Chapter 4

4:3

Just what does it mean to be sanctified? Suppose one were living in the time of Christ and wanted to make a gift to the temple. He would bring his gift of gold coins and lay them on the altar. What happened to those gold coins? The moment they were given to God they became sanctified. They were set apart for holy use. The sanctification did not change the character of the gold coins, but it did change their use and the purpose for which they were directed. So, every true Christian has been set apart as holy to God, even though he falls short of perfection. (Walvoord, 34-35)

4:4
NASB, NKJV “to possess”
NRSV “to control”
TEV “how to take”
NJB “to use”
Peshitta “to keep”
REB “to gain mastery over”

NASB, NKJV “his own vessel”
NRSV “your own body”
TEV “a wife”
NJB “the body that belongs to him”
Peshitta “his possessions”
REB “his body”

2 interpretations:

  2. A “less probable interpretation of ‘possess his own vessel’ … sees the vessel as the wife …” 1

Click here for an Abarin Publications web-page article for a very cerebral treatment of the Greek word “πορνος,” transliterated: pornos, translated “sexual immorality” by ESV, et al.

4:5

In Greece … Demosthenes had written: “We keep prostitutes for pleasure; we keep mistresses for the day-to-day needs of the body; we keep wives for the begetting of children and for the faithful guardianship of our homes.” So long as a man supported his wife and family there was no shame whatsoever in extra-marital relationships. ¶ It was to men and women who had come out of a society like that that Paul wrote this paragraph. What may seem to many the merest commonplace of Christian living was to them startlingly new. One thing Christianity did was to lay down a completely new code in regard to the relationship of men and women; it is the champion of purity and the guardian of the home. This can not be affirmed too plainly in our own day which again has seen a pronounced shift in standards of sexual behaviour. (Barclay)

4:9

Christianity sprang up in a land and culture where clan ties were strong and society was more corporate than individualistic. Not so the GrecoRoman culture; hence, Paul’s constant emphasis on love. (Hubbard, 1354)

SIDEBAR:

Chapter 5

5:6

There is one direction especially in which the Apostle thinks that that consideration ought to tell, and that is the direction of its self-restraint. … ¶ Christian sobriety and Christian gaiety have their sources lying closely side by side in the devout and earnest soul; and, like the Danube and the Rhine, which start out from different sides of the same glacier, and then diverge as far as the east is from the west, so these two, however much they seem to be at variance when they take a separate course, yet have their true founts in a living faith in God, and are then most fresh, and real, and inexhaustible, when they spring from a source of trusting love, in a heart that rests upon the Rock of Ages, and which, while it has its hold upon the earth, is yet aspiring upwards. (Nicoll)

5:9

The danger to which this consecration is exposed. The danger of routine, of system, of familiar acquaintance with Biblical truths, the very thing the worth of which we have been advocating. ¶ Simply because consecration must run in the old channels and be drawn on by the same motive, there is danger that we miss the vital contact with the Lord Jesus, that the spirit dies out while the system goes on. Church and prayer meeting attendance may degenerate into a profitless habit. Your soul may be satisfied with the form and die for want of sustenance. Class teaching may become as spiritless as school teaching–the mere teaching of the lesson. Great alarm about our own spiritual condition should smite us when we find ourselves doing Christian duties for the sake of getting rid of them and of appeasing the conscience. ¶ Then, again, the performance of Christian duties leads us into expressions of faith and desire that they may become stereotyped. Biblical language is the fittest medium by which to express our prayer and our faith. And the quickened soul can find comfort and relief for itself in repeating the same form. But let the fire die out, and living contact with Jesus shrink, and the form of words will remain, and we will have the startling inconsistency of devout expression enveloping a shrivelled and dead heart. ¶ There may be movement in Christian life but no progress. Like the water wheel that turns round in the same place that it did ten years ago, may be the Christian life that runs the weekly round of Church services. Like the door that swings on the same hinge, but never moves from the door post, may be the Christian life excessively busy, continually in and out, but never advancing into the interior truths of God’s Word. Christian life is not a treadmill round; Christianity is not meant to teach us how to talk, but to teach us how to walk, and walking is orderly, constant progress towards a terminus, a glory. The path of the just shineth more and more unto the perfect day. (Excell; outline notation removed)

5:15-

That which is a whole life to the ephemera, is but a day to a man; that which in the brief succession of human history is counted as remote, is but a single page in the volume of the heavenly records. The coming of Christ may be distant as measured on the scale of human life, but may be near when the interval of the two advents is compared, not merely with the four thousand years which were but its preparation, but with the line of infinite ages which it is itself preparing.” The uncertainty of the time of the Second Advent and its stupendous issues define the attitude of the Church. (Excell)

Works Cited

Barclay, William. William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible. Sourced from Bible Portal, https://bibleportal.com/commentary/william-barclay (quotes located with their corresponding verses).

Constable, Thomas. “Dr. Constable’s Expository (Bible Study) Notes.” Sourced from https://planobiblechapel.org/constable-notes/ (quotes located with their corresponding verses).

Exell, Joseph. The Biblical Illustrator. Baker Publishing Group, 1978. Sourced from the Bible Portal, https://bibleportal.com/commentary/the-biblical-illustrator (quotes located with their corresponding verses).

Hubbard, David A. “The First Epistle to the Thessalonians.” In The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, pp. 1347-59, ed. by Charles F. Pfeiffer and Everett F. Harrison (Chicago: Moody Press), 1962. As quoted in Thomas Constable. "Notes on 1 Thessalonians.” 2022 ed., https://planobiblechapel.org/tcon/notes/pdf/1thessalonians.pdf.

Nicoll, William Robertson. Sermon Bible Commentary. Sourced from Bible Portal, https://bibleportal.com/commentary/sermon-bible-commentary (quotes with their corresponding verses).

Walvoord, John F. The Thessalonian Epistles. Study Guide series (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House) 1979. As quoted in Thomas Constable. "Notes on 1 Thessalonians.” 2022 ed., https://planobiblechapel.org/tcon/notes/pdf/1thessalonians.pdf.