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Few matters roil contemporary sociopolitical waters more than issues related to sex. Sex education, mandatory contraception coverage, abortion, single parenthood, same-sex marriage, divorce…the list goes on. You might think that these issues are modern, that in ancient times, the moral lines were more clearly drawn and more consistently observed.

You’d be wrong. In many ways, the first-century social world in which Christianity was born was as polymorphously perverse as our own. One writer, known to classical historians as Pseudo-Demosthenes, stated his culture’s mores this way: “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our persons, but wives to bear us legitimate children.” Compared to this guy, Anthony Weiner’s sexual shenanigans seem normal, and the cast of Sister Wives seems downright conservative.

One group in the ancient world stood out in stark contrast for its sexual probity: the Jews. Their critique of the Gentile world’s sexual laxity influenced the Christian view, as can be seen in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-6:

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.

Notice several things about this passage:

First, Paul, Silas, and Timothy frame their teaching in terms of God’s will. This is important. It means that how we use our bodies sexually is not up to us. Rather, how we use our bodies is up to God, who made us. And God desires that we be holy.

Second, holiness is not just an abstract concept, it has specific content. Negatively, we should avoid “sexual immorality.” Positively, we should use our bodies “in a way that is holy and honorable.” The missionaries’ rule sexual morality can be stated straightforwardly: chastity without marriage, fidelity within it.

Third, the practice of sexual holiness requires the development of certain habits, namely, self-control and selflessness. Faithfulness to one’s spouse over the course of their life requires a consistency of purpose and self-control that is incompatible with being swayed by “passionate lust.” It also means not using others as means to one’s selfish ends–taking advantage of others, in other words.

You’ll notice that the missionaries’ presentation of sexual morality incorporates the three elements of ethics I mentioned in a previous devotional: end, rule, and habit. For the Christian, the end of sexual activity–indeed, of all of life–is God. Our Maker is holy, and we must be too. The rule of sexual morality is both negative and positive, what to refrain from and what to engage in. And there is a habit or manner of life that makes obedience to this rule and for this end possible.

Just as the missionaries called the Thessalonians to live lives of sexual holiness in their day, they call us to do the same in our very similar age.

Ethics consists of three elements: an authoritative rule, a desired outcome, and a manner of life or habit.

Each of these elements is present in 1 Thessalonians 4:1–2.

As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.

The authoritative rule is the easiest element of ethics to understand. Paul, Silas, and Timothy wrote, “we instructed you how to live.” That’s what rules do: they show us how to act and how not to act. In Scripture, authoritative rules include the Great Commandment (Matt. 22:37–40, cf. Deut. 6:5, Lev. 19:18), the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:1–17, Deut. 5:6–21), the Antitheses (Matt. 5:21–48), the Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12), and the Law of Love (John 15:12, 17). These rules can be stated positively (“Love your neighbor”) or negatively (“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor”). These are not different rules, but the same rule, applying love to different cases. Regarding the Great Commandment, Jesus says, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:40). These rules are authoritative because they flow out of “the authority of the Lord Jesus,” who himself is the point of “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44).

The desired outcome of ethics is what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the beloved community,” a community in which neighbors love one another and all love God, who made them. The rules demarcate the boundary between behaviors that foster the beloved community and those that hinder it. King, for example, critiqued Jim Crow segregation because it treated neighbors unequally, based solely on the color of their skin. A beloved community cannot be created when its white citizens were allowed to murder, rape, steal from, and lie against their black neighbors with impunity. Of course, a community is more than mere rule-keeping, but we need to see the connection between rules and outcomes. For the missionaries, the desired outcome was “to please God,” and God is pleased when we love one another.

The manner of life is that habit that is necessary for us to create the beloved community. In his Antitheses, Jesus went beyond the external observance of rules to the internal character that drives behavior. It is relatively easy never to kill someone. Not being angry with them is much harder (Matt. 5:21–22). To not be angry with others, we must develop the habits of reconciliation (5:23–24) and settling matters quickly (5:25–26), rather than denying forgiveness and nursing grudges. We develop such habits through practice: “do this more and more.” You have heard the saying, “Practice makes perfect”? The truth is, whatever we do habitually, “Practice makes permanent.”

For the Christian, then, love is our authoritative rule, the beloved community our desired outcome, and resolving conflicts our manner of life.

In 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13, Paul, Silas, and Timothy offer three prayers:

Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.

The first prayer asks that God would overcome the distance that separates us from one another. We moderns take for granted how easily we can travel to and communicate with one another. In the course of a few hours, we can traverse distances that would’ve take the missionaries months to cover. And with the click of a mouse or the pushing of a few buttons, we can talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Nothing, however, substitutes for personal presence. May we recover the apostolic desire for personal presence above instantaneous but electronically mediated conversation!

The second prayer is that Jesus Christ would foster love in our relationships with one another. It is possible to be personally present but emotionally distant. You can hate the family member or friend sitting next to you at the dinner table, after all. The missionaries want the Thessalonians–and by extension, us–to be positively emotionally present with one another. And not in any minimal sense, either. Notice the verbs they use: increase and overflow. May we learn how to relate to one another in such a way that we always desire to relate to one another more, not less!

The third prayer is that Jesus Christ would overcome the sin that resides in our hearts, sin which separates us from God and from one another. At the end of the day, it is neither physical distance or emotional distance that is the problem in our relationships. It is distance between us and God in our thoughts, desires, and actions. To overcome the problems in our relationships, the problem in our hearts must be dealt with. And this can only happen when Christ strengthens our hearts in anticipation of the Judgment Day. May we be blameless on that day!

By way of application, let me suggest we take the following actions so that these prayers can become a reality:

The missionaries offer three prayers, addressing three different issues. Do we pray? Do we pray about our needs in a comprehensive way?
The missionaries focused on the problem of unholiness. Is that a focus of our prayers? Do we trust in Jesus Christ to make us holy on the Day of Judgment?
The missionaries focused on personal presence. In the era of Facebook, Twitter, texting, and ubiquitous “smart” devices, do we major on using our technology, or do we major on face-to-face skills?

May God sanctify our hearts and increase our love until we see him face to face!

My wife and I are trying to teach our three-year-old son good manners. When he wants something, we remind him to say, “Please!” And when he gets it, we remind him to say, “Thank you!”

“Please!” and “Thank you!” are good table manners, but they’re also good prayer manners. Indeed, prayer seems to be little more than asking and thanking. Consider what Paul, Silas, and Timothy wrote in 1 Thessalonians 3:9–10:

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.

At the dinner table, “Please!” always comes before “Thank you!” because asking comes before getting. But in prayer, that order is reversed. The missionaries expressed their gratitude first, and then they submitted their requests to God.

This order of prayer is important because it expresses a theological truth. Before we ask God for anything, he already loves us and is at work to bless us. Gratitude comes first in prayer because God’s grace comes first. It is the air in which we breathe our prayers.

There’s a call-and-response chorus you may have heard in church: God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. This is the foundation of prayer. Unless God is good, we have no business asking him for anything. Jesus put it this way: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:9–11). Precisely because God is good, however, we can thank him, and out of that gratitude ask him for whatever we need.

So, “Thank you!” first. But then always “Please!” It is never inappropriate to ask God for what we need. Even when we have been glorified in the new heavens and new earth, we will continue to ask God for what we need. If thanking God reminds us of his goodness, then, asking God reminds us of our dependence on him for every good thing.

Of course, the missionaries said “Please!” and “Thank you!” for specific things. What things? Not things at all, really, but relationships. They thanked God for the Thessalonians, who brought them joy. And they prayed to be reunited with the Thessalonians so that they could supply whatever their faith needed.

Too often, we focus our prayers on material needs. This is understandable. Even Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread, after all. But relationships are more important than stuff. Today, make sure to thank God for your family, friends, and associates. And ask him to help you supply their needs.

What is the good life?

It is not having a pulse, at least not merely. Having a pulse is a necessary condition of the good life, of course, but it is not sufficient. A good life requires more.

It is not experiencing pleasure either, at least not simply. Of course, pleasure is generally better than pain. (I am a chronic pain sufferer, so I know whereof I speak.) But not all pleasures are created equal. Not only is the pleasure of doing right better than the pleasure of doing wrong, but even the pain of rightdoing is better than the pleasure of wrongdoing. In other words, better to suffer in the cause of justice (Martin Luther King Jr.) than to benefit from injustice (Bull Connor).

The good life’s complicated calculus is on display in 1 Thessalonians 3:6–8, where Paul, Silas, and Timothy write:

But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you. Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith. For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.

In this paragraph, the missionaries mention two pains they had experienced: “distress and persecution.” The two were related. Both the missionaries and their Thessalonian converts had been on the receiving end of persecution since the founding of the church (Acts 17:5–9; 1 Thes. 2:14, 3:3). The missionaries, being strong in faith, did not worry about themselves. But they were distressed for their converts, not knowing whether their nascent faith had survived the onslaught of opposition.

The missionaries went on to mention four pleasures: “good news” about the Thessalonians’ faith, “pleasant memories” on both sides, a mutual desire to meet once again, and encouragement “because of your faith.” For the missionaries, their ongoing friendship with the Thessalonians mattered more than other goods. What mattered most, however, was the end their friendship pursued: “your faith and love,” “your faith,” and “standing firm in the Lord.”

So here, if I understand it, is the good life’s complicated calculus according to Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

1. In general, pleasure is better than pain, and pleasure in pursuit of good is best.
2. But pain in the pursuit of good is better than pleasure in the pursuit of evil.
3. Pleasure from friendship in the Lord is better than pleasure from any other source.

Is (3) a stretch? I don’t think so. Notice verse 6: “For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord.” In Greek, the adverb really does not appear in the text. Ironically, by adding it, the NIV actually weakens the force of the missionaries’ statement, “Now we live…”

To live is to be friends in the Lord. Everything else—pleasure, comfort, whatever—is gravy.

Every night since my son Reese was born, I have prayed this prayer for him as I put him to sleep: “Jesus, I ask that Reese would follow you from an early age.” Because Reese is three years old, it is easy for me and my wife Tiffany to create the conditions for this prayer to be answered. We attend church, pray and read the Bible together, and model the kind of life we think a Christ-follower should live. But there will come a day when Reese has grown up and must choose for himself whether and how to follow Jesus on his own. When that time comes, I will no doubt be praying with greater intensity.

I tell you this in order to tell you that, as a father, I understand the intensity behind Paul, Silas, and Timothy’s words in 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5:

So when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens. We sent Timothy, who is our brother and co-worker in God’s service in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know. For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labors might have been in vain.

Remember the context of these words: According to Acts 17:1-9, the missionaries spent several weeks evangelizing Thessalonian Jews and Gentile God-fearers. At some point, however, a coalition of Thessalonians initiated a mob action against the missionaries and new Christians, the former eventually fleeing the city under cover of night at the encouragement of the latter. These new Christians immediately began to suffer for their faith (1 Thes. 2:14, 3:3). Paul, Silas, and Timothy were worried whether their short, three-weeks’ work among the Thessalonians had laid strong enough foundations for them to withstand these attacks. They needn’t have worried, for the Thessalonians had stood strong.

Several lessons for fathers and mothers–biological or spiritual–who long for their children to follow Jesus Christ:

First, focus on Jesus Christ. The practice of Christianity goes bad when it begins to focus on peripheral issues rather than central ones. The missionaries’ preaching was simple: “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah” (Acts 17:3). If you want your children to follow Jesus, show them Jesus all the time.

Second, expect temptations and trials. Following Jesus doesn’t mean an easy life. We are “destined for [trials].” Following Jesus helps us resist temptation and emerge victorious from trials.

Third, keep the lines of relationship open so that you can communicate “encouragement and strength” whenever they’re needed. As your children age, your relationship with them changes. But the goal of your relationship doesn’t. You bear a responsibility of helping them love God, neighbor, and self. This is best done by encouragement, not nagging; by example, not command.

Jesus, may our children follow you from an early age and throughout the ages. Amen!

Many American Christians assume that if they believe and God and do what is right, God will bless them.

Sometimes, this takes the extreme form of the Word of Faith theology, which assures believers that God will give them what they confess. If they confess health, they will be healthy. If they confess wealth, they will be wealthy. Popularly, this extreme is known as the Prosperity Gospel, the Health-Wealth movement, and Positive Confession—or more derisively, Name It and Claim It or Blab It and Grab It.

More often, however, this assumption takes the form of America as a Christian nation. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” Psalm 33:12 says. As long as the Lord is God in America, the argument goes, he will bless America with peace and prosperity.

Whereas Word of Faith theology focuses on the individual, Christian nationalism focuses on the collective. Either way, however, the assumption is the same: If you are good, you will be well.

This common assumption of American Christians is more American than Christian, however. It is not true to the experience of Christians in the New Testament, vast swaths of Church history, or even Christians in the modern day. Indeed, the New Testament at places seems to teach precisely the opposite: If you are good, you will be treated ill.

Consider what Paul, Silas, and Timothy wrote in 1 Thessalonians 3:3b–4:

For you know quite well that we are destined for [trials]. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know.

We are destined for trials. We will be persecuted. Suffering is the lot of the faithful.

Do you believe this? If not, consider this partial list of the fate of New Testament believers: John the Baptist was beheaded, Jesus Christ was crucified, Stephen the deacon was stoned, James the apostle was executed, James the Lord’s brother was stoned, Paul was behaded, Peter was crucified upside down. Were these men less faithful than we are? Less holy? Less blessed?

Or consider believers around the world who suffer for confessing Jesus Christ as Lord. It has been said that we live in the Age of Martyrs right now, for more Christians were killed for their faith in the Twentieth Century alone than in the previous nineteen centuries combined. Were these Christians less faithful than we are? Less holy? Less blessed?

Or might it be the case that we Americans have confused Christianity and comfort? Have we wrongly identified the American Way of Life with the the Way, the Truth, and the Life? Do we perhaps not suffer because we don’t turn off the TV, put down the potato chips, rise off our couches, and go on some mission for God to win the souls of the lost and relieve the misery of the poor?

I ask these questions not to provide a definitive answer, but to unsettle my comfortable soul—and yours.

Do you ever miss church?

By miss, I do not mean “to fail to be at or present for.” Every Christian misses church in this sense now and again. Rather, by miss, I mean “to notice the absence or loss of.” According to 1 Thessalonians 2:17–20, Paul, Silas, and Timothy missed the Thessalonian church in this second sense.

But, brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan blocked our way. For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.

Being “orphaned” expresses the experience of absence or loss in a powerful way. As orphaned children have an “intense longing” to be reunited with their dead parents, so the missionaries desired to be present against with the Thessalonians. And as an obstacle (death) stands in the way of orphans realizing their desire, so an obstacle (Satan) stood in the way of the missionaries realizing theirs. What a poignant image of unfulfilled desire!

The missionaries also employ a startling set of words to describe their relationship to the Thessalonians: hope, joy, crown, and glory. This set is startling because you would think it described how the missionaries felt about Christ himself. Isn’t he the Christian’s hope (1 Tim. 1:1), joy (Phil. 4:4), and glory (2 Cor. 4:4)? Doesn’t he give us the crown (2 Tim. 4:8)?

But glory is a reflected property. If Christ is glorious, then so are those in him. If we glory in him, then we glory in them…and hope and rejoice.

Two points of application immediately suggest themselves:

First, you cannot love Christ without loving the church. This goes against the grain of much of contemporary culture, which claims to love Jesus but hate Christians. This hatred is understandable. Christians can be an uptight, self-righteous, hypocritical, and judgmental lot: “miserable sinners,” in the words of Thomas Cranmer. But isn’t it uptight, self-righteous, hypocritical, and judgmental to hate uptight, self-righteous, hypocritical, and judgmental people—as if to say, “I’m OK, but they’re seriously messed up”? And didn’t Jesus love miserable sinners and give his life for them (Gal. 2:20)? If you love Jesus, you’ll love whom he loves, and he loves the church.

Second, if you love the church, you’ll notice its absence or loss. You’ll hope for, rejoice in, and glory at the love, acceptance, and forgiveness that are present whenever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name. Alternatively, you’ll rail against the satanic obstacles that keep the church from experiencing and sharing Christ’s love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Either way, you’ll long for a better way of living with people in Christ’s kingdom.

So, do you miss church?

The casual reader of 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 might conclude, at first glance, that Paul, Silas, and Timothy were rank anti-Semites.

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way, they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

Christ-killers, Gentile-haters, maximal sinners, and objects of God’s wrath: In the sad history of the Church, Gentile Christians have cited descriptions of Jews such as these to justify their anti-Semitism, discrimination, and pogroms. Words have consequences, and after the Shoah, sensitive Christians can’t help but wince at what the missionaries wrote.

Words also have contexts, however, and we misinterpret them when we read them in light of our history instead of their own.

So, to begin, the casual reader of 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 concludes Paul, Silas, and Timothy were rank anti-Semites. But each of the missionaries was himself a Jew. Paul described himself as “a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5). The Jerusalem Council thought so highly of Silas that it commissioned him to carry news of the law-free gospel to Gentile converts (Acts 15:25–27). And Timothy, though the product of a religiously mixed marriage, thought enough of his Jewish heritage to undergo circumcision as a young adult (16:3). If the missionaries hated Jews, then they hated themselves. They did not hate themselves, so they did not hate Jews.

Moreover, though the missionaries wrote harsh words about the Jews who opposed Christ and the early Christian prophets, these words were not their last words. Remember, after all, that Paul himself at one time “approved of their [the Jews’] killing him [Stephen]” (Acts 8:1). (Stephen was a Jewish believer and the Church’s first martyr.) Just prior to meeting Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul was “still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (9:1). And then, this “Christian-killer” and “Gentile-hater” became the apostle of the living Christ to the Gentiles. If God’s grace changed him, it could change them too.

And then, finally, remember that the power-relationship between Jews and Christians in the first century was the reverse of what it became in later centuries. On occasions, Jews who did not believe in Jesus persecuted those who did. Not all of them, of course—for many came to faith in Christ—but some of them. (See Acts 7:54–8:3; 9:1–2, 19-31; 13:49–52; 14:1–7; 17:5–9, 13–15; 18:5–6; 21:27–36; 23:12–22 for incidents involving Paul.) Did this produce in the missionaries a desire for vengeance? No. Instead, they praised the Thessalonian believers for imitating their joyful suffering (1 Thes. 2:14, cf. 1:6).

Love for Jews. Hope for the redemption of enemies. And willingness to endure rather than inflict suffering. These were the missionaries’ attitudes. They should be ours as well.

Every Sunday, Christians gather in churches across the globe to worship God. That worship includes singing, praying, baptizing new believers, receiving communion, and exercising spiritual gifts. One of those spiritual gifts is preaching, to which much of the service is given over.

Why is preaching so important to Christian worship? Indeed, what is preaching? Paul, Silas, and Timothy answer both questions in 1 Thessalonians 2:13:

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God.

What is preaching? The word of God. Why is it so important to Christian worship? Because it is the word of God. As the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) put it: “The preaching of the word of God is the word of God.”

The confession’s statement on preaching is astounding. In a lifetime of attending church, I have heard any number of sermons that don’t rise to the level of mediocre rhetoric, let alone to the lofty heights of a divine utterance. I have even preached a few of those sermons. Is the Second Helvetic Confession claiming too much for preaching? Are Paul, Silas, and Timothy?

Perhaps we can best understand the missionaries’ statement if we interpret it, first of all, as a prescriptive statement, not a descriptive one. In other words, the word of God is what preaching should be, not what it all too often is. This is the besetting sin of preachers: Our sinful proclivities, personal biases, social classes, political commitments, human traditions, self-help solutions, and intellectual hobby-horses distort God’s word rather than being clarified and judged by it. As such, our preaching is merely “a human word.”

But the missionaries’ statement indicates that preaching not merely should be but can be the word of God. They are not setting up us preachers for failure by creating an impossible ideal, in other words. Rather, they are saying both that preachers should and can, on a weekly basis, speak God’s word to others.

How does this happen? It doesn’t happen merely by quoting the Bible. The Pharisees were experts at quoting the Bible, but often missed its point.

Acts 17:1–9 recounts the founding of the Thessalonian church by Paul, Silas, and Timothy. Here’s how verses 2 and 3 summarize Paul’s ministry: “he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,’ he said.”

The point of Scripture is Jesus. Let me repeat that: The. Point. Of. Scripture. Is. Jesus. If preaching doesn’t present Jesus as the Messiah, the culmination of God’s promises; if it doesn’t offer him as the Savior, the solution to the world’s sin problem; if it doesn’t reveal him as Lord, the model and judge of our own feelings, thoughts, words, and actions, then whatever it is, it isn’t God’s word.

Preaching (God’s word) illuminates the ultimate meaning of the Bible (God’s word) so that people may respond to Jesus (God’s Word).