The love of Christ is the strongest power in the world, and it can control our behavior. “The love of Christ controls us, for we are convinced that One died for all...”
Our living to please the Lord is the natural response to the outpouring of Jesus’ life on the cross, and of the Holy Spirit shedding abroad the love of Jesus in our hearts (Romans 5:5).
Practically speaking, as we see Jesus laying down His life for us, substituting Himself for us, receiving the wrath of God to atone for our sins and shedding His last drop of blood for our pardon, we fall on our knees before Him in worship. We cry out, “Lord, now that you’ve given your life to save me and free me, I want to live my life to please you!” The love of Jesus compels us, controls us, motivates us!
At the cross, the believer has begun to grasp “how wide and long and high and deep” is the love of God for him” (Ephesians 3:18), and this love is beginning to fill the heart. “…to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and to be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19 ESV).
Also, God has given the believer a new heart and put a new spirit within us (Ezekiel 36:26). The Holy Spirit is putting the Law of God into the mind of the believer and writing it on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10), thereby moving us to obedience and giving us the desire to please the Lord with our lives. As we walk by His power, we don’t gratify the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16).
Let’s say I showed you a basketball hoop, gave you a basketball and told you to dunk it. Could you do it? Most of us reading this can not dunk a basketball. But what if I put a trampoline right under the hoop, could you dunk it then?
The cross of Jesus and the Spirit of God are like the trampoline, enabling us to “dunk the basketball,” meaning, to live our lives to please the Lord. The power of the cross, as infused into our hearts by the Holy Spirit literally works miracles in our lives. God changes us from the inside out, fixes our heart problems, heals us from backsliding (1 Peter 2:24-25), writes His law in our hearts, enables our obedience from the heart.
So, with these powerful influences at work in the believer, a fundamental shift happens in our heart, turning us from living to please ourselves to desiring instead to please the Lord.
Let’s continue now to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 where Paul begins to teach us how to please God: “…you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God” (verse 1).
1 Thessalonians 4:2-3 ESV For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. (3) For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.
Question 3. From 1 Thessalonians 4:2-3, how can we please the Lord?