⁶… just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. ⁷For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.

A great amount of teaching in the church is the ministry of reminding. The fundamental truths of the gospel and the new life in Christ never change. Everything else is built upon the knowledge of Christ. The apostle Peter wrote, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3). Paul wrote similarly, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ . . .” (Eph. 1:3). Our learning and growing are all about uncovering in our daily experiences what is ours already in Christ.

Some of the reminders come as warnings, and these are not to be taken lightly. They deal with the negative side of the coin, the deterrent to not build our lives on Christ. Yes, we are won to Christ through God’s kindness (Rom. 2:4), but this is balanced by the severity of the Lord (Rom. 11:22). Nowhere is this truer than in the area of sexual immorality! What God has given us in sexuality is a good thing, a fantastic gift—but when misused it invokes God’s severe consequences.

God designed the sexual relationship between men and women to be such that deviation from His divine purpose for it will incur His judgment. That is built into the idea of sex. Sex outside of marriage brings on superficial or broken relationships, broken families, mistrust, guilt, shame, and a distancing from God, the creator of sex. So Paul proclaims to the Thessalonian believers, who were saved out of pagan immorality, that their purpose in life is not to indulge the flesh in unbounded sex, which is “impurity.” This flashes up images of the purification rituals in the Levitical worship system, where an unclean or impure worshipper must first be cleansed. The picture of dirtiness is applied to a person being unfit for God’s presence because of moral or spiritual defilement. Sexual immorality is seen by God in the same way, an impurity of the soul.

But God has “called us for the purpose of . . . sanctification.” That is, we are called to be set apart from all that the world sets as its purpose. The Thessalonian believers would have known well the Epicurean philosophy that put pleasure as the highest ideal for human endeavor. But that is self-defeating and invokes the judgment of God. Instead, Christians are to live in line with God’s purposes, namely to be set apart for Him. That is sanctification.

Lord, I leave self-pleasure behind and purpose to live for You only.