1 Thessalonians 4:8

1 Thessalonians 4:8. He that rejecteth, i.e. he who contemptuously or negligently refuses to listen to these injunctions and warnings.

Not man. Not me, the apostle who conveys this message to you. I do not deliver these moral precepts on my own authority. They are the commandments of God. Frequently men make the human medium through which light is conveyed to their conscience, an excuse for not attending to it. It is only they persuade themselves the crotchet of an enthusiast, the pardonable anxiety of a parent, the impertinent advice of an officious person; but, rejecting what conscience endorses, they contemn not men but God.

Who also gave onto you his Holy Spirit. The fact that to all believers God gives the Holy Spirit, should both encourage them to persevere in seeking holiness, and should deter them from such sins as are specially offensive to the Spirit, whose peculiar title is ‘Holy.' This gift should further bind Christians by the evidence it affords that, whatever they make of God's call, God is in earnest about it, and faithfully carries out His part. Sins of the flesh are specially antagonistic to the Spirit's work; they mock all a man's nobler aspirations, and make indulgence the end of life, and whatever refinement and apparent susceptibility to what is good they leave on the surface, underneath the whole nature is rotten, feeble, coarse.