B. Avoiding Sexual Immorality (4:3-8)
B. AVOIDING SEXUAL IMMORALITY (4:3-8)
3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid443 sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own bodya in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very444 God who gives445 you446 his Holy Spirit.a 4 Or learn to live with his own wife; or learn to acquire a wife
Paul now turns to the first of the two matters where their “faith” is “deficient” (3:10), about which he had formerly instructed them, and about which he has just prayed that they might be “blameless” at the coming of the Lord (3:12- 13). His prayer was that they “will be blameless in holiness” at the coming of Christ. Now he picks up what this means for them in terms of sexual relations. In order to appreciate why “sexual immorality” is the first matter up, one needs to be reminded that what the Jewish, and its offspring Christian, community regarded as immoral was generally not considered to be so among pagan Gentiles. Indeed, the seventh commandment would have been seen as absurd by “the pagans, who do not know God,” one of whose philosophers could say, as a matter of course, “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our persons, but wives to bear us legitimate children.”447 It is precisely for such reasons that the issue of “sexual immorality” has a consistent place in Pauline ethics. For people for whom sexual activity outside of marriage was considered not only not “immoral” but in fact a cultural norm, Paul’s regularly returning to this matter in his letters makes a great deal of historical sense. It is also clear evidence that he would never have thought of himself or his fellow travelers within the believing community as doing anything other than continuing the basic morality of the Torah and therefore also of Jesus himself.
Nonetheless, even though the primary concern is stated with explicit clarity, at least two of the details are much less so and call for more careful investigation, namely (a) the meaning of the Greek word skeuos (literally, “vessel”) in verse 4, and (b) how disobedience in this matter is a way of “wronging” or “taking advantage of one’s brother” in verse 6. Significantly, this present matter in particular comes under the rubric of “holiness” (vv. 3 and 7-8), and is expressed over against “the ethnoi [‘peoples/Gentiles’], who do not know God” (v. 5).
The paragraph is composed of three sentences in Greek: an extremely complex one (vv. 3-6) in which previous instruction on sexual morality is spelled out in some detail, followed by two brief ones, one (v. 7) explanatory of the first in terms of God’s will, and a concluding one (v. 8) indicating how disobedience on this matter is related to that will. The opening sentence is in fact a series of appositions to “the will of God” in verse 3, expressed in terms of holiness, which in this case is defined as abstaining from “sexual immorality.” This in turn is spelled out in two ways, first in terms of a man’s “keeping his ‘vessel’ in holiness” in contrast to pagans who do not know God, and finally in terms of not “wronging” a brother in this matter, since such sin will result in the Lord’s punishment. Thus the series of five appositives moves successively — and one is led to think purposely on Paul’s part — from a very general admonition to a more specific kind of sin (sexual immorality) to a case-specific instance of the same. Thus:
(a) This is the will of God:(b) That you be holy(c) = Abstaining from sexual immorality(d) = Each one knowing how to possess his own “vessel” in holiness, not in lust(e) = No one overstepping the boundaries and cheating his brother or sister in this matter;
(concl.) For the Lord is the avenger regarding all these things
What Paul seems to have done, therefore, is to use a specific case of sexual sin against a brother in the believing community448 to deal once more with the larger issue of sexual immorality, since such teaching would be so utterly foreign to newly converted pagan believers in Christ.449
3 This opening clause serves as the “heading” for the rest of the paragraph. Thus Paul begins, “this is the450 will of God,” which is then defined by a series of appositives, each one becoming more case specific as the long sentence unfolds. The first definition of “God’s will” is broadly stated as “holiness/sanctification.”451 This word group, with its decidedly moral overtones, belongs exclusively to Diaspora Judaism and early Christianity. Nowhere in known pagan literature is anyone concerned with holiness or holy living.452 The noun itself derives from the adjective “holy,” and takes its meaning in the biblical revelation from God’s pronouncement in Leviticus 19:2, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy,” which in that chapter in Leviticus finds expression in a whole variety of ways, including the ten commandments. Thus, even though objects set aside for sacred purposes could be referred to as “holy,” the primary sense of the word within the biblical tradition has to do with moral rectitude — behavior that is in keeping with God’s own character.
In the present case, “your holiness”453 as “God’s will” is expressed negatively — and narrowly — as abstention from “sexual immorality.”454 It is this broad word, which in biblical usage covers every kind of sexual sin,455 that creates the first ambiguity for us in terms of the specifics. If we had only the clause that makes up our verses 4 and 5, this would be universally understood as sexual sin in general. But the clause in verse 6 gives us reason to pause, and to think that perhaps there is a very specific way this case of sexual immorality has found expression.
4-5 This next clause stands in apposition to verse 3 and therefore spells out the specific nature of the “sexual immorality” to be avoided. At the same time it is the place where most of our difficulties lie. The clause seems to begin simply enough: “[that] each of you ‘know.’ ” But part of our present difficulty is to ascertain the sense of “know” in this context, whether it means “to understand how” (so BDAG 3) or something closer to “learn how” (BDAG 4) with regard to the object of the verb.456 In either case it has been all too easy for some scholars to act as if this verb did not exist at all when they go on to deal with the difficult idiom that follows. Whatever else, Paul’s first concern seems to be that someone is engaging in an illicit sexual relationship; otherwise the contrast that has been set up makes very little sense.
Paul’s concern is thus expressed first positively (v. 4) and then negatively (v. 5); and whatever else, his two contrasting “in” phrases (“in holiness and honor” and “not in passionate lust”) must be kept in view when decisions are made regarding the subject and verb of the clause, since both of these phrases have historically been the cause of considerable difficulty in understanding the passage. Moreover, there is no view, including the one opted for here, that is without difficulty. So in the end the decision most often boils down to choosing the option with whose set of difficulties a scholar can most easily live.
The difficulties the reader/interpreter faces are the result of two matters: (a) Paul’s use of the word “vessel” as the direct object of (b) a verb that ordinarily means to “acquire.” Thus (literally): “This is God’s will . . . that each of you know/learn to acquire his own vessel in holiness and honor, not in the passions of lust.” For translators the solutions have varied. The King James Version (and its offspring, NKJV and NASU) has maintained the ambiguity of the metaphor, but has chosen to render the verb as “possess,” a meaning which it has in the perfect tense, but not ordinarily in the present.
More often the English translations have assumed that Paul’s use of “vessel” was intended as a metaphor for either “body” or “wife,” assumptions that can be traced back to the second century. But as Lightfoot pointed out over a century ago, the choice between these two historic options is difficult “not because both are equally appropriate, but because neither is free from serious difficulty” (54). Although each of them is plagued with its own set of difficulties, the primary problem they share in common is that either could have been expressed in a straightforward manner as Paul does elsewhere, and there without the need of an obtuse metaphor, which can be found neither in Paul nor elsewhere in the ancient world. After all, Paul himself in other places speaks openly and directly about “wives” and “bodies,” and therefore neither of them would seem to require such a strange metaphor, especially so had he intended “wife.” It is thus the use of “vessel” itself that has created most of our difficulties and has more recently led some scholars to find a different solution, namely that Paul is not using an otherwise unknown metaphor,457 but is here using “vessel” as a euphemism to refer to the male sexual organ; but even this “solution” is not without its difficulties. Thus we need to look at both the arguments for, and difficulties with, each of the three suggested options.458
Those who think Paul put “vessel” as a metaphor for “wife” do so primarily on three grounds: first, this option especially makes sense of the basic meaning of the verb itself, “to acquire” or “procure for oneself” (BDAG); second, they can thereby also make some sense of verse 6, which is then understood to mean, “acquire your own wife and don’t mess around with a brother’s wife”; and third, in 1 Peter 3:7 a man’s wife is actually called “the weaker vessel.”459 It is also often noted that Sirach 36:24 actually uses this verb with “wife” as the object, thus “he who acquires a wife.”460
But this view is riddled with so many difficulties that it has now become the minority option.461 First, and for me most conclusive, is the fact that such a metaphor is both unlike Paul elsewhere and seems completely unnecessary in this context. If Paul had meant “wife,” why not say “wife” rather than use this otherwise unknown metaphor.462 Second, the requirement is addressed to “each of you,” which under all normal use of language would mean that all of the men are to get married. Third, the possessive “your own” is especially strange, unless it is a safeguard against sleeping with another man’s wife; but the passage begins too generally for such a view, which in any case could have been said plainly and simply. Fourth, the passage from 1 Peter is of no real help, since by implication the man is also a “vessel,” only a stronger one. In fact, “vessel” in this case is not actually a metaphor for “wife” as such, but speaks of her overall existence in first-century culture (at least physically so). But the far greater difficulty, fifth, is with the verb in verse 5. What would it mean for the one doing wrong to “acquire a wife in passionate lust,” so that the believer is commanded not to do so?463 That might work in the twenty-first century, but not in the traditional home in a first century setting, where wives were usually not “acquired” on the basis of “love,” but for their ability to manage a household and to bear legitimate children.464 Finally, sixth, verse 6 presents still greater difficulty for this view; how, one wonders, does one avoid defrauding a brother by acquiring his own wife, and do so not in passionate lust?
For these many reasons, therefore, a large number of interpreters and most English translators have opted for “body” as the intent of the assumed metaphor “vessel.”465 This view can deal with most of the objections to seeing the “vessel” as one’s wife; furthermore, Paul does refer to the “body” as an “earthenware vessel” in 2 Corinthians 4:7. But this view also has its own set of difficulties. First, to make this work one must take the Greek verb ktaomai, which means to “acquire” or “possess [= own],” to mean something like “gain control over,” for which there is no solid lexical evidence. Furthermore, second, it is not at all clear how this works in contrast to the pagans; is Paul suggesting that pagans were only and always using their bodies in a context of passionate lust? Indeed, it is the negative phrase regarding Gentiles that makes this view so difficult to sustain in the present argument. And third, it is also not clear how verse 6 works in light of such an understanding.
For both of these views, however, the primary difficulty remains: Why use an otherwise unknown metaphor for what could have been said plainly, if either of these were the issue?466 To be sure, had we only these two options, then the evidence leans heavily in favor of “body.” But that same evidence works also in favor of the view that Paul uses the noun “vessel” not as a metaphor, but as a euphemism for the male sexual organ.467 The evidence for such usage can be found in the Septuagint of 1 Samuel 21:5-6, where David’s men were required to have “kept themselves from women” if they were to partake of the holy bread. David’s response is that “of course they have been kept from women,” as always when they set out on a mission. But in elaborating on this he reminds the priest: “The men’s ‘things’ are holy even when the mission is not holy.” The Hebrew word k
li in this case was (correctly) translated by skeuos (“vessel”) in the Septuagint, and has rather universally been understood to refer to the men’s penises. If that is Paul’s meaning here, then it is also the view that makes the most sense of the double modifiers, “in holiness and honor.” Paul’s point, then, is that the holiness he is concerned about has to do with a man’s keeping his sexual organ holy and “with honor.” It is this word that seems to be in focus when Paul completes his sentence in verse 6.
li in this case was (correctly) translated by skeuos (“vessel”) in the Septuagint, and has rather universally been understood to refer to the men’s penises. If that is Paul’s meaning here, then it is also the view that makes the most sense of the double modifiers, “in holiness and honor.” Paul’s point, then, is that the holiness he is concerned about has to do with a man’s keeping his sexual organ holy and “with honor.” It is this word that seems to be in focus when Paul completes his sentence in verse 6.But as with the view that “vessel = body,” the difficulty here still lies with the meaning of the verb, since the basic meaning “acquire” is hardly possible for either of these options. The most likely answer to this difficulty in both cases is that Paul was using the present tense of the verb with a meaning it ordinarily had in the perfect tense: to “possess” in the sense of “gain mastery over.”468 The difference between this last option and that of “body” is that it seems to make far more sense for Paul to use this more obtuse language as a euphemism rather than as a simple metaphor for something that could have been said directly without resorting to metaphorical language.
But before he goes on to the main concern of the passage, “not wronging or taking advantage of a brother in this matter,” Paul sets out such “holiness” in striking contrast to the immorality of “the pagans,” who are described in a twofold way: as “living in passionate lust” because at the same time “they do not know God.” This contrast makes especially good sense if our understanding of Paul’s use of “vessel = male sexual organ” is correct. As pointed out earlier (on v. 3), the pagan world simply did not think of sexual promiscuity or indulgence as “wrongdoing.” Thus sexual immorality was not “immoral” to them. Therefore, to think like them on this matter, not to mention to live like them, means to live “in passionate lust” rather than in “holiness before God.” And the reason for such a view of sexual immorality lies with the fact that they simply “do not know God.”469 “Knowledge of God” from Paul’s biblical point of view assumes automatically knowledge of what it means to be created in the Creator’s own image, originally designed, and now redeemed, to bear God’s likeness in a world that does not know God. It therefore means to keep one’s sexual organ within the bonds of marriage and thus in a way that is holy before God.
6 But in the specific case to which Paul is responding, the sexual sin does not seem to be just a matter, for example, of a man’s going to the prostitutes. Rather, Paul’s grammar and the present clause indicate that it is directly related to what has been said to this point.470 On that issue one can be quite sure;471 but on the issues of what and how, we are left more in the dark. That is, we simply cannot be sure from this brief admonition exactly “what” the offender has been doing that Paul should describe his offense in terms of “not wronging or taking advantage of his brother in this matter”; nor can we therefore know “how” his action can be so described, in terms of its explicit relationship both to the prohibition that has preceded and the warning that follows. The best answer overall is that at least one case of sexual sin has been an adulterous situation with another man’s wife, or perhaps with a household slave. This would seem at least to account for the doubling of the verb: that no one “overstep the boundaries”472 and thus “take advantage of (= cheat)”473 his Christian brother474 in this matter.475
But if we are less than sure on the specifics of the case that called forth this long admonition, we can be sure that Paul does not think it a matter to be taken lightly. So drawing on language that echoes the Septuagint of Psalm 94:1, Paul reminds the offender — and thus the whole community as well — that divine justice will be meted out on such offenders of divine morality. But whereas the psalmist has it, “the God (elohim) of vengeance [is] the LORD (Yahweh),” in Paul it is now “the Lord = Jesus” who will bring about divine justice in this and all such cases.476
To be sure, some are ready to see this occurrence of kyrios as referring to God the Father.477 But that not only runs roughshod over Paul’s clear distinctions (as noted on 1:1 above), but it also fails to take seriously the ease with which Paul can substitute Christ as “Lord” in speaking of prerogatives which otherwise belong to God alone. After all, in Romans 14:10, referring to believers — and in a context where “the Lord = Christ Jesus” dominates the discussion — Paul speaks of “the judgment seat of God”; while in a similar context in 2 Corinthians 5:10, again referring to believers, he says that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” In the present text, unique to the New Testament, Paul’s use of “avenger” occurs in a context in which the Lord Jesus himself will take the side of the wronged person.
Paul now brings this long sentence to a conclusion by picking up the “reminder of previous instructions” motif from the introduction in verses 1 and 2; thus, “as we have already told you and warned you.” The new element here is the second verb, “[we] warned you,” which in fact is the final word in Paul’s own sentence. Although this verb will recur three times in 1 and 2 Timothy, this is its only occurrence in the church corpus. Despite Bauer-Danker’s placing this usage under the heading “to make a solemn declaration about the truth of something,” it seems far more likely in this singular Pauline usage in letters to his churches to bear its second meaning, “to exhort with authority in matters of extraordinary importance.” What is not at all clear is why and under what kind of circumstances Paul would have previously “warned” them that Christ would be the “avenger” for those who disregard instructions on sexual misconduct. Here one must simply take Paul at “face value,” without knowing further details.
7 But Paul is not one to let the current matter drop at this point — with a word of warning to the one persisting in sexual sin that is ultimately against a brother in Christ. So, in what will become typical fashion for him, he brings the warning back to the primary matter, the fact that in calling them to become a part of his own people, God had made no room “for impurity,” but rather had called the Thessalonian believers to live “in holiness.” In so doing, Paul picks up language he had used earlier in the letter in 2:12, where he reminded them of how he had formerly “dealt with” them — as a father who urged them to “walk” in a manner “worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”
In the present case “the call” is defined by two contrasting prepositional phrases. Negatively, God’s call excluded “impurity,” where the preposition478 tells them that God’s purpose in calling them did not have sexual sin as its goal. Rather, Paul goes on, and now with a different preposition, God’s calling of the Thessalonians to himself was for the purpose of their living “in holiness,” meaning that “holiness” was to be the context that framed all of life both within and outside the community of faith.479 They were to live in holiness; and so with that word Paul also “frames” the entire matter that began in verse 3.
8 With a very strong inferential conjunction,480 used only here in his letters, Paul concludes this “reminder/warning” by indicating what refusal to conform amounts to: rejection of the very God who “gives you” the Holy Spirit so as to enable obedience at this point. Thus Paul does two things in this concluding sentence. First, he reminds them that the preceding prohibition is not merely human teaching; to reject it is to reject the eternal God himself.481 Second, the gift of the Spirit, to whose presence Paul appeals as the first thing up when he reminded them of their actual conversion (1:6), now becomes Paul’s final court of appeal as God’s own personal enablement for them to abstain from sexual immorality. Thus the sequence is: to reject Paul’s teaching is to reject God himself, the very God whose ongoing gift of the Spirit is what enables obedience at this point.
This argument has several features that need further explication, not only because it contains some crucial implications as to Paul’s understanding of the Spirit, but also because it assumes far more than it actually says.482 First, Paul’s own word order puts special emphasis on the Spirit as the Holy Spirit.483 Thus the full designation “Holy Spirit” is not simply the Spirit’s name — though that is also true. But just as “our Lord Jesus Christ” is both name and reality,484 so also the Spirit, who in the Old Testament is most frequently designated “the Spirit of God,” is in the New Testament designated the “Holy Spirit,” both as name and reality — the Spirit is none other than the Spirit of the God who is himself “holy.”485 As the Spirit who in Paul’s word order is emphasized as the Holy One, he is thus to be distinguished from all other “spirits.” In the final analysis, therefore, we are here dealing with the character of God, and with Paul’s understanding of the Christian ethic as the Spirit’s reproducing that character in his people. Thus in a context where God’s will is defined in terms of the Thessalonians’ living in holiness (v. 3), so that they “gain mastery over their own vessels” in holiness (v. 4), because God has called them not to uncleanness but to holiness (v. 7), it is hardly surprising that Paul here emphasizes the Spirit as “the Holy One,” who is thus the source of such “holiness” in the Thessalonian community.486
One should note further that in this first mention in the Pauline corpus of the actual “gift of the Spirit,” he designates the Spirit as being given “into you.” This unusual usage is most likely an intentional echo on Paul’s part of the Septuagint of Ezekiel 37:6 and 14 (“I will give my Spirit into you”), which probably means something like, “I will put my Spirit in you.”487 This usage reflects a Pauline understanding of the gift of the Spirit as the fulfillment of Old Testament promises that God’s own Spirit will come to indwell his people, “and you shall live” (Ezek 37:14; cf. 11:19). In later letters Paul will make this same point by referring to the Spirit as “given (or sent) into your hearts.”488
Although there is some debate here, the use of the present participle, “who also gives” (see n. 20 above), seems intended to stress the ongoing work of the Spirit in their lives.489 Although their previous conversion by the Spirit is the obvious presupposition of this usage, had Paul intended to refer to their conversion as such (as in 1:5-6),490 he would have used the simple aorist, as in verse 7 and as he does elsewhere with regard to the Spirit.491 This is very similar to the use of the present tense with “calls” in 2:12 and 5:24, and especially to the use of the present tense with the “granting” or “supplying” of the Spirit in Galatians 3:5 (cf. Phil 1:19). All of this is to say that Paul’s concern here is not with their conversion, but with their present experience of God’s Holy Spirit, given to them by God precisely so that they might walk in holiness. Thus the Spirit is understood as the constant divine companion, by whose power one lives out holiness, that is, a truly Christian ethic.
Finally, both the nature of this argument (which brings in the presence of the Spirit in their lives as the clincher) and the emphasis on the “presentness” and “indwelling” nature of the Spirit as gift point to the Spirit as God’s effectual empowerment in the struggle against sin. This does not mean that the Spirit guarantees perfection — hardly so — but it does mean that one is left without argument for helplessness. As Plummer (correctly) asserts: “This [gifting of Spirit] transformed their whole life; and it put an end to the pagan plea that [people have] no power to resist impure desires” (63). For Paul the presence of the Spirit was not simply God’s gift as an option against sin; nor would he have understood the Spirit as present but ineffectively so. To the contrary, the dynamic that makes Paul’s argument against sexual impurity possible is the experienced reality of the Spirit. Thus for Paul the Spirit is not only the key to becoming believers (1:6), but is the power for truly Christian behavior, and therefore makes disobedience on their part a difficult thing to argue for.
This passage has had an unfortunate, but understandable, checkered history of application in the church. It is a foundational passage for all so-called “holiness” groups, based on “holiness” as “God’s will.” And while that obviously has much going for it, Paul’s concern is more case specific. In a world that has become increasingly more blatantly sexually active outside the marriage bond — very much like the pagan world Paul himself lived in — this passage should be a constant reminder that “holiness” and “sexual purity” belong together, exclusively so regarding “sexual purity,” although “holiness” itself is a much larger concern for Paul. Thus “sexual purity” is not the whole of what it means to be “holy”; nonetheless, it is a significant part of such holiness. It is nearly offensive in our day to remind people that the first reason for sexual intercourse is not for pleasure, but for procreation; and God made it pleasurable so that procreation would happen. Thus, in a later letter (our 1 Corinthians) Paul will spend considerable energy on this question.