6b The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 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 very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.ReflectionsWritten by Vincent Chan.They say that a text without context is just a con! To be honest, at first when I read these verses, I was in danger of misunderstanding them because I didn’t look at the context. On the surface when I first read this, it seemed as if it was a big rod that said: if you sin the Lord will punish you, if you sin you are impure, if you sin you’re rejecting God! And it was tempting to walk away and think that Paul just wanted me to pull my socks up and do better. But dig a little deeper and here are some things that stand out: The sin mentioned in verse 6 is the sin of sexual impurity that is so damaging. It takes advantage of others for your own gratification. Paul is probably speaking about adultery or sex outside of marriage, but don’t modern day things like internet pornography do the same? Sinful pleasure comes at the cost of others being enslaved. However, the ‘those’ who will be punished in 6b are the pagans, not the Thessalonian church! Instead, we see that the Thessalonian believers are those ‘called to live a holy life’ (v 7) and those who have been given God’s Holy Spirit (v 8). In fact, at the beginning of the chapter, Paul says that the Thessalonian Christians have been living in holiness and he wants to encourage them to keep going. Read in this light, what stands out is that Paul is not trying to wave around a big rod, but point the Thessalonians towards their mind-blowing, society-shattering, God-given identity in Christ: You are holy because you have been given the very Holy Spirit of God. And so we need to heed the call to take sexual sin seriously. Like the Thessalonian church that was surrounded by a culture that said there were no boundaries to sex, so also now every TV show, song and social media platform broadcasts the same message at us. But God cares. It is not a trivial thing. Never forget that. God does not take it lightly. And if we are ever tempted by sexual sin, remember that the Lord will punish such sins.But at the same time, as followers of the Lord Jesus remember even more why you should put to death sexual sins. You have been called by God himself, called to know him and live for him. And right now – his very Spirit lives in you. Do you remember this? About the AuthorVincent Chan is an Assistant Minister with our Fairfield Congregations, he lives in Fairfield with his wife, 3 kids and 7 chickens.