Day 38 — Holy and Honourable 

Opening Prayer

Holy God, you have called me to belong to you and have given me your Holy Spirit. As I read your word, teach me to honour you with my body and to seek the good of others in faithful love. Amen.

Headline

Chastity is the Spirit-enabled habit of ordering our sexuality towards fidelity to God and the loving good of ourselves and others.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-18

Comment

Yesterday, Jesus exposed the look that takes. Today Paul describes the life which must replace it. His positive words are “holy and honourable” (v.4). Chastity is not merely abstinence, virginity or celibacy. It is a virtue needed by every Christian: the Spirit-enabled habit of ordering our sexuality towards fidelity to God and the loving good of ourselves and others.

Paul begins with our relationship to God. The Thessalonians have learned how to “live in order to please God” (v.1), and Paul urges them to do so “more and more”. Chastity is not about preserving a respectable image or proving our strength. It is part of sanctification: God gradually making his people holy. Paul commends real growth without pretending that anyone has arrived.

That growth includes learning “to control your own body in a way that is holy and honourable” (v.4). Our desires are powerful, but they are not sovereign. We do not have to obey every impulse simply because it feels authentic or urgent. Christian self-control does not despise the body. It receives the body as God’s good creation and refuses to make sexual desire the ruler of the whole person.

Yet Paul immediately moves from self-control to the wellbeing of someone else: “no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister” (v.6). The expression carries the idea of crossing a boundary in order to grasp something which is not ours. Lust asks, “What can I obtain?” Chastity asks, “Will my attention, words and actions honour this person before God?” As Christian author, Karen Swallow Prior, puts it, “Chastity is less about control of oneself than about love of the other.” Or, more precisely, Christian self-control exists for the sake of such love.

This applies in every season of life. Within marriage, chastity means sexual and emotional faithfulness, tenderness and mutuality; marriage never gives one spouse permission to pressure or use the other. In dating, it refuses to treat escalating physical intimacy as proof of commitment and respects another’s conscience and boundaries. For those who are single, widowed or divorced, chastity is not a waiting room before real life begins. It is a positive way of loving God and others faithfully with one’s embodied life.

Paul’s reference to those who “do not know God” (v.5) is not an invitation to feel morally superior to our neighbours. His point is that knowing God reshapes what we believe our bodies and other people are for. The people around us are not merely attractive bodies, possible partners or sources of affirmation. They belong to the God who sees how they are treated. Sexual wrongdoing matters because it wrongs people and rejects God’s authority (vv.6, 8). His warning is serious, but it gives no licence for personal revenge or for concealing abuse. God’s concern for justice should move us to protect those who are being harmed and to bring wrongdoing into the light.

The passage ends not with our resolve but with “the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit” (v.8). The God who calls us to holiness also supplies his transforming presence. Chastity grows as the Spirit teaches us to see our bodies as belonging to God, to tell the truth about our desires and to practise love until honour becomes habitual.

Why does God want me to hear this today? Perhaps because I think chastity is only about suppressing desire or avoiding forbidden acts. God calls me to something richer: freedom from being ruled by desire and freedom to love others without needing to possess them. He does not merely command that life from a distance; he gives me his Spirit.

Reflect

• Do you tend to think of chastity chiefly as restriction, or as learning to love in a holy and honourable way?
• How would asking whether your choices honour the other person change a current relationship or habit?
• Where do you need to depend on the Holy Spirit rather than relying on secrecy, shame or willpower?

Action

Choose one relationship in which sexual attraction, longing or questions of intimacy are present. Before your next interaction, pray for that person’s good by name. Ask: “What would it mean to honour them before God today?” Then take one concrete action shaped by the answer—respect a boundary, refuse pressure, speak truthfully, keep a promise or offer kindness without seeking anything in return.

Closing Prayer

Holy God, thank you for calling me to belong to you and for giving me your Holy Spirit. Forgive me when I let desire rule me or seek my good at another person’s expense. Teach me to honour you with my body, to respect the dignity and boundaries of others, and to practise faithful love in every relationship. Make me holy and honourable, for the glory of Jesus. Amen.