Trust or Treason?

“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  I Thessalonians 5:23

It does matter how Christians conduct their lives because, if they have truly been born again, their lives are not theirs any longer but belong to Christ.  Paul wrote in I Corinthians 7:23a, that believers “are bought with a price”, namely the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.  If we go to a store and buy something with cash or a credit card, it then belongs to us.  It is ours, and we do with it what we desire.  When we repent of our sins and place our faith in Christ, then we are giving Him our lives.  So, yeah, it matters what we do with those lives.

In I Thessalonians 5:16-22, Paul listed several ways in which we should pattern our lives in order to represent Christ well.  He wrote for us to rejoice evermore.  If we are saved, have Jesus in our hearts, the Holy Spirit to help us traverse life’s difficult road, and have the promise of heaven, then that is enough to rejoice forever.  It is a really depressing thought to think about not having those benefits.  Paul urges believers to always be in an attitude of prayer.  Know that the Lord is always listening, and nothing is too insignificant to Jesus.  Be a person of gratitude.  Paul didn’t say to be thankful FOR all things, but rather IN all things.  There have been plenty of times in my life when I wasn’t thankful for certain events that came my way, but I was thankful that God was with me in them.

Paul also urges believers to not quench the Holy Spirit, which means to ignore His warnings and/or reject His promptings.  He is with us to help us and keep us from trouble and danger.  The focus of the Holy Spirit is to magnify Christ, and that is done by the influence of the Holy Spirit upon believers.  It has been said that we may be the only Christians that some people see.  That is a tremendous responsibility for believers.  We are not to get weary of hearing and studying God’s word.  There is always something new to learn from scripture.  I find that the Bible is the most interesting book ever written.  It has everything including drama, mystery, comedy, intrigue, and prophesy of future events.

Paul desires that believers “prove all things”.  Don’t take everything that you hear at face value but search the scriptures to verify the truth of what you hear.  In Acts 17:10-11, Paul and Silas went to Berea, Macedonia, and went into the synagogue there.  The Jews, who were there, were searching the scriptures to find out if what they were hearing about the gospel was true.  It is interesting to note that Paul indicated that these folks were more noble than the folks in Thessalonica.  What did he mean by “more noble”?  I think that he meant that these Bereans were of good character, and particularly, they were extremely interested in knowing the truth of the word that he preached.  The last admonition by Paul was to abstain from all appearance of evil.  That doesn’t really need any elaboration.  If it’s wrong, then leave it alone.  God makes a way of escape, so use it! (I Corinthians 10:13).  “Greater is He that is in us that he that is in the world” (I John 4:4).

Paul ended this first letter to the believers at Thessalonica by calling on the Lord to sanctify them in all areas of their lives.  He prayed that God would help them to abstain from anything that would bring shame and blame upon them.  While a person is completely forgiven of all sins, past, present, and future by the blood of Christ when they repent and believe in Him, he or she still has that sin nature with which they were born, thus, even the most committed Christian has the potential to fall into sin’s trap.  Therefore, the Holy Spirit is placed within each believer’s heart to serve as not only a comforter and spiritual companion, but as a spiritual warden to give the believer warnings and a way of escape from making wrong decisions that could diminish or damage one’s witness before the lost world.

God forgives and forgets, but people are not so prone to be completely forgiving.  When unbelievers see a Christian sin, it reflects on Christ.  His or her sin doesn’t diminish Christ, but it can diminish an unbeliever’s view of Him and of the one who sinned.  A Christian is called to represent Christ on earth to unbelievers, and therefore, it is imperative to walk in holiness and righteousness.  Otherwise, we are a traitor to His cause.