Bible Commentaries
1 Thessalonians 2

Verses 1-6

2 This is the pattern pastoral epistle. Paul's deep concern leads him to constant prayer for them, for he knows their need and has been torn from them before it was possible for him to teach them much.

3 It is most significant to find in the opening strain of this, Paul's earliest epistle, that abiding trinity, faith, expectation and love, which have continued the leading characteristics of his ministry and which alone remain throughout this economy ( 1Co_13:13 ). Expectation is expounded in these Promise Epistles. Faith is fully set forth in the Preparatory Epistles, especially Romans. Love overflows in the Perfection Epistles. When all the "gifts" vanished, these remained. It is the character not the quantity of work that counts with God. Apart from faith it is impossible to please Him. Let us avoid all efforts which are not firmly founded on faith. Even toil and weariness depend on their motive to meet His approbation. Love alone can give value to our toil. Expectation, not the indefinite, uncertain desire which "hope" suggests, but an assured and confident prospect of their Lord's return, gave these young believers their endurance in the midst of persecution.

4 Paul might well question the reality of the work done in Thessalonica. In a few weeks' time a great multitude heard and believed. There was danger that the enthusiasm of the moment had carried many into their company who were never the subjects of God's grace. But as Paul reflects upon the vision which sent him there ( Act_16:9 ) and the mighty power of the preaching, and their subsequent service and sufferings, he is convinced that God has chosen them. At this very time God assures him that He had many people in Corinth ( Act_18:10 ).

6 What fervor, what zeal, was shown by this ecclesia! Only a few months before they bowed down to idols. Now, in the face of a furious persecution, they fearlessly proclaim Christ. They have no thought of confining themselves to their own city or even their own province. This was indeed a model even at that time, and how much more so now! Every member was a missionary. Their conduct forced the very enemies of Paul to bear testimony to the reality of his work amongst them ( Act_17:6 ).

10 Waiting has no English equivalent. It is used in the papyri of those who were required to settle their debts without waiting the full term. The secret of Paul's Thessalonian evangelism is twofold. He did not seek to turn them from their idols. That was incidental. He turned them to God. God and His grace provide the impelling power. In doing this they must needs turn their back on the idols they had worshiped. But more than this, he put before them a vital expectation. It was not a dead Christ he proclaimed to them. Nor did he stop with the resurrection. He engaged their hearts with the ascended Son of God, Whom they might expect to leave His place in heaven in order to receive them to Himself.

PAUL'S ENTRANCE

4 There is an overwhelming temptation to please men, in evangelistic work. The marvelous success of Paul's short ministry in Thessalonica arose from his determination to please God at any cost.

5 The apostle, in discussing his own motives and methods, gives us an ideal by which to test all such efforts. Flattery is barred out. Avarice is denounced. He himself did not even get a living for his labor, for the Philippians sent him aid even in Thessalonica ( Php_4:16 ). How many are willing to work for such wages today? As an apostle he deserved the highest honors, and could have demanded them, but he preferred to get no glory from men. His personal presence was weak and his oratory despicable (so said the Corinthians, 2Co_10:10 ), but his love was great, his tenderness was touching, his toil and labor, to avoid being a burden to them, were more eloquent than words, and his conduct above reproach.

Verses 7-20

7 What figure could more touchingly convey the apostle's genuine affection for the

Thessalonians than that of a nursing mother? How unselfish and gentle and self-sacrificing is her care! The soul is the seat of sensation. To impart his own soul to them conveys the thought that he, like the true mother, would endure any discomfort or weariness for their sakes.

11 The figure of a father is no less affectionate. His solicitude for his own is spontaneous and real. He has the welfare of his children at heart. So Paul dealt with the beloved saints at Thessalonica.

PAUL'S THANKSGIVING

13 Nothing is more important than that the Scriptures, in their pristine purity, be received as the word of God. Greece and the adjacent provinces were famed for their philosophies. Yet which of them ever produced effects to compare with the few words spoken by the apostle? He who fails to get beyond the preacher to the One Whose word he speaks has less than nothing. The one who hears the words of God receives everything.

16 What an exhibition of God's sovereign grace! The Jews, with all their advantages and their divine ritual, suffer a foretaste of God's indignation as it will be displayed in the day of the Lord. After the siege of Jerusalem under Titus, their temple was destroyed, their city razed and their whole polity brought to an end. When they go back to their land and establish their religious rites again they are meeting the more disastrous indignation of Jehovah. The Thessalonians, who had no claims on God's mercy, suffer, indeed, from their countrymen, but are promised immunity in the day of His indignation.

PAUL BEREAVED

17 Paul was torn from the Thessalonians long before he wished to go, but God had other work for him to do, especially in Corinth, where he wrote this letter. It does not seem that his desire was gratified till some years later, when he went over Macedonia on his way to Greece ( Act_20:2 ).

1 The record in the book of Acts passes over this journey of Timothy back to Thessalonica from Athens. Timothy and Silas were, indeed, charged to come to him at Athens ( Act_17:15 ) and came back from Macedonia to Corinth ( Act_18:5 ), but this visit, being outside the scope of the book of Acts, finds no place there. Such was the apostle's solicitude for them that, seeing that he cannot return to them himself, he sends his son in the faith. The persecution which forced him to leave rages about them and threatens to undermine their faith, for unlike Corinth and Ephesus, where the apostle remained for years, he had been with them but a few weeks and even then spent much of his time toiling for his living.

10 The "deficiencies" in the faith of the Thessalonians are met in this epistle and in his second letter to them, as well as in all his nine letters to the seven ecclesias. The historical order of Paul's epistles should always be borne in mind. While the Thessalonian epistles come after the Ephesian group in the canon, they were written long before, during one of the earlier ministries of the apostle. Perhaps one of the important lessons for the apostle himself lay in his enforced absence from Thessalonica. The spiritual contact of an epistle accords much more with the trend of his ministries than his personal presence. His epistles, also, have ministered to millions who have found themselves in need of the same help that he extended to the Thessalonians. This is the key to much that is inexplicable in the later epistles of Paul. He is always looking forward with confidence to a physical presence with those to whom he wrote. Even if the expectations were fulfilled, the Scriptures are silent, and leave us with the impression that his presence, like his ministry, forsook the physical.