1 Thessalonians 4:1-2 – Our goal in life is to please God

Thessalonica connected Rome from the East. Being an eclectic city, people from all over the Roman Empire would be found there. Furthermore, the pagan worship in that city was associated with sexual immorality and temple prostitutes. They basically led a very sensually and materialistically oriented lifestyle. Hence, even believers were enticed to lead that kind of lifestyle. The message of Paul in Thessalonians 4 addressed that enticing culture. Our affluent Singapore is just as sensual and materialistic, this message is just as relevant to us.

The first thing Paul called for them to do was to lead the kind of life which God expects of them. The obvious place to begin with would be in their motivation. What can be a better motivation than to appeal to their desire to please the Lord? So Paul made this his starting point. He asked them to make pleasing the Lord their goal in life. In fact he exhorted them to excel even more since they had already began to live God-pleasing lives.  

The word “walk” is used metaphorically to describe one’s lifestyle. This is a term used to refer to one’s day-to-day living. So here Paul reminded them to begin at the most crucial point – do all to please the Lord. The structure of verse 1 tells us that this must be a lifestyle. It was not to be a sporadic or intermittent act, but a continuous effort. It must be a relentless effort to excel more and more. Paul must have realized how easy it was for believers to rest on their laurels, so he told them to excel even more.

Secondly, he told them the basis on which he was making the call. It was on the authority of the Lord that he made this call to them. He reminded them that this was what the Lord would want them to do. In other words, this was the Lord’s commandment; he did not act on his own. Like them, if we want to grow spiritually, we must make pleasing God our priority in life. Not only that, we also need to learn to live under the sovereign authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s obey the command of Christ, else we are rejecting God!