We are glad to read a statement like this one but frankly we don’t get overly excited about it. After all, it doesn’t tell us much.  It says that God desires that we be devoted to him and so be separate from sexual immorality, which is really the focus of sanctification at this point in the text. And often the worst part or the least sanctified part of our brain thinks, “I could have guessed that much!” 

For Christians, there are proverbial perennial questions that are, well, perennial.  Every May graduating Christians seek the will of God for where they will take further education.  Every college student wonders who God has for them on campus. And after boy meets girl and both graduate they labor to discover where God wants them to land. In short, believers ask, over and over, what is the will of God for my life.

That’s why a text like the one we have in I Thessalonians 4:3 can and ought to be viewed as a huge blessing.  Often God gives us lots of principles and then says, “Now, choose wisely!”  But in this text Paul writes, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification…” Now, we are glad to read a statement like this one but frankly we don’t get overly excited about it. After all, it doesn’t tell us much.  It says that God desires that we be devoted to him and so be separate from sexual immorality, which is really the focus of sanctification at this point in the text. And often the worst part or the least sanctified part of our brain thinks, “I could have guessed that much!”

But let me remind you that sexual immorality isn’t the only thing that God wants us to separate from and so be devoted to Him.  In the opening of the letter Paul prays for their “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope” in the Lord. What is more, the end of the letter encourages the leaders among them to be at peace among themselves, not to be idle, to be stout of heart and to see that no one repays evil for evil.  These are all things that believers must do.  And in doing them, by the help of the Spirit in us, we get better at them.  We become more and more sanctified.  That is to say, our devotion to the Lord and toward one another grows stronger while our connection to the world, the flesh and the prince of the power of the air gets weaker and weaker.  This is what theologians call progressive sanctification.

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