Purity and Holiness

Leviticus 10:10,11

King James Version (Chapter 10)

10 And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; 11 And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.

Part 1, Purity.

NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians (Learning Objectives > Reasons for the Plea for Purity (Part 1))

After this section, you should be able to:• Explain how Jesus is involved in the first justification Paul makes for his commands concerning Christian sexual practices• Explain how God the Father is involved in the second justification Paul makes for his commands concerning Christian sexual practices.

Introduction:

Paul has thus far given the claim of God’s will for their lives, namely, that they be holy in their sexual conduct. He has, secondly, given three commands how they can live out that call. And now he proceeds to end this discussion by giving three causes—three reasons why they should be holy in their sexual conduct. Now, Paul is not teaching this in any way, and so I want to be clear about that, but it nevertheless is the fact that these three causes involve the three different persons of God, and they involve three different time periods. So, for each cause, there will be a different person of the Trinity and a different time frame involved.The Lord Jesus Christ: Future Avenger. For the first cause, it involves the future, and it refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we find, then, that first cause in verse 6, the second part of the verse. Paul says, “The Lord will punish people for all such sins.” Now, he adds, at the beginning, the little word “because,” which is omitted in most translations, but it’s important because it shows that this statement is meant to give a justification for the commands that come before it. Why should the Thessalonians, and why should we, be holy in our sexual conduct? And the first reason has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ and something that He is going to do in the future, Paul says, “because …”; and a more literal rending of the verse is “because an avenger is the Lord concerning all these things.”Emphasis on Avenger Role“Because an avenger is the Lord concerning all these things.” Maybe you notice the word order is a bit unusual, so no English translations follow it, but the word order is important because it stresses the role that the Lord is playing. He’s an avenger, and this is the idea that—it’s an Old Testament idea that the Lord comes in judgment to punish the wicked and to redeem the righteous. So the word order stresses the role that the Lord will play.“Lord” Refers to Jesus. There is some question among commentators about who “the Lord” is, with some of them, especially on the basis of it being an Old Testament idea of an avenger, [arguing] that the Lord is the Lord God. However, it is quite clear that Paul is referring here instead to the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because, well, that’s Paul’s favorite term for Jesus—namely, kyrios, “the Lord”; that’s how Paul has referred to Jesus throughout the letter.And what’s more, you can see the need for this when you compare the next cause, which we’re going to get to in a minute, where Paul explicitly refers to God. And if God were already in view in the first cause, there would be no need to identify Him explicitly in the second cause. So, for these reasons, “the Lord” here is a clear reference to the Lord Jesus Christ; and, not surprisingly, in 1 Thessalonians this is referring to the Parousia, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the future.Future Judgment, Justice. Now, most often, we associate the future coming of the Lord as something positive and good; and, indeed, later on in this letter, in 4:13–18 and again in 5:1–11, Paul ends that discussion with “Therefore comfort one another with these words” because, for believers, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is a positive and good thing.But the Scriptures are also clear that the coming of the Lord Jesus, though a good thing for believers, also involves judgment for unbelievers. Already, at the beginning of 1 Thessalonians, at the very end of the thanksgiving section, in 1:10, Paul talks about how the Lord will come and rescue us from the coming wrath. So here we have this notion, again, about the final judgment, that the return of Jesus is, as we sometimes sing in that old hymn, not only a day of wonders but also a day of judgment.Now, I know that for many Christians today the idea of Christ coming in judgment is not a happy thought. But if you think about this idea of justice, because this idea of an “avenger” in the Old Testament makes use of the root of the word for “just” or “justice”—and for those of us who live in an unjust world, where, in terms of sexual misconduct, there are abuses to women, there are abuses to children, [and] there are abuses of sexual misconduct which, well, need to be addressed—it actually is important to know that, though there is no justice, maybe, in this present time, there will be a future time when the Lord Jesus Christ will return and He will vindicate those who have been oppressed. He is an avenger about all such things.Well, the first cause, the first reason, for being holy in one’s sexual conduct has to do with the future return of Jesus.God the Father: Calling to Holiness. The second cause has to do with God the Father, and it has to do with the time frame of the past. Notice what we read next, in verse 7, for another cause, another grounding, another reason why you should live this way (verse 7): “For God did not call us to be impure but to live a holy life.” Paul here talks about God’s call, and here again, as we [meet] throughout the letter, we have these repeated references to God’s initiative in the salvation of the Thessalonian readers.We meet it first in 1:4, where Paul talks about “Brothers, you know your calling.” We meet it again in 2:12, where Paul talks about the God who has called us “into his kingdom and glory.” We meet it again in 3:3 b, where he talks about these afflictions that we were “destined” to receive. We meet here, in 4:7, [and] we’re going to meet it again in 5:9, where we read that “God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but the obtaining of salvation.” We meet it for one last time at the very end of the letter, in the letter closing in 5:24.So, throughout the letter, Paul regularly refers to God’s initiative in the salvation of his readers, but nowhere does Paul explain or flesh out what this calling means. So one of two things is possible. Either Paul is not a very good letter writer, and he uses terms and words without explaining them, or—and this almost certainly is the case—this is a teaching that Paul assumes his readers already know from his three-plus ministry in their midst and from Timothy’s ministry in their midst. So Paul, throughout the letter, can just simply but importantly make reference to God’s calling, God’s working in their lives. And here Paul talks about the fact that when God called them, when God set them apart, He set them apart for a particular reason, not that they would live any old lives but they would live a holy life.

Conclusion:

And if you’re keeping track, and I am, this is now the third of four occasions within the paragraph of verses 3–8 where Paul uses this keyword and key concept of “holy” because the big theme of the whole passage is the challenge and the call for the Christians not only of the ancient world but us today to live what kind of life with regard to our sexual conducts? To live a holy life. And Paul reminds us that God has called us—God has appointed us—to live just that way.

Part two

NT350 Book Study: 1 & 2 Thessalonians (Learning Objectives > Reasons for the Plea for Purity (Part 2))

• Explain how the Holy Spirit is involved in the third justification Paul makes for his commands concerning Christian sexual practices.

Introduction:

We have already observed two of the three causes, the three reasons, why the Thessalonians should be holy in their sexual conduct. We have observed the first cause (the future return of Jesus Christ) and the second cause (the past call of God). So what is left is the third cause. I don’t know if we should pick a favorite, but this is the one that is most exciting for you and me as followers of Jesus. It has to do with the present time frame and the working—the empowering—presence of the Holy Spirit.The Spirit’s Holy Character. Notice what Paul says in verse 8. He says “Therefore” because he’s wrapping up this discussion about holiness and sexual conduct: “Therefore, [anyone] who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God who gives you his Holy Spirit.” Actually, the Greek word order is a little bit different at the end of the verse. Paul doesn’t really write “God gives you his Holy Spirit”; he writes, “God gives you his Spirit who is holy.” Is there a difference between the two? Yes, there is. The second reading puts an emphasis on the character of the Spirit that God gives. Paul is stressing that God is giving not any old spirit to us His people; He is giving us a Holy Spirit. So the reason we can live a holy life is because we have the Holy Spirit living within us.The New Covenant Longing for New Covenant. Now, Paul is not teaching this, but this verse reveals his indebtedness to the Old Testament. Paul is a thoroughly trained Jew who knows the Old Testament inside out. And here he is reflecting—again, not teaching, but he is reflecting—in his statement beliefs and convictions that the Jewish people had about the future, about how one day God would pour out His Spirit.So, if we imagine an Old Testament perspective for a moment, we say, “O God, how we love your law. Out of all the people in the earth, we are the only ones with whom you’ve entered into a covenant relationship. We are the only ones to whom you have revealed your will. But although we’re glad for the law, we are struggling with the attempt to obey it fully, so we are appreciative of the sacrifices, which don’t pay for our sins but give us an opportunity to express our true penitence for our failures and our true gratitude for your grace in our lives.” We nevertheless are looking to the future, a future time that Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel talked about, a time when God would, well, enter into a new kind of relationship with us His people, a new covenant; and part of that new covenant is that God will pour out His Spirit. And we want that Spirit. Why? Not just because we have the Spirit for the Spirit’s sake. No, the Spirit will empower us to do and to be what God has always called us to do and be, and that is—already, at Mount Sinai—“a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”So God’s will for His people doesn’t change. He has always called His covenant people to be holy as He is holy.Thessalonian Christians under New Covenant. What’s changed, though, now, is, in redemptive history, the new reality of the outpouring of God’s Spirit. So the apostle Paul, as a Jew, knows this Old Testament expectation, and, well, he’s surprised because—he’s surprised not just that God came and gave His Spirit, [and] Paul is not surprised that Pentecost occurred. But what is surprising is that the Spirit is given not just to the Jews, so to say, alone but given to His covenant people. And who make up His covenant people? Well, in this letter, Paul assumes that the Thessalonians, even though they are predominantly Gentile—that’s the surprising thing—they qualify as the people of God, those who have been given the promised gift of the Holy Spirit.Now, again, Paul is not teaching any of that in this verse, but this verse reveals his Old Testament training and expectation. And Paul looks at Christ’s coming and redemptive history; Paul looks at Pentecost, and he sees in this event the fulfillment of what the prophets had said what was coming. And what perhaps is surprising is that the Spirit is given, again, not just in a limited way to an ethnic group of people called the Jews, but it’s given to His covenant people, the end-time people of God, the eschatological people of God, who have the gift, the privilege of the presence of the Holy Spirit.In my commentary I have this as a kind of summary statement of this important point: “It seems clear therefore that Paul views the conversion of the Gentiles at Thessalonica as a fulfillment of the eschatological promises made to Israel. The Thessalonian believers are no longer simply Gentiles who do not know God (4:5) but now are members of the renewed Israel, the covenant people of God. This privileged status meant that in their sexual conduct they are to observe the boundaries of holiness that the new covenant marks out for them.”The key to living such lives of holiness is the present and ongoing presence of God’s Spirit. So here, as elsewhere in Paul’s letters, the Holy Spirit is the power that enables believers to live holy lives. There’s an old hymn that perhaps you know that nicely expresses, I think, the significance, the importance, of what Paul is saying in verse 8. It goes like this:Spirit divine, inspire our prayer,and make our hearts your home.Descend with all your gracious power;Come, Holy Spirit, come!What Paul is promising the Thessalonians, and what God’s Word is promising us here in this third cause is that we who are members of God’s people [have] been given the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, which ultimately is a gift of power, power to overcome sin and to live the holy life that God has always called His people to live.So how can we be holy in our sexual conduct? Well, we can’t do it on our strength, [and] we can’t do it by our own abilities, but we can do it with the present empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. That’s the good news of the gospel that Paul shares with the Thessalonians, and that is also good news for you and me.