NOTES for Th1 4:1-12
1 Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. |
2 For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. |
3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: |
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; |
5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: |
6 That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. |
7 For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. |
8 He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit. |
9 But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. |
10 And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more; |
11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; |
12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. |
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Continuing the conversation about the life of the Kingdom, Paul draws attention to its most important feature: those called to such a life must always preserve a state of sanctification (v. 7; in the Synodal translation sanctification is usually called "holiness"). Here the apostle is obviously continuing the tradition formed back in the times when the second part of the Book of Leviticus was written (Lev 19-27): it is precisely here that the call first sounded not simply to purity, which had sounded before, but to a sanctified life (Lev 1-2).
Paul also calls the addressees of his letter to a sanctified life (vv. 3-7). In such a case, it would seem, there is nothing fundamentally new in the apostle's appeals. But the matter is still not quite so simple: the appeal really has remained the same, but the circumstances have changed fundamentally. Before, the call to a sanctified life sounded precisely as a call and a wish; now it sounds like a requirement. There is nothing surprising in such a change, for before the issue was righteousness in this present, still untransformed world; now the issue is the Kingdom, to which Paul calls his listeners and readers. In the untransformed world, the question of a sanctified life is above all a question of righteousness in all its fullness: sanctification presupposes the transformation of human nature, without which it is not capable of righteous life, if, of course, righteousness is understood not as formal adherence to some moral code, but as the acquisition of the inner Torah.
However, the Torah never demanded such righteousness from a person; it only offered it as an ideal toward which it called people to strive. But the ideal and the exceptional cases of our still untransformed world are, as we can see, the norm for the Kingdom, so that the apostle, following the Savior Himself, calls the faithful to a sanctified life not as to something exceptional, but as to the norm without which it is impossible to become a resident of the Kingdom. And that means it is impossible to be a Christian.
Readings for 19 November 2025
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