Wednesday 5th March
Read 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8
“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honourable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.” (NIVUK)
Why should knowledge of God demand control of the passions of the body (v5)? At the heart of Paul’s thinking is an understanding of the nature of the body that was different to what the pagans thought, and dare I say, different to what is commonly thought today.
A key argument in the permissiveness and sexual freedom prevalent in the world is that the body and soul or spirit are distinct. That one can do with the body what one wants and that it will have little effect on one’s soul. The body is less important and therefore what one does with it to satisfy sexual desires is separate to pure spiritual living. Paul will have none of this. His view of the body is that it is one with spirit and soul, and if one is saved and filled with the Spirit then we should strive to make it a fit dwelling place.
Irenaeus, an early Christian bishop (ca 130-200AD), certainly understood this. “For by the hands of the Father, that is, by the Son and the Holy Spirit, man, and not merely a part of man, was made in the likeness of God. Now the soul and the spirit are certainly a part of the man, but certainly not the man; for the perfect man consists in the commingling and the union of the soul receiving the spirit of the Father, and the admixture of that fleshly nature which was moulded after the image of God.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5:6). In other words, we can’t disentangle body and soul, they are created together in the image of God.
This is why Paul prays as he days at the end of the letter. “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23) (NIVUK)
