Living for God in a Godless Culture

If we claim to love God shouldn’t we then have a strong desire to know what pleases Him? Shouldn’t we want to know His will so that we may live according to it? Of course, we should. I have no desire to please God, then we should question our claim to believe Him or to know Him. What is God’s will? How may we learn it? Can we simply believe and live as the culture around us and find ourselves in the will of God? Or does the will of God lead us to a different path than those who do not know Him? 

These are the questions that the Apostle Paul was answering in the text of Scripture before us today. As new believers, the Thessalonian Christians needed to understand the world around them and their new calling in Jesus Christ. The first-century Roman world was not a moral society. It supported the Jewish law in few ways and of course, Christianity’s moral code was founded, with the Jews, on the Old Testament moral law (Gordon Fee, NICNT, p. 143). 

Illicit sexual behavior goes hand-in-hand with paganism.  A short study of ancient civilizations will bear this out. Ancient Corinth was one of the worst.  Western society has been inching toward this for several generations.  

The church today, as did the early church, must pick up the task of helping new believers be delivered.