How can I please God?

It is an immense thing for those who were once mere men on earth, severed from God and in spirit from each other by sin, only united when united for objects of human will or glory, now as His children with one purpose of heart to walk so as to please God. Yet such is Christianity practically viewed; and it is worthless if not practical. It is true that there is in the light and truth which Christ has revealed by the Holy Ghost the richest material and the fullest scope for the renewed mind and heart. But there is in "the mystery" no breadth nor length, no height nor depth, which does not bear on the state of the affections or the character of the walk and work; and no error more dishonours God or damages man than the divorce of theory from practice. Scripture binds them together indissolubly, warning us solemnly against those who would part them, as evil, the sure enemies of God and man. No! truth is not merely to inform but to sanctify and what we received from those divinely given to communicate it is "how we ought to walk and please God." In that path the youngest believer walks from the first, slave or free, Greek or Scythian, learned or unlearned; from that path none can slip save into sin and shame. It is not, however, a mere defined direction, as in a law or ordinance. As a life is in question, the life of Christ, there is exercise and growth by the knowledge of God. On the state of the soul depends the discernment of God's will in His word, which is overlooked where levity marks the inner condition, or the will is active and unjudged. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Then only is there surefootedness spiritually; and a deepening sense of the word in the intelligence issues in a fuller obedience. One knows God's mind better, and the heart is earnest in pleasing Him. We abound more and more.

This was no new solicitude of the apostle. They knew what charges he gave them through the Lord Jesus. Is not His will, His honour, concerned in a walk pleasing to God? He on earth could say, "I do always those things that please Him;" in heaven He is now occupied with those who are following in the same path here below. We may fail; but is that our aim? He does not fail to help us by His word, as He would also by His grace if we looked to Him and leaned on Him. Do we hear His voice?

In the first place they were to abound more and more in all those practical details of life and behaviour which are pleasing to God. During his short stay in their midst Paul had succeeded in conveying to them an outline of the walk that pleases God though of course there was much to be filled in as to detail. It is one thing however to know and quite another to do, and we are set here to please God in all our activities and ways. The will of God is our sanctification, that is, that we should be set apart from all that defiles in order that we may be wholly for God, and the Apostle had given them definite commandments as from the Lord in keeping with this.

(Vv. 1-2). The Apostle opens this portion of his epistle by reminding these believers that they had learned from him, both by his instructions and manner of life (1 Thess. 2:10-11), how they ought to walk in order to please God. Now he beseeches them that, with the passing of time, their walk should be increasingly for the pleasure of God. The importance of this practical walk is pressed upon us by the reminder that it is a direct charge from the Lord Jesus. We are to beware lest, while rejoicing in the privileges that grace has conferred, we grow slack in the practice that should mark those so highly blessed. The truth that proclaims to us our blessings as believers, also teaches us how to walk as pleasing to God (Comp. Titus 2:11-12).

Having spoken of being unblamable in holiness at the coming of the Lord he exhorts them to live now in sanctification. The motive is to please God. The believer should constantly in his daily life ask himself this question, "Do I please God?" Exhortation to purity in abstaining from fleshly lusts follows. Fornication, licentiousness in various forms were closely connected with the idolatrous worship from which these Thessalonians had been saved. The lust of the flesh was a part of this former religion, as it is still today among different heathen religions. But why these exhortations? Because they were surrounded by these things on all sides, and because the old nature with its tendencies towards these evils was still present with them, as it is with all true believers. No circumstances or position can make the believer secure against these things, without exercise of conscience and self-judgment, and hence these solemn admonitions from the Lord. Each was to possess his own vessel (his own wife) in sanctification and honor, this would be a safe-guard against the numerous immoralities practised among the heathen. If in this matter any one overstepped the rights of another and thus wronged his brother by committing adultery, the Lord would be the avenger; it would be a complete disregard of God who has not called His people to uncleanness, but unto sanctification, to be separated from all these things. Needful were these exhortations for the Thessalonians as they are still to all of us.

In the history in Genesis nothing is said of the faith of Enoch, but we are twice told that he “walked with God”. It is to this fact that the Apostle apparently refers when he says that, before Enoch's translation, “he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” Upon this testimony the Apostle argues that he must have had faith, for without faith it is impossible to please God. The one that comes to God must believe, not only that God is, but that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

"But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." If one does not honestly believe that "God is," then his apparent religious approach to God is thorough hypocrisy. Faith is simply a true recognition of God, and certainly nothing less than this can please God. This is the elementary essential, while the last part of the verse shows the active working of faith, that is, diligently seeking God, which is certainly to be rewarded, in accordance with the faithful nature of God.

Awful conclusion for man as he is! Would that he laid it to heart as the truth, the sentence pronounced by the Judge of all the earth! No fruit for God grows on that tree for ever. There is and must be for the believer a new life in order to fruit-bearing. Not the things that are seen, the things of the flesh, but the revelation of the unseen, the word of God Himself, seen by faith in Christ, nourishes this life; for without faith, the same apostle tells us in another epistle, it is impossible to please God. Now the flesh never trusts God; its mind is enmity against Him. The law brings in His authority and interdicts to the flesh its own way, which is everything to it. Hence its independence proves to be enmity against God; for in virtue of seeking its own will it neither does nor can subject itself to His law. Obedience is essentially incompatible with the self-will, the ἀνομία, of the flesh, which would cease to be itself if it obeyed God. Hence the application of the principle to the unrenewed. "And they that are in flesh cannot please God," whose complacency is in the man that ever sought and did God's will, not His own, and thus ever practised the things agreeable to His Father.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, your reasonable service." (Ver. l.) It is the detailed application of the principle laid down in Romans 6, where we first hear of the Christian reckoning himself dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, under grace, not under law. From this there is no receding to law now, as the tone of the exhortation itself testifies. But the compassions of God are morally to form the believer within and without. Just as in Romans 10 the apostle had taught the value of confession with the mouth as well as of believing with the heart, so here the brethren are entreated to yield their bodies as a sacrifice to God. Many then as now would have been disposed to have professed an inward devotedness with license for the outward man. The possibility of this self-deception is here precluded, the more strikingly as the exhortation is made not to Jews with their system of external observances, but to Christians who know that without faith it is impossible to please God. Thus is secured the service of the man as a whole; just as the apostle says elsewhere in his desires for the Thessalonian saints, "The God of peace himself sanctify you wholly, and your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Again, the word "to present," or yield, is so put as to convey the idea of a completed act summed up in its conclusion. It is not mere effort as under law, but a thing done once for all, though of course stamped on the entire christian walk up to the last according to that beginning. The Spirit of God contemplates nothing less for every soul called of God out of this world, reconciled by the death of His Son and to be saved by His life. How could He lower the standard of Christ?

But the mention of "bodies" in God's wisdom associates itself with the thought of a sacrifice so familiar then to every mind even among the Gentiles. Only in Christianity it is an incomparably more intimate and personal question than in Judaism. Animals devoted to death and sacrifice do not suffice or suit, but our own "bodies," and this of course as a living sacrifice contrasted with those of dead beasts, which of themselves left self unjudged and untouched. With the Christian's self-sacrifice God is well pleased. It only is holy now, what was once legally so being in truth proved profane, now that the true light shines; it is acceptable to Him as the expression of giving God His true place, and of man, the believer, taking his. Without this the show of doing good and communicating is vain; with it such sacrifices are indeed well pleasing to God. Further, this is "our intelligent service." Worldly elements are condemned, carnal ordinances passed away, formal worship at an end. God will only be served now intelligently. It is no question of reason judging for itself without the word, but of the Spirit guiding the mind by divine revelation understood growingly.

(V. 1). The Apostle appeals to believers on the ground of the mercies of God by which they have been so greatly blessed — the mercies that have been unfolded to us in the first eleven chapters. Seeing that we have been so richly blessed it becomes us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. This is our only intelligent service. In pressing the deep need of governing our spirits, and having our affections held in check, we may be in danger of thinking this is all, and that we can be careless as to the way we use our bodies. Here, then, it is our bodies that are to be yielded to God. Our feet to walk in the path of obedience, our hands employed in His service, our tongues to speak as a witness for God. This will involve sacrifice, for the natural inclination is to use the body to carry out the will of the flesh. To restrain the flesh involves the sacrifice of much that nature desires. The body presented to God is not only a sacrifice, but it is a living sacrifice. We may present our money, and our goods, but such gifts, however right in their place, are not "living". With such gifts there may be, at the same time, much self-indulgence of the body. Moreover it is to be presented as a "holy" sacrifice. For God's service there is required not only a living body, but a "holy" body. Only as the body is held in holiness will the sacrifice be acceptable.

In verses 9 and 10, our walk is connected with our spiritual state; God does not intend that these should be separated. To have simply the knowledge of God's will, in fact, without walking worthy, would be mischief to me, because I should then be without exercise as to being a spiritual saint. But the being "filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding," is in order "that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work." I must get divine wisdom and spiritual understanding; but then this acquaintance with His will is here connected with the state of soul. There might be something in the state of my soul that hinders the full following of Christ. It is, "that ye might walk worthy of the Lord." How can I do that if I do not know what Christ is?