How You Can Please God in: Sex, Work, Death (1)
The gospel didn’t come to Europe with a bang.
Though it all seemed so promising at first.
Prevented by supernatural intervention from preaching the gospel closer to home in Asia, Paul landed in Troas, on the extreme western edge of the continent.
There he experienced an extraordinary revelation, with specific direction as to where to go, quite unlike any previous guidance: “A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” (Acts 16:9)
So, “immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.”
Europe!
This was going to be BIG!
Maybe…
The Gospel Comes to Europe
Philippi!
Lydia, with a few others, was converted. A good start.
She was baptised, along with her household.
Then, disaster!
Those who had been exploiting for money a troubled girl that Paul had healed brought false charges against him and stirred up the mob. Paul and Silas were publicly beaten multiple times by the police, then shackled in stocks and thrown into prison. Not such an good start.
But the jailer at least was saved, and he too was baptised along with his family.
Then Paul and Silas left.
Thessalonica!
This was more promising: “Some of [the Jews] were persuaded; and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas.” (Acts 17:4)
Here, at last, was a sizeable body of new believers.
Then, disaster!
They were opposed by the Jewish leaders who fomented a riot, attacking one of the new converts.
Paul and Silas again had to flee – leaving behind a fledgling church, after only a short time and a few weeks instruction.
Would the church survive? Paul left in agony of soul for these new converts that perhaps “by some means the tempter might tempt [them], and [his] labour might be in vain.” (1 Thes 3:5)
So, when he “could no longer endure it”, though he himself was in “great distress” (Acts 17:16), stuck as he was in a city steeped in idolatry, he “thought it good to be left alone” (1 Thes 3:1) and relinguish his companion to go back to Thessalonica to see how they were doing.
Thankfully the news was good.
Immediately Paul put pen to paper to write to them his 1st Epistle (and possibly the first he ever wrote, or even the first book of the New Testament to be written).
What would you write?
What would you write, as your first ever letter, to new converts who had only just come to faith, when after just a few weeks you had had to leave them?
- “Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.” (1 These 4:1)
Paul wanted these young Christians to focus on how to please God “more and more” .
“What!” I hear the advocates of hypergrace exclaim. “No, you can’t do that. God is already fully pleased with the believer in Christ. Justified by faith, there is nothing you can do that God would be any more (or any less) pleased with you than He is already. To teach otherwise is to return to a works-based religion.”
For example:
- Clark Whitten writes, “If you are ‘working’ to please Him, you are in for a lifetime of unfinished business, and it will leave you perpetually exhausted!”[1]
- Paul Ellis: “There is nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself, but you have to understand that in Christ, you are already as good and pleasing to God as you ever will be.”[2]
- Or, John Crowder: “It is high time the church gets delivered from God pleasing.”[3]
- And Steve McVey: “We may talk about disappointing God, but the truth of the Scripture is this: It is impossible for you to disappoint God. Not only is the idea we can disappoint God a lie – it’s impossible.”[4]
Not so!
“It is absolutely false to claim that when God looks at us, He always ‘loves what He sees’ or that He is always ‘happy with [us], approving of [us], and pleased with [us]’ or that it is impossible for us to disappoint God or that there is nothing we can do to drive away His presence.”[5]
Rather:
We are to make it our goal to please God by how we live
- Jesus is our great Example in this: “I always do those things that please the Father.”
- And the Word of God tells you and me too, to “find out what pleases the Lord” (Eph 5:10 NIV)
- We are to “walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him” by “being fruitful in every good work.” (Col 1:10)
- Whenever believers “keep God’s commandments” they “do those things that are pleasing in His sight.” (1 Joh 3:22)
- Paul made it his “aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to” the Lord (2 Cor 5:9) – and we should too. His aim, in preaching the gospel was to “please God” (1 Thes 2:4)
- What the Philippians did, in supporting that gospel outreach was also “well pleasing to God.” (Phil 4:9). In fact, whenever we “do good and share, with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” (Heb 13:16)
- What children do, in “obeying [their] parents in all things” likewise is “well pleasing to the Lord.” (Col 3:20)
Even in the Old Testament:
- Believers, such as Enoch, “had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Heb 11:5)
- And when a believer sinned, it “displeased the Lord” (2 Sam 11:27)
So, yes, a believer can please God more.
And he can please God less; he can displease God.
We will never lose our acceptance with God in Christ (that is the glory of justification) – as long as we truly are in Christ. Just as a father normally will never disown one who is truly his child.
But God is sometimes pleased with what we do, and sometimes displeased. Just as a father is sometimes pleased with what his child does, and sometimes displeased.
Jesus did not say to the church in Sardis: “I am pleased with you; I could not be more, or less, pleased with you.”
No, He made it very clear He was not pleased with them:
“I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead… I have not found your works perfect before God… Repent.” Rev 3:1-2
And we are not to presume upon the Lord either.
Rather, like Paul, we are to make it our “aim to be well pleasing to” the Lord.
Please God more and more
So, when Paul wrote to the fledgling church in Thessalonica, he gave priority to asking these young Christians to focus on how to please God “more and more”.
And he doesn’t merely “ask”.
He “urges” – “beseeches”, “exhorts” – them to do this.
He “urges”, or “beseeches” them “in the Lord Jesus”, i.e. in the authority of Christ Himself.
What is he urging them to do?
Only what they “ought” to do, what they “must” do.
This is not an option. This is an obligation.
Further, Paul adds this as a reason: “For you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.”
What he is telling them to do is by way of commandment – again, through the authority of Christ Himself. (1 Thes 4:2)
We are commanded to make it our goal to live to please God.
And not only to please Him, but to “abound” in doing so “more and more”.
This is something the Christian is to grow in day by day. We are never to stop growing in how we please God.
As one commentator put it: “Our justification is indeed ‘once and for all’; but our sanctification is always ‘more and more’.”
“Which is the greatest commandment?” Jesus was asked.
“’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matt 22:36-38)
But there’s more… and more…
And then Jesus added: “The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’” (Matt 22:39)
If we are living to please God, we will be wanting to grow in our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ… more and more.
Paul prefaced his instructions in 1 Thes ch 4, to live a life pleasing to God with: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another…”
He even adds: “…and to all.” (1 Thes 3:12).
And, in the instructions which follow, in telling us practically how we can please God, he comes back to this theme of “brotherly love” (1 Thes 4:9).
He reminds his hearers: “You yourselves are taught by God to love one another”. And in this matter, he insists again: “We urge you, brothers [and sisters], that you increase more and more.” (vv 9-10)
Sex, Work, Death
What is Paul talking about when he tells us to order our lives so as to please God?
In what specific areas are we to work at “pleasing God”?
And how does “brotherly love” come into each of these?
The specific areas of concern for Paul, as he thought in particular of the pressures faced by these young believers in Thessalonica, were:
- Sex (1 Thes 4:3-8),
- Work (vv 9-12),
- Death (vv 13-18).
I would like to look at each of these in turn in future posts.
It seems that, in addressing these three concerns, Paul had in mind three groups of people.
In ch 5, v 14 he again “urges” his “brothers” in the church. This time, it is to urge them to “warn those who are unruly [or, idle], comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all.”
A number of commentators have noted that Paul’s instructions in ch 4, on three ways we are to please God and practise loving our brothers, have in mind these three groups referred to in ch 5: “the unruly, the fainthearted, and the weak.”
The “weak” needed help in the face of sexual temptation, the “idle” needed to be told to get to work, and the “fainthearted” needed comfort in mourning the death of loved ones.
Sex. Work. Death.
“Sex, work and bereavement figure in the lives of human beings the world over. The modern Christian needs to learn how to live for God in the face of these things every bit as much as the young converts in first-century Thessalonica.” (J. Philip Arthur)
Living as we do in a world which has a largely warped view in each of these matters, it has never been more important to listen to God’s commandments in how we are to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” in each of these areas.
Thirty years ago John Stott aptly noted:
- “One of the great weaknesses of contemporary evangelical Christianity is our comparative neglect of Christian ethics, in both our teaching and our practice. In consequence, we have become known rather as people who preach the gospel than as those who live and adorn it.
“Pastors must not be afraid to expound biblical standards of behaviour from the pulpit, so that the congregation grasps the relationship between the gospel and the law. And right from the beginning converts must be told that the new life in Christ is a holy life, a life bent on pleasing God by obeying his commandments.”
[1] Clark Whitten Pure Grace: The Life Changing Power of Uncontaminated Grace 40. (References are found in Michael L. Brown Hyper-Grace: Exposing the dangers of the modern grace message. This book is well worthwhile reading.) [2] Paul Ellis The Gospel in Ten Words 112 [3] John Crowder Mystical Union 9 [4] Steve McVey Lies Heard in Church every Sunday 85 [5] Michael Brown Hyper-Grace ch 8