According to Paul (1Thessalonians 4:6-7), believers are called by God to holiness (G38), which is the same Greek word that is translated sanctification in 1Thessalonians 4:3-4 above. There I described our sanctification as practicing equality between Jewish and gentile believers in Christ. This is something that Paul preached, wherever he went (Romans 10:12; 1Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:38; Ephesians 6:9-10; Colossians 3:11), and doing such a thing always got him into trouble with the Jewish authorities in the community, where he preached the Gospel. However, this idea would make no sense at all, nor would believers be persecuted for practicing such a thing, if only a few Jews were involved. In other words, if the Christian churches were filled with gentiles, and only a few Jews joined them, persecution wouldn’t make sense. If the doctrine didn’t threaten Judaism, such as it was in the first century AD, why would Jews persecute Jewish believers in Christ for receiving gentile brethren as equals and without their having been circumcised?
It stands to reason, therefore, because Paul disputed with the Jewish authorities in the synagogue for three weeks, his reasoning had to have struck the hearts of a larger group of Jews than what might be generally assumed (Acts 17:1-4). Otherwise, why would the Jewish authorities feel threatened (Acts 17:5)? I think that it would require at least one third to forty percent of the Jews who attended synagogue must have believed Paul. This means that if the congregation numbered 100 (I believe that number was greater), 33 to 40 Jews were converted to Christ through Paul’s ministry. However, the text also includes many Greek men and not a few leading gentile women who also worshiped in the synagogue. They believed Paul’s Gospel, as well. The actual number of gentile men and women depended upon how many actually attended synagogue before Paul came to Thessalonica with the Gospel. The number of gentiles attending synagogue would never approach the number of Jews attending there, so the gentiles would be a minority. If we conclude the total number of gentiles who attended were 20 (give or take), of that group men were probably in the minority, so perhaps 6 men and 14 women.
In the context of those figures ‘many’ or a large number of Greek men would be all but about one or two, while not a few women, probably indicated a similar thing, all but about two or three. Therefore, of the 20 original gentiles attending weekly synagogue services perhaps 15 to 17 believed Paul’s Gospel. While these figures are mere guesses, they are probably near to the true percentages. So, I think we have a working knowledge of about how many Jews and Greeks threw their lot in with Paul. Whatever the true figure might have been, Jews would have outnumbered gentiles by at least twice their figure, and a 75% Jewish membership of the believing community would not be out of the question. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that, if 30 to 40 Jews out of 100 in Thessalonica treated gentile brethren as equals before God, this would threaten the Jewish community, by bringing their worldview of segregation / circumcision into question.
Paul wrote, “God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness” (1Thessalonians 4:7). If we compare 1Thessalonians 4:7 with verse-3, ‘uncleanness’ (G167; akatharsia) is likened to ‘fornication’ (G4202; porneia), while ‘holiness’ and ‘sanctification’ are translations of the same Greek word (G38; hagiasmos). If we interpret this verse in the light of Hebrews 12:16, where Esau is called a ‘fornicator’ (G4205), because he sold his birthright for a bowl of lintel soup, then what Esau ‘ate’ is likened to ‘uncleanness’ or ‘fornication’ (1Thessalonians 4:3, 7; cp. Hebrews 12:16).
These very things were the subject matter discussed at the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, where Paul was given the decrees of the Apostles (Acts 16:4) to help the believing Jews and gentiles of the Diaspora understand how each related to the other. The decrees included abstaining from ‘fornication’ and ‘eating things sacrificed to idols’ (Acts 15:28-29). If spiritual fornication involved having no value for one’s heritage and speaking against the truth (Hebrews 12:16; cp. Acts 17:5-8), then uncleanness (1Thessalonians 4:7) answered to ‘eating things sacrificed to idols’ (Acts 15:29; cp. Hebrews 12:16), but what does that mean? If ‘fornication’ must be understood spiritually, then the same must be true for ‘eating things sacrificed to idols.’ Paul claimed the doctrines that dealt with touching, tasting and handling were doctrines of men and didn’t need to be observed by those who were in Christ (Colossians 2:20-22), and Jesus identified these doctrines as the ‘tradition of the elders’ (Matthew 15:1-9), which is the Jews’ Oral Law. The ‘elders’ who developed the Oral Law were being treated as gods, whereby their teaching was respected more than the word of God, and, when the two conflicted, the word of God was nullified in favor of the ‘tradition of the elders’ (cp. Matthew 15:3, 6, 9). Therefore, Paul was saying the Oral Law, which defined Judaism in the first century AD, was unclean! God had not called his people to uncleanness (separation, segregation) but to holiness / sanctification (set apart in unity, mutual respect).
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