I Thessalonians 4

I Thessalonians 4:3:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality;

​The word “fornication,” (translated here as "sexual immorality") from the Greek word porneia, is the same root from which we get the word pornography. Fornication refers to any sexual behavior deviant from God’s moral law. Thus, 1 Thessalonians 4:3 is a command to “abstain from pornography” since it is God’s will that we be sanctified or set apart. Attempting to live a life of holiness and moral purity is a spiritual battle and personal struggle (Rom. 7:8-23). But it is not a struggle that cannot be overcome

 I Thessalonians 4:13:
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.

​Paul didn’t want us to be uninformed about death “so that [we would] not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NIV). He wanted us to have a proper narrative in which death has a lifespan, a beginning and an end. He was acquainted with the sorrows of death and loss but learned how to orient his perspective around the story of God and everlasting life.
You can’t remove sin and death from the Christian story and still get eternal life. Nor can you acknowledge someone’s death and forget that they still live, fully alive in Christ. You can’t be filled with the Spirit of God and all manner of healing and ignore the reality of a broken soul. Nor can you live in the brokenness of a depraved soul and not allow God’s Spirit to fill you and lead you into healing.
A healthy and vibrant faith seems to acknowledge the real suffering of our human experience, without losing sight of the bigger story of victory in which “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21, NIV). -Natasha Dongell; Wesleyan Church

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