1Th 4:8 | KingComments | STEP | . Young believers often ask the question: ‘How could one know the will of God?’ That’s a good question. This question cannot always directly be answered in a particular case. But in the previous verse you have clearly heard about the will of God in a certain aspect of your life. God wants your sanctification with a view to marriage. The concrete application of that will is that you abstain from fornication. Therefore you need to “know how to possess” your “own vessel in sanctification and honor”. The word ‘vessel’ is also used to indicate a person ( ; ; ) or also your own body (cf. ). In this regard it can refer to both your own wife ( ) and your own body. It doesn’t matter as to the power of this Bible word. In both cases the question is whether you deal with it in sanctification and honor. The contradiction to how the nations that do not know God deal with it, makes clear how God’s children ought to practice it. Those who do not know God, do not know how to possess their ‘own vessel’ in the right way. The result of denying the Creator is the degradation of the creature. Degraded man uses the woman for the satisfaction of his own lusts. Paganism has lowered the woman to an object of lusts. Christendom shows that the woman is in the same way an heir of God’s promises like the man ( ). That she is the weaker vessel, gives the man the opportunity to deal with her in a way that fully complies with her for being a woman. He will offer her safety and protection. The phrase “know how to possess” means that you know that you have received your body in order to serve God with it. After all, “in sanctification” means separated for God. And “in honor” means that you value your body as a gift from God in order to use it for His sake. If you value this gift, you will not use it for things in order to serve your lusts in general and your sexual lusts in particular. If you are married you will consider your wife a gift from God. If you appreciate this gift you will not abuse it to fulfill your (sexual) lusts. . If your own body is meant to be a ‘vessel’, it is clear that you should not misuse your body to satisfy your lustful passions. I want to mention masturbation in this context. If in masturbation you often sought an expression for your feelings, then there is a great chance that you will abuse marriage for that as a married person. You should not consider marriage to be a solution for sexual desires. To the unmarried or engaged person (which also means: still unmarried person) sexuality should also be kept in the right place. Therefore it is important to learn how to deal rightly with what God has given in sexuality. .This verse goes still further. Here not only the own body or the own wife is misused, but the wife of the brother. Paul draws a sharp line. The sharing of all possessions may characterize true Christendom, but one must keep his hands off his brother’s wife. She belongs to him. He who ignores that border and steps across that border, does a great injustice to his brother. This injustice cannot be simply wiped away by a quick confession ( ), often forced after having been caught in the act. A form of fornication that occurs more and more is the digital form. The internet is the means that offers this opportunity plentifully. There is a gigantic offer and it increases daily in number. Many millions of porn sites are dormant present there. Just a simple mouse click brings them to life. This ‘silent’ fornication is committed by a lot of believers. Sometimes it remains to be limited to only once ‘out of curiosity’. There are also cases, and those cases increase, where it has adopted addictive forms. Do not think that it cannot happen to you. Therefore take this serious word that also comes to you, to heart. Do like Job, who says: “I have made a covenant with my eyes” ( ), which means, be determined not to look at something that defiles you. The Lord will avenge everything that has to do with fornication. Paul has said that to them when he was with them, just like he had spoken then about tribulations ( ). Here he adds to it that he had “solemnly warned” them. These particular things need to be emphasized. An exhortation is not enough. This evil is so general and hooks on to our own corruptive nature in such a way that the threat of the vengeance of the Lord needs to be put as a horrifying sight before us. Maybe that will keep us from committing this deed. I repeat what I said in the previous section: In case it is a fact for you that you have to acknowledge that you have already gone too far, admit it. Do not continue on this path! There is the possibility for you to turn your back on it. Do not let yourself be kept by any whispering voice inside of you from admitting it. Then seek for a person whom you trust and share your need with that person. Let yourself to be helped in order to become free. With the help of the Lord and of others you will succeed. However you have to be willing to, and change your willingness into deeds. If you really trust the Lord, He will make you free to live a sanctified life for Him. . God after all “has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification”. In the previous verses you are called to live a sanctified life. That includes the warning that if you do not do that, you will find the Lord as an Avenger on your way. However, doing God’s will is not only determined by the fear for God’s judgment. A positive motive to live a life in purity is to be found in knowing God’s purpose for all of His children. When He called you through the gospel, He did that with the purpose that you would be holy in your whole conduct, like He is holy ( ). The gospel that you have accepted is in sharp contrast to the impurity that surrounds you. By God’s will you have been drawn from it ( ). You do not belong there anymore and it does no longer belong to you. God has called you “in sanctification”, which means that you live your life in a holy atmosphere from the moment of your conversion. . With the word “so” Paul introduces the summary of the subject with which he has just dealt. You ought not to reject what God says about sexuality and honor and purity and highness of marriage. ‘To reject’ something is to put it aside, making it invalid, refusing it. That warning comes to you as a professing Christian. That means that you are capable of that. This ‘rejecting’ will actually not directly start with the grossest form. Therefore beware that you abide in these things close to God’s Word. In conversations with people from your environment who do not care about God’s Word, you may get to understand and tolerate relationships that really go against God’s Word. Condemn those thoughts. You reject God in that way if you allow something in your thoughts that He condemns. You’d better reject what people say about that in contradiction to God’s Word. You see that Paul goes back to the highest authority. He is a servant that passes on God’s institutions. Putting those institutions aside does not mean to put him aside, a human, but God Himself (cf. ). To anyone who dismisses sexual sins as unimportant, God and His Word have no meaning. That should not be the case with you. God has given you “His Holy Spirit” with the emphasis on ‘Holy’. Through Him you are able to maintain God’s institutions. At your conversion He came to dwell in you ( ). In 1 Corinthians 6 you read that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit ( ). There He is mentioned in relation to the same subject that we have before us. The section there concludes with: “For you have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” ( ). When you consider the price that the Lord Jesus was willing to pay for your salvation, you don’t want to live other than for Him, do you? Now read 1 Thessalonians 4:4-8 again. Reflection: Do you know how to possess your own vessel in sanctification and honor? Are there items in which you can do better? In what way can you do that?