Exhortation

For both parents and children, sexual purity is essential to Christian living and to Christian family life.  Paul tells the Thessalonians that God wants His people to be holy.  This means avoiding adultery, pornography, sodomy, pre-marital sex, lust and all other forms of sexual sin (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8).  Lust characterizes Gentiles who do not know God.  Christians, by contrast, should know how to possess the “vessels” of our bodies in sanctification and honor.

Paul reinforces this exhortation with stern warnings.  Christians are temples of the Spirit.  Sexual impurity defiles God’s temple, and God defends His house.  Whoever rejects God’s demands for sexual purity is not rejecting human custom, but God Himself.

If you seduce another man’s wife or daughter or husband, you don’t just have to deal with an enraged spouse or father.  If you’re prowling the web for porn, you don’t just have to deal with upset parents.  You have to deal with an angry God, because God avenges sexual transgressions.

At the end of these exhortations and warnings, Paul reminds us that God Himself accomplishes His will in us.  He wants us to be holy, and He has given us the Spirit of sanctification. Paul implies that the Spirit is not given once only.  Paul’s words could be translated “God who is giving His Spirit to you.”

Receiving the Spirit is like breathing.  Each new breath is new life, energizing our bodies.  To walk in purity, we must be continuously breathing in the Spirit that the Father gives and keeps giving, breathing in the inexhaustible breath of life, the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us.

(This entire exhortation depends on the exegesis of John Levison, Filled with the Spirit .)