_PERSONAL PURITY._
"Finally then, brethren, we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus,
that, as ye received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God,
even as ye do walk,--that ye abound more and more. For ye know what
charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of
God, _even_ your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication;
that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in
sanctification and honour, not in the passion of lust, even as the
Gentiles which know not God; that no man transgress, and wrong his
brother in the matter: because the Lord is an avenger in all these
things, as also we forewarned you and testified. For God called us
not for uncleanness, but in sanctification. Therefore he that
rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth His Holy Spirit
unto you."--1 THESS. iv. 1-8 (R.V.).
The "finally" with which this chapter opens is the beginning of the
end of the Epistle. The personal matter which has hitherto occupied us
was the immediate cause of the Apostle's writing; he wished to open
his heart to the Thessalonians, and to vindicate his conduct against
the insidious accusations of his enemies; and having done so, his main
purpose is fulfilled. For what remains--this is the meaning of
"finally"--he has a few words to say suggested by Timothy's report
upon their state.
The previous chapter closed with a prayer for their growth in love,
with a view to their establishment in holiness. The prayer of a good
man avails much in its working; but his prayer of intercession cannot
secure the result it seeks without the co-operation of those for whom
it is made. Paul, who has besought the Lord on their behalf, now
beseeches the Thessalonians themselves, and exhorts them in the Lord
Jesus, to walk as they had been taught by him. The gospel, we see
from this passage, contains a new law; the preacher must not only do
the work of an evangelist, proclaiming the glad tidings of
reconciliation to God, but the work of a catechist also, enforcing on
those who receive the glad tidings the new law of Christ. This is in
accordance with the final charge of the Saviour: "Go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you." The Apostle had followed this Divine
order; he had made disciples in Thessalonica, and then he had taught
them how to walk and to please God. We who have been born in a
Christian country, and bred on the New Testament, are apt to think
that we know all these things; our conscience seems to us a sufficient
light. We ought to know that, though conscience is universal in the
human race, and everywhere distinguishes between a right and a wrong,
there is not one of our faculties which is more in need of
enlightenment. No one doubts that men who have been converted from
heathenism, like the Thessalonians, or the fruits of modern missions
in Nyassaland or Madagascar, need to be _taught_ what kind of life
pleases God; but in some measure we all need such teaching. We have
not been true to conscience; it is set in our human nature like the
unprotected compass in the early iron ships: it is exposed to
influences from other parts of our nature which bias and deflect it
without our knowledge. It needs to be adjusted to the holy will of
God, the unchangeable standard of right, and protected against
disturbing forces. In Thessalonica Paul had laid down the new law, he
says, _through the Lord Jesus_. If it had not been for Him, we should
have been without the knowledge of it altogether; we should have had
no adequate conception of the life with which God is well pleased. But
such a life is exhibited to us in the Gospels; its spirit and
requirements can be deduced from Christ's example, and are explicitly
set forth in His words. He left us an example, that we should follow
in His steps. "Follow Me," is the sum of His commandments; the one
all-embracing law of the Christian life.
One of the subjects of which we should gladly know more is the use of
the Gospels in the early Church; and this passage gives us one of the
earliest glimpses of it. The peculiar mention of the Lord Jesus in the
second verse shows that the Apostle used the words and example of the
Master as the basis of his moral teaching; the mind of Christ is the
norm for the Christian conscience. And if it be true that we still
need enlightenment as to the claims of God and the law of life, it is
here we must seek it. The words of Jesus have still their old
authority. They still search our hearts, and show us all things that
ever we did, and their moral worth or worthlessness. They still reveal
to us unsuspected ranges of life and action in which God is not yet
acknowledged. They still open to us gates of righteousness, and call
on us to enter in, and subdue new territories to God. The man who is
most advanced in the life which pleases God, and whose conscience is
most nearly identical with the mind of Christ, will be the first to
confess his constant need of, and his constant dependence upon, the
word and example of the Lord Jesus.
In addressing the Thessalonians, Paul is careful to recognise their
actual obedience. Ye do walk, he writes, according to this rule. In
spite of sins and imperfections, the church, as a whole, had a
Christian character; it was exhibiting human life in Thessalonica on
the new model; and while he hints that there is room for indefinite
progress, he does not fail to notice their present attainments. That
is a rule of wisdom, not only for those who have to censure or to
teach, but for all who wish to judge soberly the state and prospects
of the Church. We know the necessity there is for abounding more and
more in Christian obedience; we can see in how many directions,
doctrinal and practical, that which is lacking in faith requires to be
perfected; but we need not therefore be blind to the fact that it is
in the Church that the Christian standard is held up, and that
continuous, and not quite unsuccessful efforts, are made to reach it.
The best men in a community, those whose lives come nearest to
pleasing God, are to be found among those who are identified with the
gospel; and if the worst men in the community are also found in the
Church at times, that is because the corruption of the best is worst.
If God has not cast off His Church altogether, He is teaching her to
do His will.
"For this," the Apostle proceeds, "is the will of God, even your
sanctification." It is assumed here that the will of God is the law,
and ought to be the inspiration, of the Christian. God has taken him
out of the world that he may be His, and live in Him and for Him. He
is not his own any longer; even his will is not his own; it is to be
caught up and made one with the will of God; and that is
sanctification. No human will works apart from God to this end of
holiness. The other influences which reach it, and bend it into accord
with them, are from beneath, not from above; as long as it does not
recognise the will of God as its rule and support, it is a carnal,
worldly, sinful will. But the will of God, to which it is called to
submit, is the saving of the human will from this degradation. For the
will of God is not only a law to which we are required to conform, it
is the one great and effective moral power in the universe, and it
summons us to enter into alliance and co-operation with itself. It is
not a dead thing; it is God Himself working in us in furtherance of
His good pleasure. To tell us what the will of God is, is not to tell
us what is against us, but what is on our side; not the force which we
have to encounter, but that on which we can depend. If we set out on
an un-Christian life, on a career of falsehood, sensuality,
worldliness, God is against us; if we go to perdition, we go breaking
violently through the safeguards with which He has surrounded us,
overpowering the forces by which He seeks to keep us in check; but if
we set ourselves to the work of sanctification, He is on our side. He
works in us and with us, because our sanctification is His will. Paul
does not mention it here to dishearten the Thessalonians, but to
stimulate them. Sanctification is the one task which we can face
confident that we are not left to our own resources. God is not the
taskmaster we have to satisfy out of our own poor efforts, but the
holy and loving Father who inspires and sustains us from first to
last. To fall in with His will is to enlist all the spiritual forces
of the world in our aid; it is to pull with, instead of against, the
spiritual tide.
In the passage before us the Apostle contrasts our sanctification with
the cardinal vice of heathenism, impurity. Above all other sins, this
was characteristic of the Gentiles _who knew not God_. There is
something striking in that description of the pagan world in this
connection: ignorance of God was at once the cause and the effect of
their vileness; had they retained God in their knowledge, they could
never have sunk to such depths of shame; had they shrunk from
pollution with instinctive horror, they would never have been
abandoned to such ignorance of God. No one who is not familiar with
ancient literature can have the faintest idea of the depth and breadth
of the corruption. Not only in writers avowedly immoral, but in the
most magnificent works of a genius as lofty and pure as Plato, there
are pages that would stun with horror the most hardened profligate in
Christendom. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that on the whole
matter in question the heathen world was without conscience: it had
sinned away its sense of the difference between right and wrong; to
use the words of the Apostle in another passage, being past feeling
men had given themselves up to work all manner of uncleanness. They
gloried in their shame. Frequently, in his epistles, Paul combines
this vice with covetousness,--the two together representing the great
interests of life to the ungodly, the flesh and the world. Those who
do not know God and live for Him, live, as he saw with fearful
plainness, to indulge the flesh and to heap up gain. Some think that
in the passage before us this combination is made, and that ver.
6--"that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in _any_
matter"--is a prohibition of dishonesty in business; but that is
almost certainly[13] a mistake. As the Revised Version shows, the
Apostle is speaking of the matter in hand; in the Church especially,
among brethren in Christ, in the Christian home, the uncleanness of
heathenism can have no place. Marriage is to be sanctified. Every
Christian, marrying in the Lord, is to exhibit in his home-life the
Christian law of sanctification and noble self-respect.
The Apostle adds to his warning against sensuality the terrible
sanction, "The Lord is an avenger in all these things." The want of
conscience in the heathen world generated a vast indifference on this
point. If impurity was a sin, it was certainly not a crime. The laws
did not interfere with it; public opinion was at best neutral; the
unclean person might presume upon impunity. To a certain extent this
is the case still. The laws are silent, and treat the deepest guilt as
a civil offence. Public opinion is indeed stronger and more hostile
than it once was, for the leaven of Christ's kingdom is actively at
work in society; but public opinion can only touch open and notorious
offenders, those who have been guilty of scandal as well as of sin;
and secrecy is still tempted to count upon impunity. But here we are
solemnly warned that the Divine law of purity has sanctions of its own
above any cognisance taken of offences by man. "The Lord is an avenger
in all these things." "Because of these things cometh the wrath of God
upon the sons of disobedience."
Is it not true? They are avenged on the bodies of the sinful.
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The holy law of
God, wrought into the very constitution of our bodies, takes care that
we do not violate it without paying the penalty. If it is not at the
moment, it is in the future, and with interest,--in premature old age;
in the torpor which succeeds all spendthrift feats, excesses of man's
prime; in the sudden break-down under any strain put on either
physical or moral courage. They are avenged in the soul. Sensual
indulgence extinguishes the capacity for feeling: the profligate man
would love, but cannot; all that is inspiring, elevating, redeeming in
the passions is lost to him; all that remains is the dull sense of
that incalculable loss. Were there ever sadder lines written than
those in which Burns, with his life ruined by this very thing, writes
to a young friend and warns him against it?
"I wave the quantum o' the sin,
The hazard o' concealing;
But Och! it hardens a' within,
And petrifies the feeling."
This inward deadening is one of the most terrible consequences of
immorality; it is so unexpected, so unlike the anticipations of
youthful passion, so stealthy in its approach, so inevitable, so
irreparable. All these sins are avenged also in the will and in the
spiritual nature. Most men repent of their early excesses; some never
cease to repent. Repentance, at least, is what it is habitually
called; but that is not really repentance which does not separate the
soul from sin. That access of weakness which comes upon the back of
indulgence, that break-down of the soul in impotent self-pity, is no
saving grace. It is a counterfeit of repentance unto life, which
deludes those whom sin has blinded, and which, when often enough
repeated, exhausts the soul and leaves it in despair. Is there any
vengeance more terrible than that? When _Christian_ was about to
leave the Interpreter's house, "Stay," said the Interpreter, "till I
have showed thee a little more, and after that thou shalt go on thy
way." What was the sight without which Christian was not allowed to
start upon his journey? It was the Man of Despair, sitting in the
iron cage,--the man who, when Christian asked him "How camest thou in
this condition?" made answer: "I left off to watch and be sober; I
laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the light
of the word and the goodness of God; I have grieved the Spirit, and He
is gone; I tempted the devil, and he is come to me; I have provoked
God to anger, and He has left me; I have so hardened my heart that I
cannot repent." This is no fancy picture: it is drawn to the life; it
is drawn from the life; it is the very voice and tone in which many a
man has spoken who has lived an unclean life under the cloak of a
Christian profession. They who do such things do not escape the
avenging holiness of God. Even death, the refuge to which despair so
often drives, holds out no hope to them. There remaineth no more a
sacrifice for sin, but a fearful expectation of judgment.
The Apostle dwells upon God's interest in purity. He is the avenger of
all offences against it; but vengeance is His strange work. He has
called us with a calling utterly alien to it,--not based on
uncleanness or contemplating it, like some of the religions in
Corinth, where Paul wrote this letter; but having sanctification,
purity in body and in spirit, for its very element. The idea of
"calling" is one which has been much degraded and impoverished in
modern times. By a man's calling we usually understand his trade,
profession, or business, whatever it may be; but our calling in
Scripture is something quite different from this. It is our life
considered, not as filling a certain place in the economy of society,
but as satisfying a certain purpose in the mind and will of God. It is
a calling _in Christ Jesus_; apart from Him it could not have
existed. The Incarnation of the Son of God; His holy life upon the
earth; His victory over all our temptations; His consecration of our
weak flesh to God; His sanctification, by His own sinless experience,
of our childhood, youth, and manhood, with all their unconsciousness,
their bold anticipations, their sense of power, their bent to
lawlessness and pride; His agony and His death upon the Cross; His
glorious resurrection and ascension,--all these were necessary before
we could be called with a Christian calling. Can any one imagine that
the vices of heathenism, lust or covetousness, are compatible with a
calling like this? Are they not excluded by the very idea of it? It
would repay us, I think, to lift that noble word "calling" from the
base uses to which it has descended; and to give it in our minds the
place it has in the New Testament. It is God who has called us, and He
has called us in Christ Jesus, and therefore called us to be saints.
Flee, therefore, all that is unholy and unclean.
In the last verse of the paragraph the Apostle urges both his appeals
once more: he recalls the severity and the goodness of God.
"Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God". "Rejecteth"
is a contemptuous word; in the margin of the Authorised Version it is
rendered, as in some other places in Scripture, "despiseth." There are
such things as sins of ignorance; there are cases in which the
conscience is bewildered; even in a Christian community the vitality
of conscience may be low, and sins, therefore, be prevalent, without
being so deadly to the individual soul; but that is never true of the
sin before us. To commit this sin is to sin against the light. It is
to do what every one in contact with the Church knows, and from the
beginning has known, to be wrong. It is to be guilty of deliberate,
wilful, high-handed contempt of God. It is little to be warned by an
apostle or a preacher; it is little to despise him: but behind all
human warnings is the voice of God; behind all human sanctions of the
law is God's inevitable vengeance; and it is that which is braved by
the impure. "He that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God."
But God, we are reminded again in the last words, is not against us,
but on our side. He is the Holy One, and an avenger in all these
things; but He is also the God of Salvation, our deliverer from them
all, who _gives His Holy Spirit unto us_. The words put in the
strongest light God's interest in us and in our sanctification. It is
our sanctification He desires; to this He calls us; for this He works
in us. Instead of shrinking from us, because we are so unlike Him, He
puts His Holy Spirit into our impure hearts, He puts His own strength
within our reach that we may lay hold upon it, He offers us His hand
to grasp. It is this searching, condescending, patient, omnipotent
love, which is rejected by those who are immoral. They grieve the Holy
Spirit of God, that Spirit which Christ won for us by His atoning
death, and which is able to make us clean. There is no power which can
sanctify us but this; nor is there any sin which is too deep or too
black for the Holy spirit to overcome. Hearken to the words of the
Apostle in another place: "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves
with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor
extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of
you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified
in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God."
[13] Still I do not feel quite certain (in spite of 2 Cor. ii. 11)
that πλεονεκτεῖν and πλεονεξία in St. Paul can refer to anything
but covetousness. This is the view taken by Schmidt, who refers to the
combination, in 1 Cor. v. 10, vi. 10, of πλεονέκτης with ἅρπαξ
and κλέπτης. If it is correct, ἐν τῷ πράγματι must be translated
"in business"; "_dass in geschäftlichen Dingen Keiner ausschreite und
seinen Bruder ausbeute_." Certainly the combination of sensuality and
avarice as the cardinal vices of heathendom is characteristic of the
Apostle.