V. The Faithfulness Of God (3:1-5) 245
16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17 encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
As he has done in other places, Paul breaks off his argument to engage in prayer. For him prayer was of the utmost importance, and it is quite in character that he should pray as he does here.
16-17 This section begins with an adversative conjunction (which NIV leaves untranslated) that might well be rendered "but." Paul has been urging his friends to action. But they can do nothing effective in their own strength. Thus the apostle directs them to that one source of strength which will see them through. He does more. He prays for them, just as he did in the first letter (1 Thess. 3:11-13). The prayer is at about the same stage in the argument, and there are coincidences of language between the two.
This prayer is notable for the place it assigns to Jesus Christ. He is given the full title77 "Lord Jesus Christ," where each word has its full weight (see on 1 Thess. 1:1 for the force of each of these). Ever since he got on to the subject of the Man of Lawlessness Paul has used every opportunity to insist on the superlative worth and might of the Savior. He is linked with the Father, and, what is unusual, he is placed before the Father. This sometimes happens elsewhere (Gal. 1:1; 2 Cor. 13:14), but the more usual practice is to place the Father first. Although the subject is in this way a double one, the two verbs "encourage" and "strengthen" are singular.78 We have seen Paul do this in the earlier letter (see on 1 Thess. 3:11). All this combines to give the highest place imaginable to Christ. Paul is not giving a formal account of his understanding of the nature of deity, but this incidental allusion in an informal act of prayer is all the more revealing for that reason. It is clear that he made no sharp distinction between the Son and the Father.
It is not quite clear whether the clause "who loved us ..." is to be taken only with the Father, or with both Persons. On the whole it seems more likely that it refers to the Father only (though Frame prefers the other view). Nothing much hinges on the point, for either way the acts of love and giving are divine in origin, and if they are thought of as emanating from the Father they are certainly mediated to us through the Son. Since "loved" and "gave" are both aorist participles, the probability is that they refer to definite actions. "Who loved us" will have primary reference to the divine love shown in the cross (or perhaps to election; cf. 1 Thess. 1:4). "Gave us eternal encouragement" is rather the good gift of God when he brought us into the state of salvation.
The content of the gift is encouragement79 or strengthening (see the note on I Thess. 3:2). Bailey reminds us that the word "may mean the presence of a great hope" that is surely the case here. "Eternal" encouragement is particularly appropriate in this context where there is so much about the troubles of the last days. Come the Man of Lawlessness, come the Parousia of our Lord, come the Day of Judgment, come anything else whatever, their encouragement will abide. Linked with this is "good hope." This is another concept that is very much in place where the interest is so highly eschatological. The Christian hope is good, as Frame points out, both in contrast with the empty hope of those who are not believers and because it will endure till it is realized at the coming of the Lord.8°
"In grace" is not to be taken with "hope" but with "gave" (as NIV makes clear by removing it from its position after "good hope" in the Greek to a place before the verb). Encouragement and the hope are both the products of the grace of God. It is because of this divine origin and backing that they are valid. The verb "encourage" has the notion of strengthening, and the noun "heart" stands for the whole of the inner life and not particularly for the emotional life as with us (see the note on 1 Thess. 2:4). With this is joined the notion of buttressing them (for the two verbs "encourage" and "strengthen" see the notes on 1 Thess. 3:2). The prayer, then, is for inner strengthening with a view to faithful Christian service. Usually when "word" and "deed" are put together in this way, "word" comes first. Possibly the order in this passage is due to a stress on the deeds that will proceed from the divine strength for which the apostle prays.