更加勉励 More and More

Title: More and More
Date: 31st Oct 2021
Preacher: Rev. Wong Siow Hwee

Last week, Elder Yook Cing shared that Paul had received a good and comforting update report from Timothy about the Thessalonian church. 9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. So Paul ended chapter 3 with a prayer for the Thessalonian church: 1 Thessalonians 3: 12 May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. 13 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. This prayer should be the aspiration of all churches even if we think we are doing well, since we can always do ‘more and more’ (4:1,10).

To follow up on this, in the next half of the letter, Paul then addressed some of the issues raised by the Thessalonians for them to achieve the aspiration of more love and more holiness before God. In our passage today, we will specifically deal with sexual morality. The problem of sexual morality was actually a cultural one because a significant number of the Thessalonians were gentile Christians. Jews and gentile converts to Judaism would stay largely unchanged after becoming Christians, since they could continue to obey the Jewish Law (especially Leviticus 18). Although we learned earlier from Galatians that the Jewish Law was not directly relevant to Gentiles, [1] sexual morality and a portion of the food laws were exceptions to this rule. So when Paul evangelized to the gentiles, he had to instruct them on sexual morality as one of the two requirements as dictated by the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:29).

For gentile Christians, the Christian understanding of sexual morality was undoubtedly a culture shock to them. The prevalent Greco-Roman perspective of women was “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our persons, but wives to bear us legitimate children.” [2] In short, women were merely the functional tools of men. Adultery was frowned upon, but only because it affected the legitimacy of heirs and inheritance, not because they valued the sanctity of marriage. Given such a cultural context, the only concern for sex was lust (v.5), and satisfying male sexual desires was the only thing that mattered.

Since the transformation for gentiles Christians would involve both radical lifestyle changes and paradigm shifts in attitudes towards sexuality, I think Paul would have to nurture them incrementally. This is why the phrase “more and more” appeared twice in our passage today (4:1,10). Christian morality is not exactly a matter of black or white, but just like love, it can increase and overflow (3:12) over time. Based on the tone of Paul’s words, we can tell that the Thessalonian church was already responding well to his teachings and working on it. What we have in 1 Thessalonians is a reemphasis from Paul on 2 key principles of Christian sexual morality.

The first principle of sexual morality is about self-control. 4 Each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable. This is in direct contrast to the pagan mentality of sexual indulgences. Sex is pleasurable, and therefore desirable, but pleasures and desires must be controlled so that they are enjoyed and satisfied within the right moral context. When you tell a person that their so-called “freedom” has to be controlled, it would sound restrictive and outrageous to them. This is why you often hear of protests against censorship, moderation, and other forms of discipline, punishment and control. But to those living with control, a disciplined and ordered setting would be the most natural state. For example, we enjoy the safety of living without firearms, and knowing that everybody else in Singapore is living the same way. However, try telling that to those who have enjoyed gun-rights their entire lives, they would fight you to the death if you tried to impose any controls on them. So I imagine it must be the same way with sexual pleasures. In this day and age, we think that monogamy and faithfulness in marriage are standard virtues, but try suggesting that in an era of orgy parties and sex slaves.

And so, Paul emphasized to the Thessalonians that this was for holiness, which meant setting yourself apart for God. It is not always easy to explain why God’s ways or God’s standards are better the world’s, because one can always argue that morality is subjective, and there are always exceptions and unique cases to every rule or principle. Setting yourself apart is a matter of obedience to God’s word and submission to his calling. I am reminded of a story from Eugene Peterson [3]: Peterson was pastoring a new convert, a woman in her late twenties. “She took everything in, embraced everything readily and gladly. But one thing puzzled me. She lived with her boyfriend. Eventually I learned that she had always lived with her boyfriends, beginning when she was twenty. They living together rarely lasted six months or so. She wasn’t interested in marriage. She told me all these without apology and not as a confession but quite casually, as we were getting acquainted with one another.
One day on impulse I said, “We have been having these conversations (every two or three weeks) for seven months. Would you do something for me?”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Live celibate for the next six months.”
Surprised, she said, “Why would I do that?”
“Just because I asked you. Trust me. I think it’s important.”
I learned later that her boyfriend moved out before the week was over. A month later when she came to see me, she didn’t mention it. But the following month, she brought it up: “When you asked me to live celibate for six months, I had no idea what you were up to. You asked me to trust you and so I did. It’s been two months now and I think I understand what you were doing. I’ve never felt so “myself” before, never felt so at home with myself. I thought everybody did what I was doing – all my friends did. I just thought this was the American way. And do you know what? I have been thinking that I might want to get married someday. Thank you.”
The celibacy decision survived the six-month mark, and continued for two more years, at which time she and her fiancé exchanged vows and I blessed their Christian marriage.”

What led to the transformation of this woman? I think each of us will have our own interpretations. My interpretation is that when she set herself apart for God, she actually gained ‘control over her own body’ (4:4). I know it sounds ironic because we often think of religious restrictions as causing us to lose our freedom and control, but I think that what really takes away our self-control is our unconscious surrender to the morals of the prevalent culture, which are generally self-indulgent. When we over-indulge our pleasures and desires, we unwittingly lose the sense of meaning and value of things. Over-indulgence can lead to us mistaking physical intimacy for relational intimacy. Sometimes it is difficult to put such matters into perspective until you are set apart from the world by God, called to a holy purpose, and really think about what you are living for and why.

Besides the principle of self-control, the second principle of sexual morality emphasized by Paul was the principle of mutual ownership of bodies between husband and wife. 6 In this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. This could happen when there are sexual acts outside of a marriage, which are a form of injustice to the spouse. We preached about this two years ago from 1 Corinthians 7: 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. [4] This principle of mutual ownership must not be abused for the husband or wife to demand sex from each other, but to guard against the other extreme where the husband or wife might think of their bodies as their sole ownership which allows them to do whatever they like with them. A cheating husband or wife wrongs his or her spouse by giving what is exclusive to their spouse to others; and whoever takes it is also taking advantage of a fellow brother or sister, similar to stealing. Does it mean that therefore it is okay for pre-marital sex between singles since there is only sole ownership of one’s body before marriage? There is no straightforward answer to the question, but one could argue that your body also belongs to your future spouse, doesn’t it? It seems so passé to speak of saving yourself for marriage in a sexually liberal world, but I think that though it may be old-fashioned, abstinence before marriage is a form of respect for your future marriage partner.

In today’s passage, besides sexual morality, Paul also addressed the issue of idlers and troublemakers in the church. Paul might have been referring to people described in Acts 17: 5 some bad characters from the marketplace (who can be rounded up), formed a mob and started a riot in the city. These people served the hidden agendas of the rich and influential people of Thessalonica to stir up trouble. So instead of Jewish gangs, maybe they thought they could form a Christian gang to serve the prominent people in church. But Paul urged them 11 to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. Since this topic of idlers and troublemakers will be repeated in the next chapter and also in 2 Thessalonians, I will focus mainly on Paul’s encouragement to the church to love one another more and more.

Paul’s pastoral approach of “more and more” was to mould the church incrementally. Step by step, day by day, we push ourselves to be more loving and more Christlike, whether in our relationships or how we spend our time in work and play. Most of us are familiar with how love is described in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is about using your gifts to serve the community, and the same applies to your time, your labour, and even your physical body. Sexual morality means you control your desires to reserve sex only for your marriage partner; your body belongs to someone fully committed to you. Similarly, our work and time should add value to the community; they are our labours of love. At the end of the day, this is how we should live in order to please God. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. 3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.

[1] https://www.jubilee.org.sg/sermons/?sermon_id=1095
[2] Ps.-Demosthenes, Against Neaera 122 (LCL), 444-47.
[3]Peterson, E. H. (2010). Practice resurrection: a conversation on growing up in Christ. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Pg 194-196.
[4]https://www.jubilee.org.sg/sermons/?sermon_id=955

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