Section 18
Nonetheless, and not surprisingly given the angst expressed in what has preceded, what gets immediate attention is their “love.” Whereas in some circumstances the combination of “faith and love” could be seen as directed toward Christ, the elaboration that immediately follows suggests that in this case it has to do with the apostles themselves.387 The two words therefore pick up the two major concerns from the preceding narrative: what the persecution they are enduring might have done to their “faith,” and what the slander of Paul (2:1-12) might have done to their “love.” His concern throughout has had to do with whether the persecution and slander might have caused their faith to be shaken and their love to have diminished.
The grateful answer to both, of course, is “no.” Paul will pick up on their faith, the primary concern, in the main clause (vv. 7-8); for now he finishes the present clause by elaborating on their love for him. The “good news” that Timothy has brought back is “that you always have ‘good’ memory of us.” While the NIV’s (unchanged in the TNIV) “pleasant memories of us” is a well-known contemporary idiom, it is also one that probably leads the reader slightly astray here. “Pleasant memories” have to do with good friendships, family gatherings, good times together, and the like; this word has to do with the fact that their memory of Paul is a good one, not clouded with doubts and misgivings — which of course has been part of the concern right along. The Thessalonians do indeed remember “our entrance to you” (2:1), and “what manner of men we were among you” (1:5). Thus he intends something like, “your good memory of us remains intact.”
Furthermore, Timothy has reported that Paul’s longing to see them, which has found such intense expression throughout the immediately preceding narrative, is reciprocated from their end: “You long388 to see us, just as we also long to see you.” This is simply all about being human — and family — where letters are nice, but not the same thing as real presence. Thus with these words Paul takes them back to where the present narrative began in 2:17, “out of our intense longing, making every effort to see you.” At the some time, one must not lose the reciprocal nature of this longing. After all, Paul begins his clause on this note — that they also longed to see him. It must have been a special delight, therefore, for him to have learned that his longing for them was reciprocated from their end.
7 With a strong “therefore,”389 and still another familial vocative (the sixth), “brothers and sisters,” Paul now comes to the main clause in his sentence. Picking up on the language he had used about the reason for sending Timothy (v. 2b), he now reports that that reason had now been reciprocated by Timothy’s return. We sent him, he told them, “to . . . encourage you with regard to your faith”; Timothy has now returned so that we have been encouraged through your faith.390 That is, their faith was not the “cause” of encouragement, but the “effective means” of it. As before, the emphasis on their “faith” is on its enduring quality of “faithfulness.”
In typical fashion, and quite in keeping with the present narrative as a whole, between the two phrases “about you” and “through your faith” Paul in serts a final reminder of his own present circumstances. This encouragement about you and your faith came in the midst of “all our distress and persecution.” Here are words that we are hardly prepared for, especially if our understanding of Paul’s time in Corinth were based solely on Luke’s brief account in Acts 18:1-18 (of an 18-month stay), where there are only two hints of persecution (vv. 6 and 12-13). Furthermore, whereas in writing our 1 Corinthians Paul focussed so strongly on issues in the church in Corinth, and the persecution there, one finds only a few hints of ill treatment in this letter (e.g., 2:1-3); and while there is more of it in 2 Corinthians, the latter is just ambiguous enough to leave us with uncertainty as to the location of much of the suffering spoken of there. But Paul is currently in Corinth, probably early on in his time there, and here we pick up that he is clearly smarting from some present “distress and persecution.” The reason for mentioning it here, however, is not that Paul “loves to suffer,” but almost surely as a way of tying his own present circumstance to theirs in verse 3 through the common word thlipsis ( “trials”).
8 One final time, and still in the same sentence, Paul ties together his own encouragement to their “faith-fulness.” But he does so in this case with the strongest of language. For Paul whether or not they “stand firm”391 in the Lord is a matter of life or death. His putting it so strongly is another indication of friendship, since friends in the Greco-Roman world “lived and died” together, as it were. Otherwise, had the Thessalonians’ “faith” failed in some way, Paul’s “distress and persecution” would function like “death” to him. And, as always, it is not their loyalty to Paul that concerns him, but their steadfast loyalty to Christ. This also explains this moment of unusual Greek, where a conjunction that ordinarily takes the subjunctive mood and expresses “supposition” (“if you are”), here has the indicative, and thus as the TNIV rightly has it, expresses affirmation, “since you are.”392 So with this final word of affirmation in this now long sentence, Paul brings the present narrative (from 2:17) to its fitting conclusion by turning it into thanksgiving to God (v. 9), which in turn evolves into yet one more prayer for the Thessalonians (v. 10).
9 The present, very complex sentence (vv. 9-10) is basically a rhetorical question, responding directly to the good news found in the preceding, equally complicated sentence. Part of its complexity is related, first, to Paul’s own emotional response to the good news brought by Timothy that Paul has just recounted for them. But its complexity is also related to the fact that in coming to the end of his long narrative about his and their past relationships, he is also anticipating what will come next in the letter. Thus, in some ways all the concerns of this letter get folded together in this single thanksgiving/ prayer: his concern about their “faith” after his and Silas’s hasty withdrawal; his gratitude that their “faith” still endures, even through hardship; and his need to “mend” some things where their “faith” is lacking.
The sentence thus begins with a rhetorical question, where Paul’s unabashed joy at Timothy’s good report (after months of anxiety about them) bursts into an expansive, “What thanksgiving393 is even possible over such good news?” That is followed (v. 10), still in the same sentence — and reasonably — with a prayer report expressing his most earnest longing before God to see them again. But the whole concludes on a very “down-to-earth” note, offering a basic reason for wanting to see them again: to supply what is lacking in their faith. As strange as this concluding moment might seem from our distance, it nonetheless flows very naturally in Paul’s present setting, since in fact it sets forth the basic reason for the immediate return of Timothy to Thessalonica with this letter.
But one must not hasten too quickly to that final clause in our verse 10, since that would be to miss too much, and to suggest a less than sincere motive for the present letter. Indeed, that it is a kind of “add on” to his thanksgiving about their perseverance, and his longing to see them again is made clear by the fact that he stops to pray for them (vv. 11-13) before he picks up the matters that need immediate attention.
Whether intended as such or not, the thanksgiving itself is only indirectly about them. Rather, it is an expression of the overflow from Paul’s heart that his own, now for him long, anxiety about “their faith” has been essentially relieved. All of its various parts indicate as much. The question thus begins with an (untranslated) “for” that connects it to the preceding sentence, but its exact relationship to what has preceded is not at all clear. Probably it is simply a rhetorical device, which serves as a proper way to introduce the rhetorical question itself. In light of what he has just narrated, and especially in light of Paul’s now being able to “live” because of their continuing faithfulness, he simply sets out to ask rhetorically, “How can God be repayed394 for such joy?” The language of “repayment” actually belongs to the arena of ancient friendship, where friends regularly “repay” each other in terms of their agreed reciprocity. The surprise element is that it has been brought onto the present scene not as something between him and them, but between himself and God. The point here, of course, and thus the reason for the present rhetoric, is that such “repayment” of God is not possible at all. But it is a most effective way of expressing his sheer delight over Timothy’s good news about them.
In making this point Paul (somewhat awkwardly) repeats himself three times, which in some ways says it all. First, he asks how he can repay God for his present joy in the presence of God. Whatever else, Timothy’s report has brought him once more into God’s presence with an overflow of gratitude, so much so that he is willing to ask rhetorically, “How can I possibly pay God back for my present joy about you?” Second, his joy is so expansive he refers to it as “all the joy in which we rejoice.” Such redundancy could hardly have been missed by them. Third, his thanksgiving is “for you” and is offered “because of you.” Together these repetitions are both effective on their side and revealing of his deep concern for them.
10 But while Paul is in God’s presence, overflowing with joy and thanksgiving to God for them, he also prays for/about them, and this is where Paul’s sentence begins to get a bit overloaded with present concerns. The prayer, he tells them, is regular (throughout “night and day”;395 cf. 2:9), and it is intense (“most earnestly”396). The primary object of the prayer is a most natural one, given the circumstances and the nature of the letter to this point: “to see you again” (which in the Greek idiom is “to see your faces”).
But the final clause is the one that is least expected in terms of the present prayer and of what has been said to this point. His ultimate reason for wanting to see them is so that “we might supply what is lacking in your faith.” This last phrase in particular reminds us that their “faith” in this passage is not about their way of entry into Christian life, but of the way they live out that faith in very practical, everyday circumstances, thus their “faith-fulness.” Our difficulty from this long vantage point is with both the verb the TNIV has rendered as “supply” and its object, “the deficiencies.” Although the main point seems easy enough to discern, and its particular historical referent almost certainly points forward to what Paul instructs in 4:1-5:11 that follows, the meaning here of the verb and its object together is less than certain.397 The primary sense of the verb is “to cause [something] to be in condition to function well” (BDAG), and thus either to “restore” something to its working condition or simply to “prepare” it for such use. Because the object of the verb is “what is lacking in your faith,” it most likely in this case means simply to “put it in proper condition.” In any case, what follows is both correction (4:3-8; 4:9-12), thus “putting their faith into proper condition,” and instruction where their “faith” has been deficient (4:13-18), while 5:1-11 is a bit of both. In some ways, the NAB’s “remedy the deficiencies of your faith”398 would seem to get at both dimensions of the metaphor, although it might also sound a bit more pejorative in English than would have been intended in Greek.
But this is hardly the way for Paul to end this paragraph, which up to this point simply overflows with both relief and joy. So rather than move on directly to the “deficiencies,” Paul chooses to conclude the now very long narrative with a prayer report that touches all the previous bases and anticipates what is to come.
From this passage (vv. 1-10), one can learn much about Paul both as a person and as a “pastor.” On the personal side, this section is full of “friendship” motifs, as understood by ancient standards. Thus, even though they are his “disciples,” as it were, he treats them in this letter altogether as his friends. Here in particular, therefore, those who have roles of church leadership can learn much about the true nature of such a relationship. This is not the apostle exercising “authority” over, but a friend coming “alongside,” showing genuine concern for their welfare in Christ. At the same time, he demonstrates that “feelings” regarding friends are a genuine part of such relationships. Paul here exhibits none of the aloofness that has often characterized what has come to be called “Christian ministry,” which seems too often to fall short of the apostolic kind.