What Does 1 Thessalonians 4:3 Mean?
For this is the will of God, your setting apart, that you hold yourselves away from sexual immorality.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:THE KEY
God’s will is named as your set-apartness, made visible in the distance you keep from sexual immorality.
THE MEANING
God’s will is named here as your being set apart. That reality takes a concrete shape in your present life: holding yourself away from sexual immorality. Your body is included in what belongs to God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that God’s will is only a hidden plan unrelated to bodily life; here, it is expressed in a concrete boundary.
THE ROOT
ἁγιασμός
hagiasmos
GROWS FROM
ἁγι-
hagi-
The Greek word family of being set apart, consecrated, or belonging to God for a distinct purpose.
“setting apart” in this verse is hagiasmos. “Sanctification” belongs to the same word family as being set apart. Here, that is not left as an abstract status: the verse gives it a visible shape in abstaining from sexual immorality.
ALSO GROWS
hagios: set apart; holy
ἅγιος
This adjective shares the word family and shows the quality named by “sanctification.”
hagiazō: set apart; consecrate
ἁγιάζω
This verb names the action behind the state of being set apart.
hagiosynē: holiness; set-apartness
ἁγιωσύνη
This related noun shows the same word family describing a lived quality.
ἀπέχεσθαι
apechesthai
GROWS FROM
ἔχω
echō
To have or hold; in compounds, the sense can extend to holding something away or sharing in it.
“hold yourselves away” in this verse is apechesthai. The verb translated “abstain” carries the sense of holding oneself away. Its base also appears in words for sharing or partaking, so the verse frames a real separation from one thing rather than a vague inner intention.
ALSO GROWS
apechō: hold away; keep at a distance
ἀπέχω
This is the verb family behind the form used here, making abstention a concrete distance.
metechō: share in; partake
μετέχω
This related compound uses the same base to express participation, sharpening the contrast with holding oneself away.
THE PATTERN
Set-apartness becomes visible in the way embodied life is held apart from what violates it.
So set yourselves apart, and be set apart, for I am the LORD your God.Flee the selling of bodies. Every shortcoming that a person does is outside the body; but the one who sells bodies misses the mark against his own body.Therefore I urge you, brothers, through the compassions of God, to set your bodies beside God as a living sacrifice, set apart, well-pleasing to him, which is your true service.THE THREAD
But from him you are in Jesus the Anointed One, who became for us wisdom from God, and alignment, and setting apart, and the buying back.The same Greek word for sanctification appears in both verses: here it names God’s will for you, while 1 Corinthians names it among what comes from God. That shared word opens set-apartness as something received from God and given a concrete shape in life.
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