5. Persecution (2:14–16)
3. Reminiscences of Thessalonica (1:4–2:16)
a. Response of the Thessalonians (1:4–10)
4. In these two epistles Paul uses the address brothers twenty-one times (and ‘brother’ another seven times); the tie that bound the proud Pharisee to despised Gentiles was a close one. Barriers insurmountable to men were done away in Christ. In the Greek loved is a perfect participle, combining the thoughts that love existed in the past and that it continues into the present in full force. The construction occurs only here in the New Testament (though 2 Thess. 2:13; Jude 1 are similar), and is richer in meaning than the usual expression (found for example in Rom. 1:7). In view of many loose modern ideas about ‘the brotherhood of man’ it is worth noticing that the New Testament concept of brotherhood is that of a brotherhood of believers. Here it is linked with being loved by God and with election. Both are significant.
Paul speaks of knowing that God has chosen them (literally, ‘your election’). In the Old Testament God’s choice is usually associated with the nation, in the New with individuals. The thought that God has chosen us is another reminder that our salvation is all of God, and not at all due to any effort of our own. In the face of those who hold that election is harsh and arbitrary Paul’s reminder that it proceeds from God’s love is timely. The reason he knows the Thessalonians to be elect appears to be given in verse 5. Poole comments, ‘We cannot know election as in God’s secret decree, but as made manifest in the fruits and effects of it’.
5. The reason Paul is sure of the election of the Thessalonians is the effect on them of what he calls our gospel. The term points to the content of the original preaching, the good news of God’s action to bring salvation to sinners. The possessive our may mean that apostles, just as much as other people, need the gospel, or, more probably, that they had made the gospel they preached their own. It was for them far more than a fine theory; it was something to be lived and proclaimed with power. That the gospel came may imply that it possesses a vital force; but eloquence is not the explanation of its effectiveness, for it came to you not simply with words, but also with power (cf. Rom. 1:16, where Anders Nygren comments, ‘The gospel is not the presentation of an idea, but the operation of a power’3). This power is linked with the Holy Spirit (always the source of the Christian’s power, cf. 1 Cor. 2:4), and with deep conviction; the two are closely linked (there is no repetition of en in the Greek), which directs us to the inward assurance that the ‘powerful operation of the Spirit’ (G. Schrenk, TDNT, iv, p. 179) had given to both the apostles and their converts. The Spirit was active in both. Some hold that it is not the inward assurance that is in mind, but what G. Delling calls ‘great “fulness of divine working” ’ (TDNT, vi, p. 311; so Rigaux); but deep conviction seems to be the meaning (with BAGD, Best, etc.). GNB adds ‘of its truth’, but this is not in the Greek and is not necessary.
6. The converts had followed the example of their mentors; they had become imitators of the preachers and, because the preachers modelled themselves on Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 11:1), of the Lord. Notice the conjunction of severe suffering and the joy given by the Holy Spirit. Affliction has always been the lot of the true disciple of Christ, as he himself foretold (John 16:33). Luther asked reasonably, ‘If Christ wore a crown of thorns, why should His followers expect only a crown of roses?’ (cited in Neil). But, just as it is true that the Christian will find trouble in the world, so it is true that he will have a joy that the world never gave and can never take away (John 16:22), a joy brought by the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22).
7–8. Paul has appealed to the example set by the apostles (v. 5) and he proceeds to point out that the converts in their turn had become an example to others. The word typos, translated a model, meant originally the mark of a stroke or blow (the ‘mark’ of John 20:25), then a figure formed by a blow, an impression left by a seal or die, an image generally (Acts 7:43), and so it came to mean a pattern (Heb. 8:5), which is its meaning here. This is high praise, for in the first place Paul calls no other church a pattern, and in the second he thinks of the Thessalonians as an example, not only to the heathen, but also to Christians throughout Greece. Indeed, their reputation is word-wide. Paul’s from you is emphatic (they were special), and his rang out (exēcheō) is picturesque; it might describe the clarion call of a trumpet or the roll of thunder. It emphasizes the resounding nature of the witness borne by the Thessalonian church. The verb is a Greek perfect, which implies that the sounding out was continuing. It was no passing whim.
The Lord’s message (RSV ‘the word of the Lord’) is an expression very common in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament and found often in Acts, but twice only (here and 2 Thess. 3:1) in Paul (though it is not very different from expressions such as ‘the word’, ‘the word of God’, ‘the gospel of God’ and the like, which are frequent in Paul). It emphasizes the conviction of the early Christians that the message they proclaimed was not the product of human wisdom, but truly of divine origin. This message is said to have sounded out in Macedonia and Achaia, the two provinces which together embraced all Greece (Rigaux points out that Paul usually refers to provinces rather than to cities). Paul adds that the faith of the Thessalonians has become known everywhere. This may be a hyperbole; but it may also reflect the fact that Aquila and Priscilla had come to Corinth from Rome just before Paul wrote this letter (Acts 18:2), and what was known at Rome could be presumed to be known everywhere.
The sentence looks as though it should end at everywhere, but it is typical of Paul’s impetuous style that he should go off on a new tack. So he adds that the faith of the Thessalonians was so universally spoken of that he himself had no need to say anything about it.
9. They themselves is sometimes taken to indicate people from Macedonia and Achaia, but is probably quite general. Anyone at all might be found telling of what was going on in Thessalonica (cf. Moffatt, ‘People tell us of their own accord about the visit we paid to you’). It is not usual in such a context to speak of an ‘entering in’4 (eisodos; NIV reception), but the term is not difficult to understand. The indirect interrogative what kind of points to the success of the visit, a success evident from the following statements.
Paul goes on to describe the conversion of the Thessalonians, and since much of the characteristic Pauline terminology is lacking (e.g. justification by faith), it would seem that he is using accepted mission terminology. It seems reasonably clear that the first Christian preachers had a common understanding of the essence of their message and of its effects. Paul is using the recognized vocabulary and he seizes on three main points.
First, they had turned to God from idols (which shows that the church was predominantly Gentile); in the first century this was a very important evidence of true conversion. Indeed, in every age it is a mark of the true Christian that he has turned from contemporary idols.
Secondly, they had come to serve the living and true God. A negative attitude is not enough. The word rendered serve basically means ‘serve as a slave’ and reminds us of the way Paul delighted to call himself a ‘slave of Jesus Christ’. It underlines the wholehearted nature of Christian service. Notice that God is spoken of as living, which contrasts with dead idols (‘Only the living God is God’, Masson), and true, which means ‘genuine’, used ‘Of God in contrast to other gods, who are not real’ (BAGD). The conjunction of these two terms gives emphatic expression to Paul’s essential monotheism.
10. Thirdly, they awaited the second advent. The word wait for (anamenein, here only in the New Testament) means ‘wait expectantly’ (NEB; cf. Hendriksen, ‘to look forward to with patience and confidence’). This is the one place in the Thessalonian epistles where Christ is called Son; the title is used elsewhere in Paul, but its connection here with the second advent is ‘unique’ (Best). For Paul the parousia is very important and its neglect in many quarters today is a great loss; its rediscovery is sorely needed, for, as J. E. Fison says, ‘it is precisely that kind of conversion which the church as well as the world needs today, and which only the rediscovery of a living eschatological hope can produce’.5
T. F. Glasson maintains that this is one of the first references to the second advent. He holds that it was not found in the teaching of Jesus and, indeed, does not appear until the Thessalonian letters. He thinks it originated in the early church’s study of the Old Testament. Then when the Emperor Caligula attempted to place an image of himself in the temple at Jerusalem, this was interpreted as showing that ‘the spirit of Antichrist was abroad’, and ‘the end of the age was near’.6 But this reconstruction is not in agreement with much that is said in the Gospels, with early statements like those in Acts 1:11; 3:20–21; 10:42; with the implications of the Aramaic expression maranatha (1 Cor. 16:22; it probably means ‘Our Lord, come!’), or with the way in which eschatology is integral to the whole gospel. The final consummation is implied in the facts that the old has passed away, that in the coming of the Messiah the new age has dawned, and that the power of God is at work. ‘This Act of God must reach its climax in Judgment, in the vindication of the just, and in the supreme, and final, and visible Victory of the Lord’ (Neil).
At the same time we must query Neil’s further idea that we should see here a timeless truth: ‘The Lord is always at hand and comes to every generation, and we pass the Judgment of Doomsday upon ourselves every living moment.’ While there is a valuable truth in this, it is not what the New Testament means when it speaks of the second advent, nor in particular what Paul means in this verse. Throughout the New Testament it is clear that the advent referred to is an event that will bring this world as we know it to a decisive close. It is the consummation of the age, and it is difficult to see how we can do without the idea of this consummation. Jesus is to come from heaven, the word being plural in the Greek, from which some have seen in it the rabbinic idea of a plurality of heavens (cf. 2 Cor. 12:2). But singular and plural are interchanged so much in the New Testament that it is unwise to emphasize the use of the plural.
Paul goes on to refer to Jesus’ resurrection. It is a mark of the centrality of this event that even when Paul is thinking of the second coming he refers to Christ as the One whom he raised from the dead. The New Testament writers, of course, habitually ascribe the work of the resurrection to the Father. It is the mark of his vindication and approval of the atoning work of the Son.
Paul glances at the humanity of the Saviour with the use of the human name Jesus, and says that he rescues (‘a timeless participle’, Frame) us. The verb puts emphasis on the greatness of the peril and on the power of him who delivers us. The completeness of the deliverance is underlined by the use of the preposition ek; we are delivered right ‘out of’ the wrath.
The coming wrath is the eschatological wrath, the wrath that will come on evil at the end time. C. H. Dodd and others have made a determined attempt to eliminate the idea of ‘the wrath of God’ from the Bible by arguing that in Scripture this is no more than a name for an impersonal process; people sin, disaster follows (cf. JB, ‘retribution’). But it is difficult to substantiate this. It is true that there are some passages, like this one, where the wrath is not explicitly linked with God. But can it be seriously argued that Paul is thinking here of a wrath that is not God’s? In any case wrath is explicitly linked with God in a number of passages (e.g. John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; 9:22; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6; Rev. 11:18; 14:10, 19; 19:15), and the idea is often present when the word ‘wrath’ is not used (e.g. 2 Thess. 1:7–9). Further, the New Testament writers always regard the universe as God’s universe. If retribution follows upon sin, then it seems impossible to hold that this takes place independently of God. If we were to maintain this, we would be building up a picture of a God who is personally indifferent to sin. The concept of the wrath of God is a healthy corrective to such unmoral views of the Deity, and it stands as a striking reminder that God is totally opposed to every form of evil.7
b. The preaching of the gospel at Thessalonica (2:1–16)
Paul proceeds to defend his conduct when at Thessalonica, with the Jewish slanders very much in mind. Rolston finds this ‘one of the richest descriptions of the work of a Christian minister to be found in the New Testament’.
1. The preachers’ motives (2:1–6)
1. NIV omits Paul’s ‘For’, but the conjunction shows that what follows is a consequence of the preceding (cf. Lightfoot).8 You is emphatic; Wilson speaks of ‘this brilliant stroke’, in that Paul begins by calling the Thessalonians themselves to witness. They know what had happened. There are further links with 1:9, the unusual word eisodos being repeated (there translated ‘reception’, here visit; Schlier sees it as having an active sense as in 1:9, an entrance with the fullness of power), while you corresponds to ‘they themselves’. What other people reported about the Thessalonians they themselves knew to be true. This opening shows Paul’s confidence in his converts, and it also directs their attention to facts within their own knowledge that would refute the accusations of Paul’s opponents. If the result of his preaching was so manifest and so definite, then clearly he could not have been the time-server he was now accused of being.
In a masterly understatement Paul goes on to say that his entrance was not a failure. The perfect tense of his verb gives the idea of a continuing result: not only did the preaching have immediate impressive consequences, but a permanent change was wrought in the lives of the believers. The word kenos (a failure) means ‘empty’; Paul strongly repudiates any thought that he had frittered his time away in aimless pursuits. He had come with a definite aim, and he had secured what he had aimed at.
2. ‘But’ (which NIV omits) is alla, the strong adversative; the following words are in emphatic contrast to the preceding. Far from the visit being ‘a failure’, Paul and his companions were bold in their preaching of the gospel. Just before the little band first came to the city they had had to endure physical suffering and mental distress. At Philippi the preachers had undergone the painful punishments of scourging and having their feet fastened in the stocks. Neil thinks that the Pauline correspondence as a whole (and 2 Cor. 11:23ff. in particular) shows that Paul may have been specially sensitive to bodily pain, so that he recalled it with something akin to horror. If this is so, then his fortitude in the face of continual ill-treatment is something to marvel at, and indicates courage of the very highest order. But he remembers not only the physical pain but also the indignities that had been heaped on the Roman citizen at Philippi. Insulted (hybristhentes) indicates an attitude of haughty insolence on the part of the oppressors (NEB ‘outrage’).
Despite these troubles the apostolic band had preached boldly. The verb translated we dared derives from two words that mean ‘all speech’; it points to feeling completely at home so that words flow freely. This includes being without fear and having complete confidence. It is difficult to find one English word that will express both these ideas, so that translations tend to choose one and leave the other (though here Moffatt renders ‘we took courage and confidence in our God’). In the New Testament the verb is always connected with Christian preaching. This is done with the help of our God (more literally, ‘in our God’; ‘our God’ is characteristic of these two epistles). Paul is not speaking of merely natural courage, but of the supernatural endowment with which God equips those who put their trust in him.
In this confidence and courage they had proclaimed ‘the gospel of God’ (so, rather than his gospel). In 1:5 it is ‘our gospel’, for the preachers were proclaiming something they knew for themselves and had made their very own. Here what is singled out for attention is that the gospel is not of human origin. It is nothing less than God’s plan for man’s salvation. The Christian faith is not the accumulated wisdom of pious souls, nor the insight of men of religious genius, but the divine plan for dealing with our sin.
But at Thessalonica, as at Philippi, there had been strong opposition. Rigaux thinks that the word agōn here signifies inner tension and Frame that inward trouble may be meant (though he does not commit himself). But the word (which is used of a contest in the Olympic Games) is much more likely to point to acts of opposition, since Paul is speaking of things that might have made him afraid. It is that in Paul’s experiences that corresponds to the troubles of the Thessalonians (1:6).
3. Paul’s insistence on the purity of the motives of the preachers seems to indicate that he is meeting an accusation that their interest was not in their message, but in their profits (like the many itinerant preachers of strange cults and philosophies). The appeal we make is the manner of the preaching, as ‘the gospel of God’ in the previous verse was the matter.
Paul makes three points. First, the preaching was not from error; the preachers were not wrong (how could the gospel ‘of God’ be a mistake?). Secondly, it was not from impure motives, which implies that the preachers had been accused of immorality. This may be general (Best), or, more probably, sexual; religious prostitution was characteristic of many of the cults of the day and it seems that Paul was being accused of gross sensuality. Thirdly, the preachers were not trying to trick the converts. The word points to cunning craft: it properly signified catching fish with a bait, and thence it came to mean any crafty design for deceiving or catching. There is an interesting change of preposition from ‘of’ (ek, denoting origin) with the first two words to ‘in’ (en) with the last. Paul is saying that his preaching did not spring out of delusion or impurity, nor was it conducted in an atmosphere of craft.
4. The apostle vigorously repudiates these slanders and emphasizes the solemnity of his commission. So far from seeking anything for himself, he could speak only because he was approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. His own subservient position is brought out in this expression, as is the transcendent nature of his message. It came from God and therefore the accusation that he spoke from error was false. The verb approved means first ‘to test’ and then to approve as the result of the test, and the perfect tense used here conveys the meaning that the approval continues. Paul thinks of himself as having been tried out by God, and then trusted for service. It is out of this situation that he and his companions speak, the present tense in the verb we speak showing this to be their habitual practice.
Paul is emphatic that the message originated with God; it is not something thought up to please men. The word please probably means more than the English term suggests. The Greek word can convey the idea of service in the interest of others (MM give examples from the inscriptions). The point is that, while Paul served men, he did not live to serve them. His service was primarily the service of God, and he delighted to refer to himself as ‘the slave of God’ or ‘of Christ’. In every age this needs emphasis, for the Christian preacher is always tempted to accommodate his message to the desires of his hearers. People do not want a message that tells them that they are helpless sinners and that they must depend humbly on God’s mercy for their salvation. They are more interested in the ‘social implications’ of the gospel. These, of course, must not be soft-pedalled, but the preacher must always put his emphasis on those doctrines to which Scripture itself gives priority.
That God tests our hearts means that the preacher must be completely sincere. The verb tests is that translated approved earlier in the verse; it signifies ‘put to the test’ and thus ‘approve by test’. In the Bible ‘heart’ means the sum total of our inward dispositions, including the emotions, the intellect and the will; it is not confined to the emotions, as usually with us. Paul is saying that the whole of the motives and thoughts of the preacher are always open to God and, further, that his own preaching had been done in the full consciousness of this fact. It is not unlike calling God to witness his sincerity, as he does in the next verse.
5. Paul turns from the general to the particular and from the positive to the negative. There had been three things from which the preaching at Thessalonica had been free. The first is flattery (more literally, ‘neither have we come to be in a word of flattery’). The verb conveys the idea of entering into and continuing in a given condition (as in Rom. 16:7, of Andronicus and Junia coming to be and continuing to be in Christ). ‘In a word’ refers to the totality of the preaching, but the remaining word kolakeias is difficult to convey exactly in English. It is not flattery in the sense of fair, but insincere, words. Rather it denotes something like ‘cajolery’ (‘deception by slick eloquence’, Moore), the use of acceptable speech with the purpose of lulling someone into a sense of security, so that one may obtain one’s own ends. Paul emphatically rejects the idea.
He further denies putting on a mask to cover up greed. The preachers did not hide their real motives in order to secure personal profit. Some translations concentrate on the money angle (JB ‘trying to get money’; LB ‘so that you would give us money’), but the word pleonexia denotes the general attitude of eager seeking to have more. While it is often shown in the desire for money, it is the spirit of desire in its most general sense, self-aggrandisement. In disavowing any such motive Paul solemnly calls God to witness (cf. v. 10; Rom. 1:9; 2 Cor. 1:23; Phil. 1:8). Earlier in the verse he appealed to the Thessalonians’ knowledge of the outward (you know), here to God’s knowledge of the inward.
6. Paul’s third disclaimer is that of seeking praise from men, whether the Thessalonians or any others. This is a repetition of what has already been said in verse 4, with this difference that there he was denying that he directed his preaching to serve the ends that men approved, whereas now he is thinking of his own inner state; he was not looking for the satisfaction that comes when one’s work is praised. Paul did obtain honour, and to this day is honoured by millions throughout the world. But he tells us that he was not looking for this and it is this purity of motive that makes him a worthy object of the praise that Christians have delighted to lavish on him.
2. The preachers’ maintenance (2:7–9)
7. An apostle is ‘one who is sent’, ‘a messenger’, and the term was in common use among both Jews and pagans. The Jews used the term to denote a man’s personal representative, and the Talmud says more than once, ‘A man’s shaliach is as it were himself’ (shaliach is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek apostolos, ‘apostle’).9 For the Christians we see the essence of apostleship in the commission Jesus gave to the Twelve: ‘He appointed twelve—designating them apostles—that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons’ (Mark 3:14–15). The essential task of the apostle was to witness to (Acts 1:22) and to proclaim the saving act of God in the gospel. There were other things apostles did, like the organization of new churches, the provision of a ministry for them, and the exercise of oversight. But such things were secondary. Paul could regard the proclamation of the authentic gospel as so much the work of the apostle that he could say, ‘even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!’ (Gal. 1:8). Apostleship was not so much the conferring of an honour on an outstanding servant of God as the laying of an obligation on him.
The apostles are here said to be of Christ. Apostleship is always conferred by a divine call, not by human commissioning (cf. Gal. 1:1). In Acts 1:24 the prayer before lots were cast on Joseph and Matthias ran, ‘Show us which of these two you have chosen’. The apostle was already chosen by God, and the only thing remaining was for him to be made known. So, when it was revealed that Matthias was the man, we read of nothing like an ordination or commissioning; simply ‘he was added to the eleven apostles’ (v. 26).10
It accords with this that when Paul recalls that the preachers were apostles he is thinking of responsibility rather than privilege; they had been set apart by God to preach the gospel. This did give them a place of honour and authority, but he insists that they had not claimed such a place, and indeed goes on to show that they had been more conscious of their responsibility than of their privileges.
Because the preachers were apostles they could have been a burden to the converts. The noun translated a burden (baros) is ambiguous; it may mean ‘burden’ or it may mean ‘importance’ (as LB, ‘we certainly had a right to some honor’; NEB manages to get something of both meanings with ‘we might have made our weight felt’). Paul may be saying that the apostles had the right to be treated with honour (though they had not sought it), or he may mean that they had the right to maintenance (and had not claimed it).
It is plain that Paul is repudiating any suggestion that the apostles had taken a high and mighty line and extracted money for their support from their converts. But his precise line of reasoning is not so clear. NIV reads we were gentle, and many, perhaps most, commentators would support this. But a large group of MSS reads ‘we were (or became) babies among you’. There is a difference of one letter only in the Greek (ēpioi ‘gentle’ and nēpioi ‘babies’), and this is the last letter of the preceding word. It could have been slipped in accidentally from that word, or it could have been omitted by a scribe who had already written one n. The difficulty is made more acute by the fact that, while ‘gentle’ seems to give the better sense, ‘babies’ has the better manuscript attestation. Those who favour ‘gentle’ point out that it is hard to think of Paul comparing himself to a baby and a nurse in the same sentence; that nēpios has the thought of being undeveloped and unripe and, when Paul uses it, it generally has some implication of blame; that ēpios occurs in the New Testament elsewhere only once (2 Tim. 2:24), and there is always a tendency for less usual forms to be assimilated to the more usual. In favour of ‘babies’ is the manuscript evidence;11 the fact that Paul has no great objection to mixing his metaphors and indeed in this very chapter likens himself both to a father (v. 11) and to an orphan (v. 17, where ‘torn away’ is literally ‘being orphaned’); after apostles a noun is more likely than an adjective; the Greek rendered among you is natural after ‘babies’, less so after ‘gentle’; and what Westcott and Hort call ‘the change from the bold image to the tame and facile adjective’ which they think ‘characteristic of the difference between St Paul and the Syrian revisers’.12
With the evidence so evenly balanced a firm decision is not possible, but I am inclined to go along with the weight of the MSS and accept ‘babies’ as original. While it would be easy to alter the original either way, the probability of a change from ‘babies’ to ‘gentle’ seems greater than the reverse. If this be the reading the meaning would seem to be (with Origen and Augustine): ‘like a nurse among her children talking in baby language’. It would indicate the tender way the preachers adapted themselves to their hearers. They took up no attitude of superiority.
The word that NIV renders as mother (as also GNB, JB, LB, etc.) really means ‘nurse’; the reason for this translation is the statement that the children are her own. Paul’s point is that a nurse would be expected to be caring with any children, but this would be especially the case with her own. The verb caring means basically ‘to warm’; it is used of the mother bird (Deut. 22:6), and so comes to have the secondary meaning, ‘to cherish’, ‘to care for tenderly’.
8. The apostles behaved in a genuinely affectionate manner towards the Thessalonians; Paul repeats the thought in different words: we loved you so much. He uses an unusual verb (homeiromenoi), and, while it cannot be proved, Wohlenberg’s conjecture that it may be a term of endearment derived from the nursery (cited in Milligan) is very attractive, and may well be right. At any rate the verb does express a yearning over the converts, and a good will that is repeated in we were delighted (eudokoumen).
The preachers were delighted to impart the gospel of God to the Thessalonians; not only so, but they shared their lives as well. AV translates psychas as ‘souls’, while a number of translations join NIV with lives (GNB, JB, LB). But psychē does not mean quite ‘soul’ or even ‘life’; in a context like this it stands for the whole personality, ‘our own selves’ (RSV). Paul is speaking of that giving of oneself (and not simply a message that one has heard somewhere) that is of the very essence of genuine Christian teaching and evangelism. As Best puts it, ‘The true missionary is not someone specialized in the delivery of the message but someone whose whole being, completely committed to a message which demands all, is communicated to his hearers.’ There is an intensity of expression which is a rebuke to that tepid service that keeps the innermost self to oneself and is always a cause of ineffectiveness. Vital Christian service is costly.
Part of the reason for Paul’s giving of himself is seen in the concluding words of the verse, which really mean ‘for you became beloved to us’, where ‘beloved’ points to the self-giving quality of agapē (see on 1:3)
9. Paul calls on his readers to remember the toil and hardship that the preachers had endured. If there is a distinction between the two terms, toil (kopos) will point to the weariness involved in labour, while mochthos means, as the translation indicates, the hardship. The combination which, as Lightfoot, Neil and others point out, employs similar sounds (like ‘toil and moil’), makes it clear that the work the preachers had done had been hard and fatiguing. They had not been play-acting or making a token gesture. The double function of evangelism and earning their living had meant hard work for them, and this the Thessalonians knew quite well. Paul does not say what kind of work they did, but the apostle was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3), which probably means a worker in leather. The reason for the constant work (night and day), Paul says, was in order not to he a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. The verb preached (ekēryxamen) denotes the action of a herald, who, of course, said what was given him to say. His work was to pass on a message, not to produce some high-flown oration elaborately adorned with ear-tickling phraseology, nor even to give a simple message to meet the need as he saw it. The fact that this is a favourite way of referring to the activity of the Christian preacher in the New Testament puts stress on the divine nature of the message. The gospel preacher is not at liberty to substitute his view of the need of the moment for the God-given message of the cross. This is underlined by the reference to the gospel of God, an expression we have met in verses 2, 8 (and substantially in v. 4; apart from this it is found in the New Testament only in Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1; 15:16; 2 Cor. 11:7; 1 Pet. 4:17). This deep-seated certainty that he was entrusted with a message of divine, not human, origin gave a note of urgency and conviction to all that Paul did and said. The conviction that the gospel is of God is an important factor in fervent and effectual preaching, whether in the apostolic age or any other.
3. The preachers’ behaviour (2:10–12)
10. Paul solemnly maintains that the Thessalonians can bear testimony on his behalf (you is emphatic; ‘you of all people’), and, so certain is he that the preachers’ behaviour had been above reproach, that he says that God is witness, too (cf. v. 5). He uses three adverbs (adjectives in NIV) to describe their conduct, holy, righteous and blameless, and the older commentators sometimes made sharp distinctions between them. They took the first to refer to their behaviour towards God, the second to that towards the Thessalonians and the third to that towards themselves. But this division seems artificial for, as R. C. Trench puts it, Scripture ‘recognizes all righteousness as one, as growing out of a single root, and obedient to a single law’.13 NIV’s translation with adjectives rather than adverbs can be justified, for even in classical Greek adverbs are sometimes used in this way (BDF 434 (2)). The first term, holy (hosiōs), points to the character involved in being set apart for God, and the second, righteous (dikaiōs), to conformity to a norm; for biblical writers that norm is the law of God. The third, blameless (amemptōs), means without cause for reproach. The combination makes an impressive witness to Paul’s certainty that no accusation could fairly be levelled at the conduct of the little band of evangelists. And the fact that he so confidently appeals to the Thessalonians as witnesses shows that he was right. They had been there at the time and knew at first hand what had happened. Paul is appealing to people who knew what the truth was.
He calls the Christians you who believed. So central is faith to the Christian scheme of things that Christians are often called simply ‘believers’. But here, in addition to this use, Paul is probably making a contrast with his Jewish opponents who stood out as non-believers. Those people violently rejected the message and the messengers, but Paul expresses his confidence in the believers.
11–12. From the way the preachers had lived and commended the message Paul turns to the manner and the content of the preaching. He reminds his readers (you know) of the tenderness with which the gospel had been preached to them as well as of the thoroughgoing nature of the demands that had been made on them. He himself had been like a father to them, the very opposite of the deceiver and go-getter he had been misrepresented as being. His loving care comes through in his insistence that he had brought the message to each of you, where the Greek ‘each one’ is more emphatic (‘intensified’, BDF 305) than the simple ‘each’. In other words, he had not contented himself with giving the message in general terms to the Thessalonian public at large, but had been sufficiently interested in individuals to bring it home to them one by one, evidently in private conversations (cf. Phillips, ‘how we dealt with each one of you personally’).
Paul uses three verbs to convey the manner of the preaching, the combination giving the impression of urgency. The apostles had evidently been very much in earnest. The first verb carries the note of exhortation and encouragement. Being a Christian in first-century Thessalonica could not have been easy and the preachers had given the encouragement that was needed. The note of tenderness is intensified in the second verb, comforting, a verb used elsewhere in the New Testament only of comforting the faint-hearted (1 Thess. 5:14) or the bereaved (John 11:19, 31). The preachers had been mindful of the difficulties that confronted the newly converted.
But, though there is this clear note of tenderness and understanding, it is also plain that the message was uncompromising. The preachers had urged (‘charged’, RSV) the converts to live lives worthy of God, which sets before us ‘the noblest possible ideal of life’ (CBSC). Clearly Paul had not toned down the demands of the gospel in any way, and we are reminded that, when we become followers of Christ, no less a demand is made on us. More literally the expression means ‘to walk worthily of God’, where the metaphor of walking (as often in the New Testament) gives the idea of steady, if unspectacular, progress. There is nothing static about being a Christian.
God calls you, where the use of the present tense brings home the fact that God’s call never ceases. Paul generally uses the past tense when he is referring to the call of God. He may use the aorist to remind us of the once-for-all nature of the call (e.g. Gal. 1:6, 15), or the perfect to point to the fact that those called remain in the position of called ones (e.g. 1 Cor. 7:15, 17). Here we see that God’s call is always coming to us, and that it calls us to nothing less than being worthy of him. The Christian’s standard is the highest possible.
God calls people into his kingdom and glory, the two concepts being closely linked (the Greek has a single preposition and article). The kingdom of God is the central topic of Jesus’ teaching. It has Old Testament roots, for the idea that God rules over all is very ancient. But there was a new emphasis in Jesus’ teaching and we appear to owe the very expression ‘the kingdom of God’ to him. Scholars are increasingly agreed that the concept is essentially dynamic; Jesus saw the kingdom as something that happens, as God’s rule in action, rather than as something like a realm. In a sense the kingdom is present here and now, for God is working out his purposes and there are those who have yielded themselves to do his will. In another sense it is future, for not yet do we see all his enemies put under his feet (1 Cor. 15:24–25). The kingdom is closely associated with the person of Jesus, and, while the kingdom and the cross are not explicitly linked, we cannot but think that the death of the Christ was necessary to the establishment of the kingdom. It is a gift from God (Luke 12:32), not the result of men’s labours; it is not explicable but is always sheer miracle (Mark 4:26–29). The thought of the Gospels is that God has broken into this world of space and time in the person of his Son, and it is in this way that the kingdom is brought in.
The kingdom is not as central in the Pauline writings as in the Gospels, but Luke says that Paul could describe his ministry at Ephesus in the words, ‘I have gone about preaching the kingdom’ (Acts 20:25); at Rome ‘he preached the kingdom of God’ (Acts 28:31). There are some important references to it in the epistles and a notable feature of Paul’s understanding of the kingdom is that he speaks of it as Christ’s, just as it is God’s (Eph. 5:5; Col. 1:13). In the passage before us Paul has this great concept in mind.
4. The preachers’ message (2:13)
Paul constantly gives thanks to God for the way the Thessalonians received the message the preachers brought. The expression translated when you received the word of God (‘the word of divine preaching that goes out from us’, BAGD) is difficult; more literally Paul refers to ‘the word of hearing (logon akoēs)’. The word akoē means first the faculty of hearing (1 Cor. 12:17), then the organ of hearing, the ear (Mark 7:35), then what is heard, the message. Paul is saying something like ‘we handed on God’s message’ (NEB). Best points out that this noun is from the same root as akouō, ‘to hear’, and that among the Jews true hearing and obedience went together; here he sees the idea of ‘obedient hearing’. Paul connects the hearing denoted by this noun with faith (Rom. 10:17; Gal. 3:2, 5), and the writer to the Hebrews looks for it to be accompanied by faith (Heb. 4:2). All this means that Paul appears to be thinking of the obedient response of faith that followed when the Thessalonians received the message. The verb received (paralambanō) is often used of the receiving of a tradition that has been handed on; Paul uses it of his own reception of the Christian message (1 Cor. 15:3). Neil sees it as a technical term for the reception of the kērygma, the message preached by Christian evangelists. The word accepted (dechomai) conveys the idea of a welcome, being the usual word for the reception of a guest (Ward calls it ‘a hospitality word’). The message was not only heard and received by the Thessalonians; it was welcomed.
The reason for the welcome and for Paul’s thanksgiving was that the Thessalonians received the message as truly the word of God. Twice Paul insists that what the Thessalonians heard was of God. The second time is particularly emphatic, as we see from Findlay’s rendering, ‘you accepted no word of men, but, as it truly is, God’s word’ (CGT). Paul could preach with certainty and power, for he had the profound conviction that what he said was not of man’s devising; it was the word of God, a conviction at the heart of the church’s message. ‘The man who feels that “there are few things worth living for and none worth dying for” will not gather around himself a band of zealous disciples’ (Rolston). To preach interesting little moral essays can never prove an adequate substitute for the word that comes from God.
At the end of the verse Paul makes the point that this word of God really does things; it works in believers (cf. Rom. 1:16, where the gospel is said to be ‘the power of God’). Most accept some such translation as NIV, which is at work in you, but Armitage Robinson, in a valuable note on energein (the verb here) and its cognates, argues that it should be understood as passive, i.e. ‘is made operative’.14 His point is that, while another writer may well have used the active, Paul prefers the passive which implies that God is the One who works. Whether we accept these linguistics or not, this is certainly Paul’s thought; the power is God’s and the word is his instrument (cf. NEB mg., ‘God, who is at work’). The verb incidentally is almost always used in the New Testament with reference to supernatural activity (mostly that of God, though sometimes it refers to what Satan does).
5. Persecution (2:14–16)
14. For introduces the evidence for this working of God in the converts. That they had responded to the gospel as God’s word is plain from the way they behaved. They became imitators of God’s churches in Judea. This does not mean a conscious patterning of themselves on those churches, but rather that they had endured suffering in the same way. Paul has already linked their suffering with imitation (the imitation of the preachers and of their Lord, 1:6). It seems curious that he draws attention here to the sufferings of the churches in Judea, when there were churches in the immediate neighbourhood that had suffered. We have no exact knowledge of the persecutions in Judea (though from Acts we can see the sort of thing that must have happened). But clearly they were well known throughout the Christian church and that may be the reason for referring to them. The early believers saw persecution as inevitable (cf. 2 Tim. 3:12).
15. Paul makes the point that the conduct of the Jews has been consistent; they have always been hostile to the purposes of God. When he says that they killed the Lord Jesus, by an unusual word order he manages to emphasize both Lord and Jesus. The One whom they killed was the Lord, with all that that means in terms of heavenly glory; and he was Jesus, fully man, and their fellow-countryman. In an important sense, of course, it was the Romans who actually killed Jesus, but Paul’s point is that it was at the instigation of the Jews (cf. John 18:30–31, 35; 19:10–15). Nor did this activity begin with Jesus, for they also killed the prophets; the New Testament writers often point to the way the Jews had treated the prophets (cf. Matt. 23:29–31, 35, 37; Luke 11:47–51; 13:34; Acts 7:52; Rom. 11:3; cf. Matt. 5:12; Jas 5:10). Nor did it finish there, for they also drove us out (the verb may also mean ‘persecute severely’, cf. AV, GNB). There is consistent opposition to God’s way and God’s people. Thus they displease God (they oppose his purposes) and are hostile to all men (they oppose the gospel which would bring blessing to all).
16. The indictment of the Jews continues. They have opposed the preaching of God’s saving act among the Gentiles. Salvation is the comprehensive term, of which redemption, reconciliation and the like represent aspects. It is sometimes viewed as a salvation from evils like wrath (Rom. 5:9), or perdition (Phil. 1:28); sometimes it is a salvation with a view to blessings, such as the heavenly kingdom (2 Tim. 4:18). Here, as often, the term is used absolutely, with both positive and negative aspects implied.
The effect of the Jews’ attitude on themselves includes their heaping up of their sins to the limit. Grammatically the words express the purpose of the Jews, but the sense of it is that God’s purpose is worked out. Their continual hostility to his plan inevitably brings his wrath on them. They piled sin upon sin (Phillips, ‘I fear they are completing the full tale of their sins’; cf. Matt. 23:32); the inevitable consequence is the wrath of God (as elsewhere, JB, NEB translate with ‘retribution’, but this is not what Paul says). The verb has come is in the aorist tense, which often denotes action in the past, but here the wrath is surely eschatological and therefore future. The aorist stresses the completeness and certainty of the coming of God’s wrath. At last might be translated ‘to the uttermost’ (AV), and this seems to be Paul’s meaning.
The denunciation of his own nation in these verses is unparalleled in Paul’s writings and gives some indication of his feelings on the matter. As Neil says, he speaks like an Old Testament prophet, and his vigorous words leave no doubt as to the extent of the Jews’ departure from the divine way. The castigation is unqualified, and the final expression indicating the eschatological wrath leaves no hope for the future. A nation (or a person) can reach a point in opposition to God where return is impossible.