Quiz: 1 Thessalonians 4:3

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality.” 
1 Thessalonians 4:3

Questions

1. How do you define “the will of God,” generally speaking?
2. What is the will of God in this instance?
3. What is sanctification?
4. Who does this verse apply to?
5. What is sexual immorality?
6. What does abstain mean?
7. How would you write this verse in your own words so that it applies to you in particular, and to porn and masturbation specifically, now that you have parsed it and defined its terms?

Answers

1. The “will of God” in this instance refers to God’s decretive will, that is, the will of God that pertains to His decrees. If God decrees something, He commands it. If God commands something, God wills, or desires, that thing to happen. God’s will is what God wants to happen.
2. The “will of God” in this instance is your sanctification. God wants you to be sanctified. God desires that you be sanctified.
3. Sanctification is the process of making or becoming holy, set apart, sanctified, consecrated. It’s the process of advancing in holiness, of being progressively transformed by the Holy Sprit into God’s likeness.
4. This verse applies immediately to the believers in the church in Thessalonica, the people that Paul wrote this New Testament letter to. But this verse also applies to all believers, everywhere, ever since, including you today, if you are a Christian.
5. Sexual immorality (rendered in some Bible translations as fornication), comes from the Greek, porneia. Sexual immorality is any act that disobeys God’s commands about sexual relations. Sexual immorality includes pre-marital sex, bestiality, pedophilia, incest, viewing pornography, and masturbating.
6. To abstain means to stay away from, to be distant from, to hold back from, to keep off.
7. “God’s express, written desire for me is that I be sanctified, set apart and consecrated. To get there, God commands that I be distant from, stay away from and hold back from pornography and masturbation.”