Iii. Reminiscences (1:5-2:16) 44
2 We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. 3 We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
4 Brothers loved by God, we know that he has chosen you.
Paul usually begins his letter with a thanksgiving (Galatians is a conspicuous exception). This was a normal way to begin a letter, but Paul clearly is doing more than adopting a convention: thanks for what God is doing in the churches is important to him. There is disagreement as to how much of this letter the thanksgiving occupies, with many exegetes taking it down to verse 7 and some as far as 2:16. Not much hinges on this, but in most of this section Paul seems to be more concerned with reminiscences than with thanksgiving.
2 Paul's thanksgiving is removed from the merely conventional by his insertion of "God": he is giving genuine thanks to the one true God, not making a casual reference to whatever gods there be. Far from the conventional also is the warmth of feeling the writer displays. Paul's regard for his converts is deep and sincere. He includes them all in the thanksgiving, which is a mark of his satisfaction at their spiritual progress (contrast Corinthians or Galatians). Paul rates thanksgiving very highly. He enjoins his readers to give thanks in everything (5:18; cf. 2 Cor. 4:15; 9:11-12).
Frame takes "mentioning"13 with "always," and understands it to mean, "Each time that they are engaged in prayer, the writers mention the names of the converts." But this does not seem justified. Rather, "always" qualifies "thank" and indicates that the thanksgiving is constant, not sporadic. While Paul is clearly affirming that he and his companions prayed often for the Thessalonians, we need not think that he could never pray without bringing in a reference to them. It is not certain whether the word rendered "continually" is to be taken with "mentioning" or with "remember" (v. 3). On the whole it seems probable that it goes with the former (NIV takes it with the latter and puts the word in v. 3).
3 The matter of the thanksgiving is threefold,14 and, as Paul often does, he gives thanks for matters that will be raised in the letter: faith is the topic in chapters 1-3, love is prayed for in 3:12 (cf. 4:9-12), while concern for their hope and their steadfastness is found throughout the letter. First, "your work produced by faith." There is no reason to doubt that the meaning of this phrase is "your work that springs from faith."15 Grammatically other meanings are possible (as, for example, Hendriksen shows), but none suits the context as well as this. Paul is very emphatic that salvation is a matter of faith, not works, and he uses the very strongest of expressions to make clear that people are not saved by works of any kind. But when this truth is not in dispute he does not hesitate to speak of the good works that characterize the life of faith (cf. 5:13; 1 Cor. 3:11-15; 15:58; 16:10). Faith, for Paul, is a warm personal trust in a living Savior,16 and such faith cannot but transform the whole of life and issue in "work" of many kinds (cf. "faith working through love," Gal. 5:6, RSV). The word "work" is very general, and we should not try to delimit it too closely.
"Labor prompted by love" is apt to be misunderstood, for we use the expression "labor of love" to denote small services we render without hope of reward. But Paul's term is a strong one,17 and he means that, out of love, the Thessalonians have labored to the point of weariness. The word expresses the cost of their love, not its result. With or without visible success, love gives itself unstintingly.
Since the Greeks had a number of words for love, it is of interest that the Christians passed over all those in common use. They took up agape, a word rarely used before them, and made it their characteristic word for love.'K It rings throughout the New Testament. Not only did they have a new word, but they had a new idea, for, as John says, we can never know what agape is from any human activity, not even from love to God. It is known only from God's great love to us shown in the propitiation wrought out on the cross (1 John 4:10).19 We have food for thought here, for it may be that in our day popular ideas of love are as misleading as they were in theirs. The Hollywood brand of love will never do if we wish to understand the New Testament.
Among the Greeks the usual word for love was ergs. Basically this word means romantic love, love between the sexes. Though it came to be used of other loves, this is its characteristic meaning, and all others are derived from it. Now there are two important points about a young man's love for a young woman. First, he thinks highly of his beloved. Whatever the opinion of others ("I can't imagine what he sees in her!"), he thinks she's wonderful. Second, his love includes the desire to possess. I have never yet met a young man who said: "I'm head over heels in love with so-and-so, and I don't care who marries her!" On the contrary, he is determined that she will be his. These two ideas, the love of the worthy and the desire for possession, are of the essence of eros. The result may be a crude lust or it may be a high and pure emotion, for example, the love of the good. It is no small praise of anyone when we can say that that person loves (in the sense of eros) the good. For that is to say that he regards it as the most worthy thing and is determined to make it his own day by day. This is a fine concept. But it is not the Christian idea of love.
God loves us, not because we are worthy, nor even, as some think, because he sees in us possibilities as yet unrealized. God loves us although he knows full well our complete unworthiness. He knows that, at best, our righteousnesses are as "filthy rags" (Isa. 64:6, KJV). And still he loves us. He loves, moreover, without thought of advantage, for there is nothing that we can bring to him who made all things. He loves because it is his nature to love. He loves because he is love. Continually he gives himself in a love that is for the blessing of others, not for the enrichment of himself. This love is more than a matter of words. God's love is a love that costs. It is an active love, a love revealed in what Christ did on the cross. Indeed, it is only in the cross that we can really know what the love of a pure and holy God for sinners is.
The third item in the thanksgiving is "endurance inspired by hope." "Endurance" (or "stedfastness," ARV mg.) is not a quiet, passive resignation, but an active constancy in the face of difficulties. As Barclay puts it, "It is the spirit which can bear things, not simply with resignation, but with blazing hope."21 This springs from hope,22 that hope which is more than pious optimism. It is a solid certainty. In the New Testament hope is always something that is as yet future, but that is completely certain. It is a significant feature of the early church, and marked it off from contemporary paganism.23 It is a hope that is firmly grounded and that is related to the resurrection of Jesus (cf. 4:13-14).
It is not absolutely clear whether we should take "in our Lord Jesus Christ" with "hope," or, as Neil, for example, does, with the whole of the preceding, including the work of faith and labor of love. In the latter case it would mean that the whole of the life of the believer is lived in Christ. While this is true, yet here Paul seems rather to be saying that the Christian hope is in Christ. The Thessalonian epistles have a good deal to do with the second coming and associated events, and hope is very prominent in them. Similarly, "before our God and Father" is probably to be taken with "hope" rather than with the preceding.24 The hope of the believer is in Christ, but it is also a hope that has reference to his standing before the Father, and not merely before other people.
This verse brings before us that conjunction of faith, hope, and love which we find in a number of places in the New Testament (5:8; Rom. 5:1-5; 1 Cor. 13:13; Gal. 5:5-6; Col. 1:4-5; Heb. 6:10-12; 10:22-24; 1 Pet. 1:21-22). 1 Corinthians 13:13 is especially important, for that chapter is about love, not faith or hope, yet at the climax the other two appear quite naturally. It was apparently an accepted Christian practice to join the three. While the linkage is found in several places, the order varies. In this verse hope comes last as a climax, which is very fitting in a letter in which hope is given so much emphasis.
Here we notice a characteristic of Paul's writing. The sentence might well have finished at "hope," and it would have been well rounded and complete. But Paul is not satisfied. He goes on to add another thought and another, so that his sentence does not finish till the end of verse 5 (or even later, in the opinion of some expositors). As Findlay says, "His thought flows on in a single rapid stream, turning now hither, now thither, but always advancing towards its goal. His sentences are not built up in regular and distinct periods; but grow and extend themselves like living things under our eyes" (CBSC).
4 Paul addresses his readers as `Brothers loved by God."25 He is fond of the address "brothers," using it twenty-one times in these two epistles (he uses the word "brother" another seven times). Brotherhood was a very real thing in the early church, composed as it was of people from every race and social class, but with a preponderance of those from the depressed classes (1 Cor. 1:26ff.). The members of the church knew a real brotherhood, a brotherhood that depended on the fact that they had all experienced the love of God. In view of much modern talk about "the brotherhood of man," we should be clear on the New Testament teaching. The brothers are those "beloved by God," and they are elect. There is a sense in which all people may be thought of as brothers. But in the sense that matters, brothers are brothers in Christ. The Christian brotherhood is the fellowship of the redeemed. It refers to those who can call God "Father."
Election is one of the great concepts of the Bible, and it looms large in both Testaments. It is often misrepresented (as in Burns's dreadful caricature). God is pictured as an arbitrary tyrant, damning or saving people without rhyme or reason. Against all such views we must insist that election, as Paul's words imply, proceeds from the fact of God's great love (notice the connection between love and election also in 2 Thess. 2:13). It is not a device for sentencing people to eternal torment, but for rescuing them from it. Election protects us from thinking of salvation as dependent on human whims, and roots it squarely in the will of God. Left to ourselves, we do not wish to leave our state of untroubled sinfulness. It is only because God first convicts us and enables us that we can make even the motion of wanting to turn from our sins. This is no afterthought of God, no sudden change in his plans, but his eternal purpose. He has chosen his own from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). Nothing gives security to salvation like the concept of election. Salvation, from first to last, is the work of God. Well may the seventeenth of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England speak of our election in Christ as "full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort."