Section 30
25 With his final vocative “brothers and sisters” (number 14) in this letter, Paul, who has just prayed for them, asks the Thessalonian believers to reciprocate in this matter. Indeed, so obvious is this that early scribes added a kai (“even, also”), so that the later text reads: “Brothers and sisters, pray also for us.” While one should probably not make too much of a unique moment like this, at least two matters might be suggested by it. First, without necessarily trying to do so, Paul here reflects the friendship motif we have noted throughout. Asking them to pray for him and his companions is a way of expressing mutual indebtedness between friends. Second, it may also indicate something about Paul’s own present situation in Corinth, where his relationship with that community of believers turned out to be not nearly at the same level of comradeship as those between him and his Macedonian churches.
26 The imperative to greet all God’s people occurs only occasionally in Paul’s letters,716 and with the modifier “with a holy kiss” only in one other instance (2 Cor 13:12). But it is especially noteworthy that it occurs in this letter, where friendship is what drives so much that is said, since a “kiss”717 in Greco-Roman culture was a natural greeting between friends, and especially within families, which is now the assumed relationship in the preceding vocative, “brothers and sisters.” Thus this word is a reminder to the whole community to keep their internal friendship alive, and demonstrate it regularly with the kiss that denoted such friendship. What would be most remarkable about this expression of mutual Christian love within the believing community is the radical crossing of social boundary lines that would have been involved, not only between Jew and Gentile but also between rich and poor, slave and free.718
27 Perhaps from our distance the most significant matter in the charge to have the letter read to all is the sudden shift from the first person plural, which Paul has basically maintained throughout, to the first person singular.719 At this point Paul himself has most likely taken pen in hand and authenticated the letter by this final personal word. It is also further evidence that Paul is the actual “writer” of the letter, even though it began as from Silas and Timothy as well (1:1), which plural “authorship” was basically maintained throughout by the first person plural “we.” As pointed out on 1:1, the letter is to be understood as from all three of them, but Paul is the one responsible for its wording by way of dictation.
At our distance one can only be puzzled by Paul’s singular charge that “this letter [be] read to all the brothers and sisters.” Moreover, the charge is not a casual one; it is made “before the Lord [= Christ],” and therefore with the intent that it be seen as having divine approbation. Most likely this is a final word in the letter that has the unruly-idle in view. That is, Paul is not suggesting that they be sought out and have this letter read to them; more likely this is his way of letting them know that he is herewith once more authorizing the leadership to direct them to mend their ways. One is led to think so only because in his next letter Paul must take up this issue one more time, and there with much greater forcefulness.
28 The one element that recurs in all the letters in the church corpus, as well as the Pastorals (1-2 Timothy, Titus), is the concluding “grace.” Here, in its first occurrence in the corpus, it takes the form that becomes more or less standard throughout. While the “grace” itself occurs in all the letters,720 the modifier “of the Lord Jesus Christ” occurs in some form, usually this one,721 in all but Colossians. It is noteworthy that the standard “good-bye” in ancient letters was errōso (lit. “be strong”), which occurs in the New Testament only in the letter of James recorded in Acts 15:29. As with the salutation with which the letter began, this standard conclusion has been Christianized. It was “grace,” God’s own favor that is theirs through “the Lord, Jesus Christ,” with which he greeted them at the beginning; and now that same “grace” is what he wishes for them in conclusion. It is the one word in Paul’s vocabulary that embraces all that God has done, and that he desires that God will do, for his Thessalonian friends through Christ Jesus.
It is hardly surprising, given how Paul “Christianizes” the common greeting in contemporary letters, that he does the same with the concluding matters. Although it is true that, in many examples from Greco-Roman antiquity, writers of letters have shown themselves somewhat reluctant to “sign off,” nonetheless there are few, if any, examples of what Paul does here — thoroughly modify standard stuff both by elaborating and by “Christianizing” it. And what begins here carries on throughout his life as a writer of letters to his churches (with the exception of Ephesians, which is best explained by understanding it as a “circular” letter to be read in many churches).