And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you, (13) so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. (4:1) Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; (2) for you know what commandents we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
The letter to the Thessalonians was written by the apostle Paul. In our verses today his emphasis is for every Christian to want God to use his or her life to impact others for eternity – our prayers are to be focused on the spiritual growth of others. One of the great weakness of contemporary evangelical Christianity is the comparative neglect of Christian ethics in teaching and practice – the lack of instruction as to how we might walk and please God as the foundation for Christian behavior. As we grow older it is easy to drift into a humdrum spiritual life. It becomes routine and it takes work and effort to keep the spiritual life fresh.
Faith in Christ as our personal savior is more than mental assent to the gospel – some continue to live for all the world can offer. But to be reborn means God has changed our hearts and our desires are new. We love God rather than being indifferent toward Him. We are to seek to obey the Lord and please Him. Our motivation changes from striving to earn God’s favor to wanting to please Him because we are objects of His favor. We are not free to decide how we want to live as Christians. The way we learn to walk with God (a walk, not a leap) is to learn and obey His commandments. To obey God’s commandments is not legalism but the Christian’s response to His grace. These are not helpful hints for happy living but God’s word of life and not culturally relative.
During the war years, in June, 1941, c.s.Lewis delivered his vision of Christianity in his (and my favorite) Weight of Glory. Lewis writes of our relationship with God, ‘Indeed how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God.’