One of the key questions for both pastors and laypeople, is how Christians may be motivated and empowered to live a Christian lifestyle worthy of God. Here in his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul gives us profound insight into this question.
Paul’s approach to motivation stands in contrast to guilt, legalism, and many other unhelpful methods of motivating God’s people to obedience.
In the first place, Paul seeks to inspire the Thessalonians with a vision of God’s kingdom and glory; he wants them to taste and see the beauty of living under God’s rule and sharing in his glory. As we seek to motivate one another toward Christian obedience, we must set before our eyes a vision of God in his glory, holiness, and love. We must be stirred up by holy affections, by an appreciation of God’s beauty and grace, by his attractiveness and desirability.
Secondly, we must be motivated by an understanding of God’s power in our lives. The strength to walk in a manner worthy of God does not come from ourselves. It comes from God, who is busy calling us into his kingdom and glory. Jonathan Edwards reminds us that this power is the resurrection power of Christ dwelling in our hearts:
Christ is not in the heart of a saint as in a sepulchre [a tomb], as a dead saviour that does nothing; but as in his temple, one that is alive from the dead. For in the heart where Christ savingly is, there he lives, and exerts himself after the power of that endless life, that he received at his resurrection. Thus every saint who is the subject of the benefit of Christ’s sufferings, is made to know and experience the power of his resurrection.1
Thirdly, Christian obedience is motivated by the knowledge that we do not earn God’s acceptance by what we do. We are accepted by God only because of what he has done for us in Christ: Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand
(Romans 5:1–2, emphasis added). Because of this acceptance we are free from the power of sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:8–11). Now obedience is not a matter of earning God’s approval; rather, it is resting in God’s love and presenting ourselves to him as instruments of righteousness, so that he may work in us what is pleasing in his sight (Romans 6:12–13; Philippians 2:12–13). As long as we operate by guilt or legalism, we believe that we are separated from God until we obey. In that state, we cannot expect or rely on God’s power. And that is why these are such futile motivations.
12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.