1 Th 4:1 “For the rest, therefore, brethren, we beseech you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, so also you may walk, that you may abound more.”
“To walk and to please God.”
Thus it is said of Enoch in Genesis 5 that “Enoch walked with God,” that is, he lived so holily and devoutly as though he always had God present before his eyes and revered Him. Therefore in every action he proceeded most cautiously, modestly, and religiously; he was in all things consenting to God and to His will, just as a man walking with a friend or with his lord everywhere conforms himself to him and agrees with him in all things. Hence the Lord “took and carried him away to Himself,” as one higher than earth, worthy of God and the angels, indeed as a familiar friend.
For this reason God commands Abraham in Genesis 17:1: “I am God Almighty; walk before Me and be perfect.” It is great art and wisdom to know how to walk with God.
“So also you should walk, that you may abound more.”
That is, I ask you so to conduct yourselves that day by day you may advance in the path begun—namely, that you strive daily to surpass yourselves, to progress and excel in Christian life and virtues. So Anselm explains it. The Greek text does not have “so also you should walk,” but only ἵνα περισσεύητε μᾶλλον—“that you may abound more”—supply: in this walking and pleasing of God, so to speak. Chrysostom and Theophylact explain it thus: “that you may abound more,” that is, that you may desire to do something beyond what is commanded, that you may surpass what is prescribed. For as the earth returns and brings forth only the seeds it has received, so the soul ought not merely to rest in the precepts received, but to transcend them.
Note: it is proper to a Christian not to stand still but to walk and ever to make progress in virtue and Christian life, so that he may daily say with Psalm 76, “Now I have begun,” and with Psalm 83, “They shall go from virtue to virtue.” In Hebrew, מחיל אל חיל (Mechail el chail), which Jerome renders, “They shall go from strength to strength,” because they become daily stronger by the grace of God, until they ascend to Zion—that is, to heaven—where they shall openly see the God of gods.
Beautifully does St. Bernard write to Drogo (Ep. 34): “No one is perfect who does not desire to be more perfect; and in this he proves himself more perfect, that he tends toward greater perfection.”
1 Th 4:2 “For you know what precepts I gave you through the Lord Jesus.”
That is, by the authority and in the name of the Lord Jesus. I, Paul, as His legate, have given you these precepts. As if he said: The precepts I have commanded are not mine but Christ’s. Christ is the lawgiver; I am Christ’s herald. For many mandates of faith, virtues, and sacraments in particular Christ entrusted to me to propose and deliver to you and to other Christians; the rest He committed to me to establish and commanded that I prescribe those laws to Christians which I judged suitable to them according to circumstances. Thus a parliament is said to enact an edict “through the king,” because it enacts it in the king’s stead, name, and authority.
1 Th 4:3 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication.”
Note first: here the will of God is not that which is called the will of good pleasure (beneplaciti), by which God creates and does whatever pleases Him, but that which is called the will of sign (signi), by which God signifies what He wills and commands us to do—namely, that we strive after holiness.
Secondly, chastity alone is here called sanctity because it is opposed to fornication and uncleanness. Yet, as St. Dionysius says, integral sanctity, both in God and in us and in the angels, is a most perfect purity, free from all defilement and contamination; thus sanctity is opposed to every sin and is the completion of the virtues. But here, and in 1 Corinthians 7, it is opposed especially to fornication and impurity. Hence he adds:
1 Th 4:4-5 “That each one of you know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor.”
What is this “vessel”? St. Augustine (On Marriage and Concupiscence I.8; Against Julian IV.10; V.9) understands by “vessel” the wife, so that each one may use his wife honestly and chastely. Thus Proverbs 5:15 says, “Drink water from your own cistern,” where the Septuagint renders, “Drink water from your own vessels.” The sense is: draw the chaste, pure, and fruitful pleasure of marriage from your own wife, who should be to you like a pure vessel, free from the mud of fornication, jealousy, and quarrels. So Bede, Jansenius, and others interpret it. Likewise St. Peter (1 Pet 3:7) admonishes husbands to dwell with their wives as with the weaker vessel.
Accordingly, the Apostle seems here to command husbands not only to abstain from another’s wife but also to use their own as a holy vessel, chastely and moderately. Jerome (or rather Rabanus) says on Lamentations 1 that husbands are commanded to know fixed times for intercourse; for, as Ecclesiastes says, “There is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” Let the wife beware lest, overcome by passion, she entice her husband; and let the husband not force his wife, thinking that the pleasure of marriage ought at every time to be subject to him. Hence Paul says that each should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification. As Xystus the philosopher aptly said: “An ardent lover of his own wife is an adulterer.”
Yet because among the Thessalonians many, especially the younger, were still unmarried, and since the Apostle assigns this “vessel” to each one universally, it is more general and better, with Chrysostom, Theodore, Theophylact, Ambrose, Oecumenius, and Anselm, to understand by “vessel” the body. In Hebrew idiom the body is called a vessel, that is, an instrument of man. As a craftsman uses his rule or trowel as an instrument for his work, so the soul uses the body as its instrument and organ for all its actions—indeed, it cannot even understand without bodily senses and phantasms. Plato likewise said that the body is the vessel of the soul. Thus Paul is called a “vessel of election,” that is, an instrument chosen by God for the conversion of the Gentiles. So in Genesis 49 Simeon and Levi are called “vessels of iniquity,” that is, instruments of unjust slaughter.
Or, secondly, the body is called the vessel of the soul more properly because as a vessel receives and contains wine, so the body receives and contains the soul. And as a foul and putrid vessel corrupts the wine, so the filth and pollutions of the body defile the soul. Hence the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 6:18: “Every sin which a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body,” because he pollutes and contaminates it.
David gives an example (1 Sam 21). When he asked the priest for the loaves of proposition during famine, and the priest inquired whether the young men were clean, especially from women, David answered: “We have kept ourselves from yesterday and the day before, and the vessels of the young men are holy”—that is, their bodies are undefiled. Although the way is common and profane (that is, the use is lay and ordinary), yet “it shall be sanctified in the vessels,” meaning that the bread would not be defiled but would be received into holy and pure bodies in this necessity. So Abulensis explains it.
The Apostle therefore wills that each one possess his vessel—that is, his body—as a master, not as a slave serving the desires of the flesh, in sanctification and honor; that is, holily, not in the affection of lust, so that the mind may use it chastely and honorably—not “in the passion of desire,” that is, not serving the desires of the flesh, but rather that the flesh serve the right will of the mind, as Anselm says. A philosopher once said to a young voluptuary: “Are you not ashamed, being freeborn, to make yourself the slave of your body?” And Anacharsis inscribed on statues: “The tongue, the belly, and the genitals must be restrained,” for nothing is more disgraceful than unbridled speech and luxury; lust makes a beast of a man (Laertius, I.9).
Chrysostom and Theophylact take “passions of desire” more broadly for delights, riches, idleness, sloth, and whatever inflames concupiscence; when these are cut off, chastity of mind and body is safe.
1 Th 4:6 “And that no one overreach nor circumvent his brother in the matter.”
Here the Apostle does not treat of fraud in money or unjust gain, but of injustice and fraud in the marriage bed—that is, of adultery. For he is speaking of lust and impurity. He calls adultery “overreaching” and “circumventing”: overreaching (ὑπερβαίνειν) because one transgresses and climbs over into another’s bed; circumventing (πλεονεξία) because one deceitfully usurps another’s wife—an excessive desire not of riches but of illicit pleasures. Thus in Ephesians 4:19 the Apostle uses πλεονεξία (“avarice”) for immoderate lust, as I explained there.
1 Th 4:7 “For God has not called us unto uncleanness, but unto sanctification.”
That is, unto chastity. Christianity is a profession of chastity and a detestation of lust, so that Gentiles addicted to lust must renounce it and embrace chastity when they receive baptism and Christianity. Therefore in baptism God gives them the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle adds.
CONTINUE
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