God’s sovereign rule includes discipline

The Lord sovereignly reigns over his people. And therefore sin has negative consequences—just as obedience will generally lead to blessing under his will. So, for example, the writer of Hebrews points out that God’s sovereign rule involves his discipline. If we grow slack in pursuing holiness, well, God is likely to discipline us through circumstances designed to get our attention: he disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness (Hebrews 12:10).

Now, moreover, if God is sovereign over his people, and if Christ is a sovereign ruler over all his people, then we are to derive our standards and our values from him—through the Word—and not from the world and society around us. Look at 1 Thessalonians 4:2. Paul speaks this very way. He emphasizes that to be a Christian means that you have instructions from a sovereign Lord: For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. Now, here again, he is talking about sexual purity. Now, the Greeks would not have been bothered by sexual sin among the Christians. In fact, the opposite was kind of strange to them.

And our society today is not just unmoved if Christians should play along with the loose sexual standards of that society, but the very ideas, biblically, of modesty and shame and sexual sin are almost completely forgotten in our society. It simply does not occur to most Americans that a couple who like each other would not have sexual union practically as soon as they have their first date. The world mocks the idea that anybody could manage to be a virgin after high school—and the movies and the songs and the way people live mock these things. And so here is the question: As a Christian, why should I be different if that is how society is going to be? Because Christ is our sovereign. We are his subjects. We receive our standards and our values—our mores—from his truth, as it is revealed in his Word.¹

Richard D. Phillips