His Will, Our Sanctification

1 Thessalonians 4:3-8   
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. 7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. 8 Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.

God’s will is for our sanctification, our conformity to Christ, our godliness.  This begins by cleansing desires from self satisfying to God pleasing, which begins with what gives the greatest sensual pleasure - sexual immorality.  God made sex for a man and his wife alone and a woman and her husband alone.  Any other sexual desires or acts miss the mark of His good pleasure and command to us.  We are not to live for ourselves, but to do the will of God (1 John 2:15-17).  Since we have turned from sin in repentance towards Christ, how can we turn back like unbelievers away from Him who gave His life in perfect obedience to forgive us?  We cannot sin like this without harming others, which breaks the second greatest commandment either (Romans 13:10).  There are consequences for sin.  Therefore, since we are called to holiness, we must not reject God’s good design, but rely on and yield to His Holy Spirit living in us to choose as God-pleasers.  His will is our transforming sanctifying holiness.