1 Thessalonians 4:3Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

As a pig that has wallowed in mud fills with stench whatever place it enters, and strikes the senses with a repulsive odor, so is fornication. This evil is washed away with difficulty. And when those who have wives do this, what extreme madness it is.

"For this," he says, "is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication." There are many forms of disorder, and the delights of passion are manifold and various. It is unbearable even to speak of them.

But having said "from all fornication," he leaves the enumeration of its forms to those who know.

It was not at all by the will of His Father that our Lord suffered. Nor is it the will of God that Christians be persecuted. One of two things would follow: either our persecution is good, if it occurs by God's will, or our executioners and persecutors are innocent.

Yet in nature nothing occurs without the will of the Master of the universe. To gather everything into one word, we must say that all this happens because God does not oppose it. This alone can explain how providence is reconciled with the mercy of the Most High.

We must not imagine that God Himself raises His hands against us and brings calamities upon us. We are far from this thought. Such are the admonitions given us by providence in the person of others who are punished for their personal sins.

But the instructions given us by Christ and the Apostles because of our sins are these: "The will of God," says the Apostle, "is your sanctification."

See with what praises he extols chastity, calling it the honor of the vessel, that is, of our body, and holiness. Consequently, by contrast, whoever remains in lustful passion is in a state of dishonor and impurity, and lives as one alien to holiness.

A little below, St. Paul adds further, again calling chastity holiness: "For God did not call us to impurity, but to holiness. Therefore he who rejects this rejects not man, but God, Who has given His Holy Spirit in you" (1 Thess 4:7-8).

He gave inviolable force and weight to his commandment when he said that whoever rejects this, that is, what I have said, rejects not man, meaning me who commands this, but God Who speaks in me. He appointed our heart as a dwelling for His Holy Spirit.

Do you see with what praises, in simple words, he extolled this virtue? First, he attributes holiness properly to it. Second, he affirms that by it the vessel of our body is freed from every impurity.

Third, when shameful impurity has been cast out, this vessel will remain in honor as a holy thing. Finally, its highest privilege is that through it the Holy Spirit will be the inhabitant of our heart.

I shall bring forward another similar testimony of the same Apostle. Addressing the Hebrews, he says: "Have peace with all, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord" (Heb 12:14). Here also he affirms that without holiness, which he usually calls purity and cleanliness of soul and body, it is altogether impossible to see God.

He also teaches that the Thessalonians must in no way act unlawfully or covetously toward their brother. On the contrary, they should live quietly and attend to their own work, laboring with their own hands and lacking nothing (1 Thess 4:1-12).

"By lustful passion," says blessed Theophylact, "the Apostle means everything that inflames lust: pleasures, entertainments, idleness, luxury, and the like. One must abstain from all this if one desires to be chaste."

According to blessed Theodoret's explanation, the Apostle speaks as though saying to the Thessalonians: "You have been freed from error and have come to know the true God. Therefore do not imitate those living in the darkness of ignorance, and do not be enslaved to lustful passion."

"Let everything in a Christian be pure, from the thoughts and feelings of the soul to the last motions and stirrings of the body. Let his bodily, psychic, and spiritual life be united and flow purely, as the clear water of a pure spring streams cleanly through clean places."

Holiness is the goal of the whole life. Therefore no one can consider himself fully holy in this life (see 1 Jn 1:8-9; Rom 7:19; Gal 5:7). Only the Church in her totality is holy. And she guides even her sinful members toward holiness (see Mt 13:29-30; Eph 2:21; Eph 5:25-27).

He intensifies the obligation to purity because it was hard to wean them from impurity. In paganism it was so common that it was not even counted as sin. The corruption of man's fallen nature has made man especially prone to sins of the flesh.

The pagans overflowed in fornication, and among them were the Thessalonians, perhaps more openly, if not more than others. Therefore the Apostle spoke more against it orally, and now in writing places instruction on this first and sanctifies it by the will of God.

St. Chrysostom says on this word: "Notice that he never hints so often at anything else as at this. Writing elsewhere, he commands: 'Have peace and holiness with all, without which no one will see the Lord' (Heb 12:14).

And to Timothy he said: 'Keep yourself pure' (1 Tim 5:22). We shall find this in many places, in the Epistle to the Romans and in all the other epistles. Truly this evil is destructive for all."

Oecumenius adds: "In every epistle he offers much discourse concerning chastity. For he knew that there is no passion more unbridled and harder to correct."

Holiness, αγιασμος, sometimes means the sanctifying action of God's grace in the mysteries (1 Pet 1:2). Sometimes it means the purifying action of grace, received by freedom, as moral sanctification, purification, and correction of the soul (1 Cor 1:30).

Sometimes it means the state of moral purity, the established disposition to live purely and blamelessly according to all God's commandments. "Be holy, for I am holy," the Lord requires (1 Pet 1:16).

In the present case, the Apostle clearly understands holiness in the last sense, and specifically in relation to the purity of soul and body from passionate lust. This is shown by the following words: "abstain from fornication," which, in the flow of speech, directly explain the word "holiness."

General moral purity may only be understood as implied in this text, on the ground that without it purity from passionate lust, or chastity, cannot be formed or stand in its full meaning and power.

"Abstain from fornication" explains holiness. "Having said that the will of God requires holiness, he then makes known what virtue he calls holiness" (Theodoret). In Greek, "abstain" means to hold oneself away from something and withdraw from it.

By fornication he means every kind of bodily impurity. "There are many forms of disorder, and the delights of passion are manifold and various. It is unbearable even to speak of them. He cuts them all off with one word: 'abstain from fornication'" (Chrysostom).