What Does 1 Thessalonians 4:8 Mean?

(8) “So you see that to act contumeliously in the matter is to act contumeliously not only towards your neighbour, but towards God Himself, and that, too, after He has given you a gift which should have preserved you from these corruptions.” **He . . . that despiseth.**—The verb means to treat as insignificant either persons or things. Here the *object* is not supplied in the first instance, in order to heighten the effect of the second clause. If we were to supply it, it would include *all* the rights which the unclean liver spurns, “the commandments which we (mere men as you thought us) gave you,” the “brother” whose domestic happiness has been invaded, the unfortunate victim herself, and, finally, the “honour” due to the sinner’s own body. Since it was God who ordered the relations in which we all stand to one another, contempt for these relations is contempt for Him. **Who hath also given.**—Mistranslated for “who also *gave.”* St. Paul is looking back to the day when he *confirmed* them; for the right reading is not “unto *us*,” but “unto *you,” *or more correctly “*into* you”—*i.e., *“to enter into you, and dwell there” (John 14:17, and many other places). The word “holy” in the original is very emphatically put:” Who also gave His Spirit—His Holy Spirit—to enter you,” thus bringing out the startling contrast between such foul lives and the holiness which befitted and was possible (Romans 6:14; Romans 8:3-4) for men in whom the Holy Ghost, communicated by the laying on of hands, vouchsafed to dwell.