PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

Educating Our Children Concerning The Lusts of the Flesh

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has become tasteless, with what shall it be salted?

The world is decaying and the Christian community has lost its saltiness. Especially in the realm of the lusts of the flesh and sexual conduct, the Christian community is becoming corrupted with the immorality of the age. As parents we need to fellowship with one another concerning how we can guide our children into living as proper people before God, preserving their human vessels to serve the Lord. It is extremely important that we find a way to have an intimate part in the base and development of the sexual views and attitudes of our children. For this purpose, we must build a strong relationship and involvement with our children throughout their toddler years right through puberty and into young adulthood.

Parents are the most important factor in the growth of the view our children have concerning their sexuality. We must be involved. Peers are the primary way that most children learn about sexual activity. In today's educational system, they have heard about and are educated concerning sex, but what they have heard is misguided and often perverted information. The media, especially television invades them with distorted and evil concepts. They haven't heard of proper human living or the image of God;the spiritual dimension attached to their humanity. It is important that parents get involved with their children in the process (the gradual growth--not majoring on the biological aspects) of their development as proper human beings. The real issue at hand for the parents is character.

We must not only warn concerning the dangers of fornication and sexual promiscuity, but shape their character with a strong and positive attitude toward their calling by God in sanctification. They should be helped to realize that marriage, including the intimacy of the marriage bed, is ordained by God and to be held in honor. This is the responsibility of the parents before God.

The Epistle of First Thessalonians was written to new believers, to those who had been in the Lord less than a year. For this reason, in the first three chapters of this book, we cannot find anything to compare with what is revealed in Romans, Ephesians, or Galatians. Paul stayed with the Thessalonians for approximately a month. In that short period of time he did not have the opportunity to cover many deeper truths....

We have emphasized the fact that in 1 Thessalonians we have a word to beginners, to new believers. Those who are working with young people or with new believers can receive from this book both a direction and an outline to follow. If they follow this outline and direction, they will lay a good foundation in their work with new believers.

A WORD OF WARNING

In this message we come to chapter four of 1 Thessalonians. In chapter one we have the structure and origin of a holy life for the church life; in chapter two, the fostering of such a life; and in chapter three the establishing of the three items of the basic structure of this life. After covering these matters, in chapter four Paul injects an inoculation into the believers concerning the most serious germ that damages the church life, the germ of fornication.

Fornication has its source in lust. People would never have a chance to indulge themselves in this lust if they did not have some form of social life. Social life is a hotbed of fornication. A person who does not have a social life is not in danger of falling into fornication. If you live alone and have little contact with others, it is very unlikely that you will commit fornication. But the church life is a meeting life, a communal life. In other words, the church life is a social life. In order to have the church life, we cannot avoid having a communal life, a social life, in which we have considerable contact with one another.

According to history, the problem of fornication has come up over and over again in one church after another. The facts prove that Christian workers in particular are often snared by fornication because they have so much contact with others. Furthermore, fornication has been the factor in damage caused to those in the Pentecostal movement. In certain places this movement has been limited because of the sin of fornication.

In 4:3 Paul says, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that you abstain from fornication." God's will is that His redeemed people, the believers in Christ, should live a life of holiness according to His holy nature, a life wholly separated unto Him from anything other than Him. For this He is sanctifying us thoroughly (5:23).

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