1 Thessalonians 5:22
Abstain from every form of evil.
Today’s verse comes from the very tail-end of a short paragraph of brief moral instruction from Paul to the Thessalonians. What is striking about it is how unstriking it is. Paul is not the first person in the universe to tell his hearers “don’t do evil.” A brand-new student of the New Testament, presented with this verse as the first sample of Paul’s writing might well wonder what all the fuss is about and why Paul is regarded so highly. After all, he’s not saying anything different here than practically every religious or philosophical figure in the history the world. In one way or another, every decent moral instructor tells us to do good and “abstain from every form of evil.” But that’s the point. For as Samuel Johnson observed, good moral teachers are primarily here to remind us more than to instruct us. Paul, when it comes to morality, says pretty much what every moral teacher says: be good, not bad. What is new for Paul is not basic moral teaching known to every three-year-old since the beginning of time. Rather, it is the redemption of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit whereby a brand-new power has been unleashed in the world to enable us to actually live up to and even surpass these simple moral principles. Paul’s good news is that what was once an unattainable ideal is now the free gift of God’s grace. Receive that gift today.
