2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12 Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson returns to one of last Sunday’s themes that is suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ. However, while last Sunday’s Lesson largely addressed Paul’s suffering for his faith, this week’s focuses mostly on the Thessalonian Christians’ suffering for their faith. By the power of the Holy Spirit, preachers might let 2 Thessalonians 1 help our hearers to think about our own suffering for the faith.

In fact, it’s perhaps a good thing that the RCL invites us to think about Christian suffering again. I sense, after all, that at least some Christians in the world’s northern and western hemispheres don’t have a good handle on it. It’s tempting for us to, after all, think of Christian suffering as confined to parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. What’s more, while many Christians in the rest of the world experience genuine persecution because of their faith, Jesus’ friends in the North and West are sometimes tempted to view people and institutions’ relatively ordinary slights as persecution for Jesus’ sake.

At first glance it may be tempting to think Paul is primarily praising the Christians in Thessalonica for their admirable response to their suffering for the faith. He begins, after all, by celebrating both how their “faith is growing more and more [hyperauxanei*], and how the love [agape]” they “have for one another is increasing [pleonazi]” (3).

In writing that, Paul basically compliments the Thessalonians for refusing to stay stagnant in their walk with God and each other. Their faith in God and love for each other isn’t just “treading water.” In fact, the apostle notes how Thessalonica’s Christians’ faith and love aren’t even just growing. They’re literally “growing abundantly” and “abounding.” The Message paraphrases Paul’s verse 3’s praise as “Your faith is growing phenomenally; your love for each other is developing wonderfully.”

Yet what may make the Thessalonians’ faith and love’s exceptional growth even more extraordinary is its context. In verse 4 Paul, Silas, and Timothy write of how “We boast about your perseverance [hypomones] and faith [pisteos] in all the persecutions [diogmois] and trials [thlipsesin] you are enduring [anechesthe].”

It’s no wonder the apostles publicly take pride in Thessalonica’s Christians. Those friends of Jesus’ faith isn’t just increasing exponentially. It’s also abounding even in the face of suffering for Jesus’ sake. Others’ persecution of them for following Jesus isn’t diverting them from that road that leads to life. While hard times have attacked them, they haven’t knocked down the Christians to whom Paul writes in Thessalonica.

But from where does such startling faith, love and perseverance come? Is there something in Thessalonica’s Christians’ spiritual DNA that equips them to not just persevere, but also grow? Is this yet another example of Paul at least implying that that the rest of Jesus’ followers just need to try harder to be “better” Christians?

No, the apostle implies the source of the Thessalonians’ growing faith and love as well as steady perseverance is God himself. We can infer that from verse 3’s beginning. There Paul writes, “We ought always [pantote] to thank [eucharistein] God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so [kathos axion], because your faith is growing …” One of the many reasons the apostles feel compelled to thank God is because of Thessalonica’s Christians. The Message paraphrases verse 3a as Paul calling that thanksgiving “not only a pleasure; it is a must. We have to do it.”

Yet were the Thessalonians’ perseverance as well as the growth of their faith just a matter of their spiritual virtue, it wouldn’t seem that the apostles would feel it so vital to thank God for them. That Paul, Silas and Timothy thank God for their Christlikeness is almost certainly a sign that they understand that growth is one of God’s great graces to God’s adopted children.

The second part of the Lectionary reading seems to affirm that understanding. In the verses 5-10 that the RCL omits from this Sunday’s Lesson Paul grieves that people who are evil are causing the Thessalonians to suffer for their Christian faith. He also warns that God will eternally punish those evildoers when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead.

The apostle goes on to write, however, that when Christ comes again, as The Message paraphrases verse 10, God “will be exalted by his followers and celebrated by all who believe.” Christ’s return will be, in other words, a cause of rejoicing rather than regretting for Jesus’ followers.

“With” that approaching day “in mind,” Paul adds in verse 11, “we constantly pray [proseuchometha] for you, that our God may make you worthy [axiose] of his calling [kleseos], and that by his power he may bring to fruition [plerose] your every desire for goodness [agathosynes] and your every good deed prompted by faith.”

Preachers might let the Spirit prompt us to point out a couple of things about this remarkable verse. It returns to the theme of prayer. Throughout this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, Paul is very much concerned to communicate to Thessalonica’s Christians that he cares so deeply about them that he constantly prays for them. Those prayers include both his thanks for and intercession and supplication on behalf of them.

The apostle, what’s more, returns to the theme of faith in verse 11. It’s not just a faith that’s increasing dramatically, even in the face of intense persecution. The Thessalonians’ faith is also a source of each one of their “good deeds” [ergon pisteos]. Their faith in Jesus Christ is no mere intellectual assent to a series of propositions. It’s also the source of their Christ-like behavior. Thessalonica’s Christians’ faith is motivating them to love their neighbor as themselves.

But perhaps more than anything preachers might choose to highlight the theocentric nature of verse 13. This is no “Do your best and let God do the rest” heresy. Paul understands that everything for which he praises Thessalonica’s Christians is a product of God’s gracious work of the Spirit. He insists that it’s God who, in the words of The Message, makes “us fit for what he’s called” us “to be” and fills our “good ideas and acts of faith with his own energy so that it all amounts to something.”

It’s somehow fitting, then, that Paul sees the outcome of all of this to be God’s glory. “We pray this,” he writes in verse 12, “so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified [endoxasthe] in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

While a growth in faith and love may benefit both the Thessalonian Christians and their neighbors, that’s not the primary goal Paul has in mind for the Thessalonians. While their goodness and kindness may draw others’ admiration, that’s not the apostle’s main goal for them. While Thessalonica’s Christians’ godliness may make Paul proud of the role he played in helping to foster it, it’s not his chief purpose.

No, more than anything Paul longs for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to be glorified – both in Silas, Timothy, and him, and in the beleaguered Christians of Thessalonica. He longs for people’s attention and acclamation to be drawn away from God’s adopted children and toward the living God in Jesus Christ.

2 Thessalonians 1 offers preachers another opportunity to point our hearers and ourselves away from spiritual self-improvement projects and toward God’s sanctifying work. Jesus’ followers certainly want to get out of God’s way and open ourselves to the Spirit’s help. But mostly we seek to remember that God is the one who so graciously blesses us with increasing faith, love, and perseverance – whatever our circumstance.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his terrific little book, The Fruit of the Spirit, Stephen Winward writes about the kind of sanctification Thessalonica’s Christians were experiencing. He rhetorically asks if Jesus’ friends must try for holiness.

Winward then answers, “Yes.” In the NT the Christian life, he writes “is described not only be verbs denoting receptivity: hearing, trusting, receiving, resting, relying, but also by verbs denoting activity: striving, working, running, fighting, casting away, putting on, etc.”

One reviewer sees sanctification as analogous to working for our daily bread while also praying for it as God’s gift. Winward notes, “The earth produces of itself (Mark 4:28),” so “the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth” (James 5:7). “Yet before and besides waiting comes ploughing, harrowing, sowing; afterwards comes harvesting, threshing, grinding, baking.”