1Thessalonians 4:7

            I believe, at least I hope, that everyone who professes to be a Christian knows full well that repentance of one’s sinfulness is a requirement for salvation.  Jesus preached repentance from the very beginning of His public ministry (Mark 1:15); Paul preached it (Acts 20:21).  Apart from repentance of sin there can be no forgiveness of sin.  I feel certain that most Christians understand that.

            Yet there is one area that many Christians seem to think is exempt from repentance.  That is the area of sexual immorality.  It is alarming how many preachers, church members and churches are falling apart because of sinful sexual activity.  People who have abandoned excessive drinking, smoking, gambling, cursing, lying, robbing and killing find it acceptable to continue in sin in this one area.  Such people need to spend lots of quality time looking at the first eight verses of this chapter of inspired Scripture!

            There can be no reasonable questions as to what is the topic of this paragraph of the Bible.  In vs. 3 the words “sexual immorality” (“fornication” – KJV) are specifically given.  This term is derived from the original Greek word that gives us our English word “pornography,” and it includes all sexual activity outside the blessed union of holy matrimony.  Let’s make no mistake about it – God is here making much out of that of which many of us make too little! 

            God’s attitude toward sexual sin is given plainly in the seventh of the Ten Commandments – “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14).  Six or seven times depending on the Bible translation used we see God refer to sexual sin as “an abomination.”  That term comes from a Hebrew word that means “something disgusting, filthy or nauseating.”  God hates sexual impurity in all its perverse forms.  His “abomination” statements include what we commonly know as heterosexual adultery or fornication, but they also encompass homosexuality and cross dressing.  His hatred for these things probably is rooted in the simple fact that all of them distort, even destroy, the natural order that God programmed into the human race.  We recall that when God had completed his creative work by giving Eve unto Adam in marriage and a blessed sexual union, He declared that “it was very good” (Genesis 1:26-31).  Adultery, homosexuality and transvestism could not have been included in that “very good” because there was no one on Earth at the time to commit those abominations.

            Because God takes this sin so seriously we should as well.  The verse immediately preceding the one we have today says that God Himself avenges adultery.  The verse that succeeds it says that anyone who rejects this teaching is rejecting God Himself.  Do you think it would be possible to take this issue too seriously?  I think not!

            Now, here is where this issue intersects with our passage of Scripture for today.  This verse says that “God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.”  If we have not repented of all our sins we are still in uncleanness, and God will not call such a one unto Himself.  He only calls those who have repented of their life of sin and of all known sins.  A literal translation of the verse, according to A.T. Robertson’s New Testament Word Pictures, would be “For God has not called us on the basis of uncleanness, but in the sphere of holiness.”  Failure to repent of any sin would immediately disqualify us from being called unto salvation, and thus holiness, by Our Holy God.

            Let’s clarify one thing.  Changing one’s mind about the acceptability of sin in the eyes of God is a good thing, but it accomplishes nothing if not accompanied by a change in lifestyle.  That means that any and all sexual sin that existed in our unsaved past must be abandoned when we come to Christ for cleansing and forgiveness.