Finally then, brothers, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, that you abound more and more.
and to please God: Jesus affirms, "I do always those things that please him" (John 8:29). Such a goal requires total self-abnegation. One cannot please both self and God at the same time, except in those instances where what pleases God pleases us as well. Paul says of Jesus, "For even Christ pleased not himself" (Romans 15:3). Whatever purpose God may have had in the creation of mankind, it is clear man is intended to please God. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11). "Pleasing God is not a matter of personal choice, but an imperative necessity for the Christian" (Morris 79). Pleasing God is, as Stott notes, "the foundation on which Christian ethical behaviour is built" (78). In the discussion which follows, Paul deals with sex, work, and death. Stott says these "continue to be three major human preoccupations, so that Paul’s teaching on these subjects has about it a ring of relevance" (80).