Sons of Light

Sons of Light and the Identity That Leads to Obedience

We'll turn, if you would, please, in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians and chapter 5. And I'll read verses 4 through 11 to you this morning. As you're turning there, just to catch us up a little bit, the Apostle Paul is continuing here to teach about the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and what is incumbent upon the people of God as they await the coming of Jesus Christ.

In other words, how are we to conduct ourselves? What should our lives look like as we await this coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? You remember from the previous message in the first three verses of this chapter, Paul pointed out how the day of the Lord, which is, of course, Jesus' return, will be a day of surprise, a day of terror to those who do not know Him, those who rejected Him during this life.

And he tells us it's going to come on like a woman's labor pains, something that is inexorable, something that starts whether you like it or not, and something that will certainly accomplish that which it is intended for.

And so once the day of the Lord begins, like the birth process, Jesus Christ will come and will be here and history be wrapped up. So labor like that, once it begins its course, will complete it. Now in verses 4 through 11, he's going to draw for us the distinctions between we who are in Christ Jesus awaiting that day and those who are not.

And the focus is going to be upon our spiritual heritage in Jesus Christ and what that implies for our behavior as we await His coming. So please stand with me for the reading of God's Word, 1 Thessalonians 5.

I'll read verses 4 through 11. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day does surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.

So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of His Word. Please be seated. When we come to the ethical demands of the gospel, and we have before us a couple of easy choices to make. We are going to decide whether to obey or to disobey.

And how many of you would say, well, I choose to disobey the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, no hands are going to be raised up on that, so we all choose to obey. And how do we accomplish that? Well, the short answer to that is we don't.

But I ask you this morning, do you want to obey the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you want to live waiting for His return the way He would have us to live? Well, the easy way to do that is just to do the doing of the Word of God.

Just to take the imperatives, turn them into sort of a checklist, if you will, which a lot of us like to do, set it forth on a schedule, say, okay, I'm going to do these things, and then I'll be okay.

And I have for you this morning a much more difficult path to choose, one that's harder to be on. The Apostle Paul gives us an identity. And as we all know from just common sense and the practice of the world in general, identity leads to practice.

The identity that you have, your self-identifying factors, are going to lead to certain decisions that you make based upon what that identity brings to you in terms of worldview, in terms of ethics, in terms of morality.

So before we go into the imperatives, before I stand here and pound on this pulpit, which God willing will be next week as much as I ever pound on a pulpit, I want to bring forth to you your identity in Christ.

The title of this message is Sons of Light. You have a spiritual heritage that you must understand before you get to the doing. Oh, we must do. Oh, we must obey the Lord Jesus Christ. That's clear to all of us.

Prior to that, you must understand your identity in Christ. Without this, the doing is just a work of the flesh. And what does the Apostle Paul say? That all is not of faith is sin. And therefore, if we proceed without being truly enmeshed in this identity that the Apostle Paul brings forth here in these verses, if we don't understand this identity before we get to the imperatives, to the commandments, it's all just doing.

It's all just a checklist. Let's understand who we really are in Christ Jesus and what the Apostle Paul gives us as a basis for this before we get to the imperatives. If you want imperatives, if you want commands, if you want me to tell you what to do, you're going to have to come back next week.

Because this morning, my purpose before we get to the doing is to tell you what you are, what the Lord Jesus Christ in his word says we are. Identity, you see, is terribly important. Identity leads to practice.

The standards of the group with whom you identify yourself become those by which you conduct everything. You become like, if we can use the term we hear all the time now, of herd immunity. Now, I don't want to delve into the religion of offense that's out there in the world, but I kind of resent being called part of a herd.

We are a people. But the idea there is that you assimilate the practices of that large group with each with which you identify. And that makes a lot of sense. How are we identified in Christ Jesus? If you by faith, repentance for your sin, and by faith in Jesus Christ, and what he accomplished, then this is your identity that leads to the practice.

Let us get things in the right order. Identity leads to practice, not the other way around. The other way around is just doing. Your identity in Christ was determined before the foundation of the world.

We have that in chapter 1 verse 4 of Ephesians. And it becomes yours, not by any striving upon your part, but by the transforming power of God's Holy Spirit. If you by faith are a believer in Jesus Christ, then here's your identity.

And here's the focus this morning. It's an identity that must be understood, an identity that leads to right practices, an identity that the Apostle Paul gives as the basis before we get to the doing.

It's so important. Without the proper identity, we're only going to strive in our own power to do what pleases God, which brings only failure, only frustration, only a stunted growth, if any growth at all, into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you want to know how to progress in the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you want to know how to make greater strides into his image for which you were predestined to be conformed? Identify yourself properly.

Or to say it even a little more accurately, understand what the scripture says is your real identity. And the call of the gospel is to be what God has made you to be. And in our passage this morning, that transformed identity could not be any more clear.

The key is verse 5. The key is verse 5. For you are all children of light, children of day. This is your identity in Christ. Children of light, children of the day, as we have it in our English Standard Version.

And I want to spend some time. I need to tell you how I'm going to read this verse to you as we go through this message. It's going to be a little different than what I just read from the ESV. And you need to understand why I'm going to read it the way I do.

I'm not off in my own little never-never land. There's some major translations of the Bible, major versions that agree with what I'm going to give to you. But I want you to understand why this is important.

And then we're going to talk about this identity, which I haven't really given to you quite yet. The first thing I want you to understand in verse 5, this key verse here, is that there's no word the in the verse.

It says in our ESV, for your children, all children of light, children of the day. Well, the was added. It says children of light, children of day. The other thing we need to understand is that the Greek has no indefinite article.

This is not going to be a long lecture. We'll get through this quickly. There's no word a. So when Jesus starts the parable and says there was a man, that little word, that single letter is not in the Greek.

If it's not there, it's assumed there was a man. There was man is what it literally says. There was a man. Now this becomes important because sometimes the word the is assumed to be there and is exaggerated in its importance by its absence.

And so we have here the article, the definite article left out in order to amplify its importance. Third thing I want you to understand is that where it says you are children of light, children translates the word that is normally translated as sons.

Okay, so I'm going to say sons of light when I go through this. And fourth and last, in Hebraic thought, which was certainly Paul's thought, when someone is called a son, they're called a son because he or she lives according to the pattern set by their ancestors, such as when King Hezekiah, centuries after King David died, is said to have walked in the ways of his father David.

Or when Jesus told the unbelieving Pharisees, you are of your father the devil, and you do your father's desires. So I took a little bit of time on this, and that lecture is over. And we'll jump into our message here.

I took a time because it's so important. You see, identity leads to practice, and the gospel is never you making yourself better. It is us being better because God has made us better by the transforming power of his son, Jesus Christ, who is not better.

He is the best, as we just sang. He's remade you. He's given you a heart to believe the gospel, and he's remaking you into the image of his son, Jesus Christ. So what's this identity that gives us the wherewithal to do the doing of the Bible?

To follow the imperatives, to obey the commandments. Don't just do them. Understand who you are first, and then see where the compliance with the imperatives falls into place. Your identity is this. You are sons of the light and sons of the day.

Emphasis mine. You see the difference with what you have in your ESV Bible there? It's to emphasize this identifying factor. The light, the day. That's the basis for your conduct. That's the basis for your thoughts.

That's the basis for even your entire worldview. You are sons of the light, and this is where we're going to focus this day, on what light really means. And God willing, we'll circle back onto this passage next week, and we'll talk about, okay, now that you know who you are, let's see about what we're supposed to do.

The Light of Creation and the Order of the Gospel

Sons of the light. Light brings order. Light brings exposure. Light brings presence. To understand what this means, you need to understand that if you just go to the doing, you take an easy way out. Because to be a son of the light is to live a courageous Christian life.

Let me just say plainly, it takes some guts. It takes more guts to understand who you are before you start the doing, than it does just to do the doing. Light brings order. Light brings exposure. Light is God's presence.

So light is order, for you are sons of the light, and sons of the day. I want to think about light with you for a moment, because the Apostle Paul says, you are sons, you descend from the light. Now the light, of course, is Jesus Christ, and we're going to quote some of the verses you might expect in a few moments.

You're sons of the light. What is light in the Bible? Where is Paul thinking here? Well, the first words we have from the lips of God, in Genesis chapter 1, what is the first thing we have where we get the quotes in our Bible?

God said, let there be light. That's Genesis chapter 1, verse 3. And if we work our way up towards verse 1 in that, verse 2 is going to say, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And just before that, the earth was without form and void.

And back to the end of verse 2, there in Genesis chapter 1, what does it say? And the Spirit of God was hovering, or brooding, if you will, over the face of the waters. Now many people object to the creation account because we have light created before there's anything available that can shed light.

Light comes from the sun. Sun doesn't come until the fourth day. If the sun's not there, then there couldn't have been light on the first day. But you see, light in the Bible is rarely used to describe some physical condition.

It's rarely used to describe the ability to see with your eyes. That would reduce one of the most important metaphors for God's work to something like a super flashlight. Now light is a metaphor for something very different.

Almost always when it's used in the Bible, it's used for God's presence. It's used for the light of God coming into the world. It's used for his works in the world. The scripture says that the earth was formless and void.

That's part of the darkness. Formless and void. It doesn't mean that the earth had no physical form. It's a metaphorical medley for chaos, for confusion, for lack of purpose. And that being the case, light being a metaphor as well.

Light is God's redeeming power. Light is God's spirit brooding over the waters and bringing order and purpose from chaos and disarray. And the apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 5, you are sons of this.

You are sons of that light. And so now we're just approaching the importance of what Paul writes in that verse about being sons of the light. This identity that you have in Christ. This identity you must have in Christ before you attempt to follow the commandments.

Now I'm not saying go off into never and ever land and anarchy and just do whatever you want. No, we're not saying that at all. What I'm saying is your compliance, your obedience to God must come first from this faith-filled identity as sons of light.

This is the importance of what Paul is saying here in 1 Thessalonians 5. As we so often say, the indicative, meaning the statements of fact of who you are in Christ, lead to the imperative. The obedience to Christ.

The ordering, the chaos-disrupting light of Jesus Christ is what we're talking about here. Jesus who said of himself, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

So what are you sons of? Sons of light? So you're sons of order. The first thing God says, let there be light. And that's the spirit brooding over the chaos, over the purposelessness of creation as it first came into being.

That's the light. Sons of order. The chaos of your disbelief brought to purpose and order through the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the light of God's glow, to Jesus who is the light of the world.

See, only he can still the turbulence, the chaos, the purposelessness that comes from sin. Only he can bring order to a soul, even in a world that seems determined to bring confusion and disorder and chaos.

So I want to ask you, very early in this message, do you have this kind of orderliness? Do you have this light in you that brings order and purpose from chaos and confusion? I don't mean an organized life with day planners full of activities scheduled out and meticulously followed.

I mean the confidence of being ordered by Christ in his word. You know, a couple of messages back in 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 11, where Paul says you to live quietly, to live quiet lives. Well, he doesn't mean, as we explained, he doesn't mean just don't be noisy.

It means to have a quiet disposition. It means to have an attitude of confidence in Christ in the midst of a turbulent world. This is what it means to be sons of the light. Not just children of light, sons, descendants of the light, which is Jesus Christ.

This is your identity. This is the basis for your obedience to the commandments. Because if you're not a son of the light, if you're not a son of God by faith in Jesus Christ and that adoption that we have because of because of that faith that he gives you, then you're just striving in your own flesh.

You're on an exercise machine like a hamster in a wheel, and you're getting nowhere, but you're spending a lot of energy. Do you ever feel like this? You ever feel like I'm working so hard. I've put together my checklist.

I've read the commandments. I've gone through Proverbs. I do everything it says, and I'm still thus far from having grown anywhere into the image of Jesus Christ. Perhaps you don't realize first of all comes identity.

You're sons of the light. Sons of the light comes first. What does light do? What does light do? Light exposes. Light exposes things. We are not of the night or of the darkness, says the apostle Paul.

Well, night and darkness mean much the same thing here. And as I say those words, think back again to Genesis where the earth was formless and void, and dark was over the face of the waters. Darkness, the opposite of light from which you are descended if you're in Jesus Christ, the opposite of light by which you're born again.

Sons of light, of order, not of darkness, not of chaos, not of disorder. So what is the darkness which Paul says we are not? If you're identified as light, you're not darkness. That's pretty clear. What is this darkness which we are not of?

What brings it on? Well, in a word, sin. Sin brings on darkness. Sin is a dark blotch on the soul. Sin is the chaos-inducing cancer that threatens the soul with immeasurable loss. Sin is the formless void over which the spirit broods, bringing peace and order.

And this is why you are not that. We are not of the night. We are not of the darkness. And why? Because darkness hides things. In the darkness, you can't see things. When you close the door and you turn out the light, you have privacy.

The darkness gives you that cover. The cover that we often, too often, use for things that bring disorder and chaos and confusion back to the soul. Light means exposure. And here's what I was saying in the beginning, that this is a message that takes some courage.

Because if you're going to identify as a son of light, you identify as a son of something that's going to expose you to yourself. The light of Jesus Christ brings order. How? By exposing disorder. So can we say it brings righteousness by exposing our evil?

It brings sanctification by exposing our wickedness and our sins. Christ said, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Darkness hides things. That's why you're not of the darkness, brethren.

You are not darkness. You are sons of light. You see, you can hide your sin from me. I tend to be a fairly positive person. Some people are a little bit more realistic or a little bit more cynical. But you can still hide your sin from them, too.

You can hide it from people who are very close to you. You can hide it from your parents, from your children, from your spouse. It gets harder as that circle gets closer, does it not? It does get harder.

And then we have to weave together and remember who I told what and what I exposed this one to or to whom to expose this particular thing or not. And it becomes harder and harder to keep it together, but you can do it.

Some people can do it successfully for all their lives. You can hide your sin. You can even ignore the darkness so long and so effectively that you yourself forget all about it. And this is what the Apostle Paul means.

He says, you're not of darkness. You're not of those who hide your sin. Why are we afraid to let our sin be known? Could it be because we don't quite believe that Christ Jesus truly forgives someone as wicked as me?

That can't be, brethren. There is no sin that is beyond the cross of Jesus Christ. There's nothing that you could have done that Jesus Christ didn't suffer for adequately before God the Father. You can ignore the darkness so long that you forget all about it.

That you've built up this image of yourself, this false identity of yourself, that doesn't remember those things, that you've covered it with stories and with lies for so long that's not even a part of you.

Light is exposure. And here's the courage that we need as Christians to come into the light, no matter what gets exposed. And trust God that what is exposed is for our good, is to draw us closer to Christ Jesus in his image.

That's why we're not of the darkness. That's why we're no longer in that chaos, that purposelessness. I ask you, what is so attractive about something so hideous as the darkness of sin? Well, Jesus Christ, as we might expect, he puts his finger right on the matter.

In John chapter 3, beginning of verse 19, in his famous discussion with the Jewish leader Nicodemus, Christ says, and this is the judgment, the light, of course he means himself, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Why do you love darkness? Why do you love not confessing sin? For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works be exposed. This is why, is it not? Because we don't want to see it.

We don't want to be reminded. We lose faith. We lose confidence in the cross of Jesus Christ. Or perhaps as he says here, you just love your sin so much that you ignore it and leave it in that one little compartment within.

And as you walk down the hallways towards that compartment that you're going to hide everything, you turn out light after light after light, becomes darker and darker, and finally you slam this vault door closed and it's pitch black inside, but it's your little spot.

And no light gets in. And what I'm telling you this morning, light is exposure. If you're sons of light, you're sons of something that exposes your sin. You need to go into that place no matter how deep and dark and dank and how long it's been ignored.

You might not even know the way there anymore, but Christ does. And open. And come further and further away from it. And repent. And trust Christ's forgiveness and his transforming spirit to help you away from it.

Darkness hides things. This is what Jesus Christ says. Whoever comes to the true light, whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

This is what it means to be sons of light. To be courageous sons. And that means daughters the way we're using this. Sons and daughters. There's no distinction. Sons of light who will come courageously into the light and leave the darkness behind.

And trust Christ to forgive and not humiliate. And trust God to forgive and take your sins as far away from you as east is from the west. And to remember your sins no more. This is courage, brethren. This is the kind of courage that cannot be covered up just by skipping past this part.

This indicative. This identity that you have and going straight to the doing. Anybody can do. You can do things that I'm going to think are wonderful. You can do until I think this is the most holy sanctified person since the apostle Paul or something like that.

You can fool me. You can even fool yourself. But can you walk courageously into the light of God's word with his spirit attending with you? And be exposed like this. No, light brings exposure. And this takes some moral and some spiritual courage.

You can't grow if you dwell in the dark. And if you keep dark things within, your growth, if it's at all going to happen, is going to be stunted. You can't grow if you dwell in the dark. My parents had these dear friends named Marv and Judy.

I think his first name was fully Marvin, but we called him Marv. Marv and Judy. And they were friends in Portland, Oregon before I was even born. And when we moved from Portland in 1963 to come down here into the San Jose area, they remained very close friends.

They were politically, they were socially, they were religiously aligned with each other. And they enjoyed many of the same things. And at the top of the list for some of the things that they enjoyed was fine dining.

But there was a point of conflict that never really got resolved between two of them. It turns out to be Marv and my mother. And they would argue about this almost every time they went out together, the four of them.

Well, Judy couldn't get her husband Marv to give an inch towards my mom's side in this conflict, and my dad couldn't get my mom to give the matter up. So every time they sat down for dinner at one of these fine dining places, this thing came up, this issue.

And they both died several years ago. And they died never having resolved this one iota. Do you know what the issue was? Do you want to know what the issue was? This controversy that drove these dear friends to dominate the opening rounds of dinner with their positions?

It wasn't religion. It wasn't a social position. It wasn't politics. It was mushrooms. But that's not a joke. It really was mushrooms. Marv hated mushrooms. He couldn't stand mushrooms. He thought mushrooms were dangerous because there are some mushrooms that are dangerous.

So he thought all mushrooms were dangerous. My mother was steeped in French cooking. It was a near gourmet quality chef. And so she had a deep appreciation for mushrooms. And when they sat down to one of these fine dining establishments, that's what she would look for is things that had mushrooms on them.

And she would try to get Marv to try a mushroom, and he wouldn't on his life touch a mushroom. You know what he would say? They're fungus. Those are fungi. They grow in manure. And they're kept in the dark.

He'd say, why are they in the dark? I'll tell you why they're in the dark. They're hiding something. They're hiding that they can kill you. So he wouldn't touch mushrooms. Well, mushrooms prefer the dark.

Christians are opposed to the dark. Mushrooms do well in the dark. Christians should abhor the darkness. Dark is foreign to you if you're a son of the light. If darkness is a metaphor for sin, and it is, then let's have a healthy fear of the dark.

Let's have a healthier love for the light. And let's courageously go into the light. Let the darkness be a terror to us. And light of Christ be the only cure. Go through the soil of your soul. Root out those places where only mushrooms can grow, and not Christians.

Expose your sin. How? Well, by the light of God's word. Again, this is courageous living in Christ. This is courageous Christianity. This is hardcore stuff. To get to the who we are and really get steeped in that before we get to the what we must do.

The psalmist says, your word is a lamp to my feet. We all know what that means. It's a metaphor for showing us the path to walk on, the path of righteousness in Christ. Psalm 19, verse 6, says there's nothing hidden from the heat of God's word.

As God's word goes forth, is proclaimed everywhere, nothing ultimately is hidden from it. It's a light that exposes. Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12,. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and tensions of the heart.

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. You know how you can avoid this? How you can shrivel up and remain in that little mushroom farm with all the doors closed?

Just ignore God's word. Fail to pray. Let your belief become cold and stale. Now most of us read God's word. We memorize it. We get it syllable perfect. And now you expect me to ask you if you obey it.

You expect me to tell you to be a doer and not a mere hearer as James tells us. And that's that pulpit pounding thing that we're going to avoid today. Because that's not what I want to draw from this lesson.

Do you let the light of God shine into your secret parts? Is your inner person, are your thoughts, your intentions exposed by God's light? Do we have the courage to walk into that well-lit room? Better asked, do you have the faith?

Do you have the faith to believe that what God exposes is for your good? And that he will, when you repent, truly forgive? Only mushrooms, well, there's some other things probably, but mushrooms excel in the dark.

We're sons of the light, sons of the day. You can hide in the darkness and your sin will fester and grow. Or you can come to the light and you can see it die. There's a miracle of the power of God's living word.

Jesus is the word made flesh. Remember when he came out of the high priest's office after his interrogation just before his crucifixion? And what happened with him and Peter? There was Peter having denied Jesus Christ three times and the word of God looks upon him.

And what happened to Peter? He realized his sin and he wept bitterly. The light of the world, Jesus Christ, exposes your sin. It doesn't just leave you there. You remember Peter at the beach was restored when Jesus Christ those three times says, do you love me?

And restored him, forgave him. Have you the courage to come out of that dark room? To get away from those mushrooms and to walk in the light of which you are a son if you are in Jesus Christ. Well, this is what ought to happen when we read God's word.

It's a warm light. It's not the interrogator's bulb shining in your eyes to block your vision and to confuse your answers, to torment you, to make your mind a muddle. No, it's God's light searching you out for your good.

Piercing into the deepest places. Exposing misdeeds, exposing your sin so that what? So you feel badly? No, so you might be cured. And be cured so you feel good about yourself? No, so you feel good about Jesus Christ who forgives your sin.

Do you trust that? Are you willing to open up that dark place? You're a son of the light if you're in Jesus Christ and the light exposes sin. And sin once exposed as Jesus Christ told Nicodemus, loses its power over you.

It loses its grip, maybe not all at once, but it will. This is the promise of God's word. How long will you carry your burden? How long will you keep up your pretense? How long will you carry that darkness within?

How long will you pretend and believe that the trends of the world out there where they reclassify what God calls sin as something that is your choice or your right or your personal expression? This only happens if you have faith to read the word of God with courage and with prayer.

If you have faith to believe that what is exposed can be repented and by repentance a new chapter and progress towards Jesus Christ, the light of the world will ensue. This is what it means to be sons of the light.

This is your spiritual heritage. And part of that gives you the responsibility of being exposed by that light. What else is light? Light is God's presence. Verse 8 says in 1 Thessalonians 5,. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Well, the day here is what we have in verse 5. We are sons of the day. The day can mean to walk as if in daylight open and free of needing to hide anymore, not in darkness. And it also can mean the day of Jesus Christ.

And I take it as a both and. It is the day that we walk in courageously, boldly, faithfully in Christ, knowing that as we follow his ways, we have nothing to hide. That's the day. That's walking in the light.

The day is also the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, that great day when he comes and brings us whom he has redeemed by his cross to himself. Psalm 27 verse 1 says, The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid if you walk in the light of God? The answer is nothing. The answer is no one. Chapter 43, excuse me, Psalm 43 says, Send out your light and your truth.

Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of God, to my God with exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God. This is God's presence.

This is what light means. It is the presence of God. It is God brooding over the primordial waters and saying, Let there be light. Let there be order. Let the confusion, the chaos, the purposelessness go away.

And the earth began to form to accomplish the purposes for which God sent it or made it. God's presence. How do we stand in God's presence? Well, Paul says, By having put on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Now this is part of the spiritual armor that in Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 through 20 is explained in much more detail. And it's shorter here because the warfare motif is a bit further from Paul's mind here in 1 Thessalonians.

Faith, love, and hope are the triad of our Christian life. It's the identifying character of our group identity. Identity which leads to right practice. Identity first. Know who you are in Christ, and then let's get the practice going.