Simply put, it means to allow the Holy Spirit freedom to work in the individual and community of believers. So the phrase “quench the Spirit” can be understood as actively hindering the Spirit’s work by extinguishing, suffocating, or ignoring His leading. More specifically, and in context with the next verse, “Do not despise prophecies” (v. 20), the phrase suggests not repressing, or failing to nurture, the spiritual gifts within the church (1 Corinthians 12).
Consider this from Robertson’s Word Pictures:
Quench not the spirit (to pneuma me¯ sbennute). Me¯ with the present imperative means to stop doing it or not to have the habit of doing it. It is a bold figure. Some of [the believers] were trying to put out the fire of the Holy Spirit, probably the special gifts of the Holy Spirit as [1 Th 5:20] means. But even so the exercise of these special gifts (1Co 12-14; 2Co 12:2-4; Ro 12:6-9) was to be decently (eusche¯mono¯s, 1Th_4:12) and in order (kata taxin, 1Co 14:40) and for edification (pros oikodomee¯n, 1Co_14:26). Today, as then, there are two extremes about spiritual gifts (cold indifference or wild excess).
Paul warns the Thessalonians not to interfere with the work of the Holy Spirit. His instructions in the wider context regarding behavior (5:12-28), both individually and corporately, indicate the ways that the Spirit might be quenched. The Thessalonians were to stop something they had been doing. In essence, “stop extinguishing or suffocating the Spirit.”
Similarly, aside from the special gifts, Paul’s writings in Ephesians 4:17-32 about Spirit-gifted living say, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit.” While some distinctions may be made, there is a similarity between the commands “do not quench the Holy Spirit” and “do not grieve the Holy Spirit.” In a longer list of specifics, Ephesians 4:17-32 spells out some things that resist the Spirit’s influence. Attitudes and behaviors that impede His work seem to both grieve and quench the Holy Spirit.
However, note that the Holy Spirit is not grieved for Himself; God is sovereign and omnipotent. Rather, grieving the Holy Spirit is for the believer because of the need for love. Significantly, the apostle commends love to the believers in both Thessalonica and Ephesus. As chief fruit of the Spirit, it is essential for unity and growth in the church:
I . . . beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. . . . but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:1-3, 15, 16; cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 3:6, 12; 4:9; 5:8, 13).
Therefore, let us give free reign to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in us — both individually and corporately — so that we may never be found to have quenched the Holy Spirit.
— Elder Chip Hinds
