us, and He sees to it that said finished work is indeed accomplished.

For us, there is the two-fold aspect of this reality, something of a tension.  On the one hand, we heartily and gladly hear the encouragement Paul gives.  “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba!  Father!’” (Gal 4:6).  We are entered into this close relationship with Holy God.  We can cry out to Him, knowing we are indeed addressing our Father, Who art in heaven.  At one and the same time, we hear the corrective from John.  “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him.  We know He abides in us by the Spirit He has given us” (1Jn 3:24).  I say it is a corrective, and so it is.  If, in fact, the Spirit abides, then obedience follows.  I could turn that around and suggest that if you do not see obedience as the trend-line of your Christian life, there is cause to question whether in fact you abide in Him and He in you; which is to say, there is cause to  question whether in fact you are a Christian in reality. 

But there is also that encouraging notice:  We know He abides in us by the Spirit He has given us.  Understand that your failures are not some proof of being reprobate.  The Spirit reminds you.  There remains a voice of conscience observing that failure and stirring regret, stirring true repentance.  Where there is remorse for our sins, there is the Spirit reminding.  Where there is none, now we have real cause for concern.  But He has sent His Spirit to us.  Apart from Him, we would never have received Christ in the first place.  Apart from Him, thoughts of sanctification and our need for it would be cause for hopelessness.  But we are not without hope in this life.  The Holy Spirit of Christ Himself both guides and empowers us as we seek to walk worthy of this Christ Who saved us, of the Father Who called us.  Here is perhaps the greatest gift of God’s mercy:  He didn’t leave us to work it out unaided.  He supplies the power and the direction.  He has, as Peter reminds us, “granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2Pe 1:3-4), making us “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”

You are not alone, Christian.  You do not fight this inward battle by will alone, but by the strength and power of God Himself.  You can do this!  You can do this, because He is doing it.  Cry out, oh, poor soul.  Cry out, “Abba! Father!”  Cry out, “Holy Spirit, come to my aid!”  Remind yourself!  “I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead;  His eye to watch, His might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need.  The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, His shield to ward; the word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.”  Those words come from the prayer of St. Patrick, and they are marvelous reminders of how we walk worthy of this Lord we serve.  Herein is the power to stand, and stand some more, as needs must.

Father, let it be so with us today.  May I bear this mindset, be reminded ever of Your indwelling presence.  May I not so quickly lapse into past habits, but indeed progress in sanctification as You come to my aid.  I thank You in advance, for I know You are already at work within me.  But may I also be mindful to give You thanks again as I witness Your aid, Your power upholding me in the battle against my sins.  Amen.