4:1 Furthermore {1} then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort [you] by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, [so] ye would {a} abound more and more.
(1) Various exhortations, the foundation of which is this, to be mindful of those things which they have heard from the apostle.
(a) That you labour to excel more and more, and daily surpass yourselves.
4:1 Exhortation to a Godly Life
SUMMARY OF I THESSALONIANS 4:
Continence Commanded. Brotherly Love Required. Each Should Quietly Follow His Own Business. Not to Sorrow Without Hope for the Dead. They, As Well As the Living Saints, Shall Meet the Lord at His. Coming.
Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort [you]. In all Paul's letters to Gentile churches there is a closing exhortation to purity of life and against such sins as Gentiles especially needed to guard against. These exhortations to the Thessalonians begin with the fourth chapter.
How ye ought to walk and to please God. He reminds them that he had instructed them how to live to please God.
4:1 More and more - It is not enough to have faith, even so as to please God, unless we abound more and more therein.
4:1-8 To abide in the faith of the gospel is not enough, we must abound in the work of faith. The rule according to which all ought to walk and act, is the commandments given by the Lord Jesus Christ. Sanctification, in the renewal of their souls under the influences of the Holy Spirit, and attention to appointed duties, constituted the will of God respecting them. In aspiring after this renewal of the soul unto holiness, strict restraint must be put upon the appetites and senses of the body, and on the thoughts and inclinations of the will, which lead to wrong uses of them. The Lord calls none into his family to live unholy lives, but that they may be taught and enabled to walk before him in holiness. Some make light of the precepts of holiness, because they hear them from men; but they are God's commands, and to break them is to despise God.
