1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Commentary

It sometimes seems as if the RCL editors had their eyes not just on the church year calendar, but also the secular one. After all, this Sunday on which Paul fills its Epistolary Lesson with expressions of thanksgiving falls between Canadian and Americans’ Thanksgiving Days.

Some Thanksgiving traditions include a variation of the “What are you thankful for?” exercise. Over pumpkin pie and coffee someone will almost invariably ask, “So what are you thankful for this year?” Over the years the answers morph from “My family and friends” to some variation of “My family and friends … and good health.”

Thankful preachers don’t want to tell thankful Christians to be “More like Paul.” After all, we long for them to be more like Jesus. Yet in this season of thanksgiving it may be helpful to explore with our hearers what 1 Thessalonians at least implies the Spirit uses to help fuel the thankful apostle’s gratitude to God.

Grateful preachers might note, first, how little Paul focuses on himself and how much his gratitude concentrates on God’s work in and through others. It’s a timely reminder that while reasons for thanking God for what God is doing in us may ebb and flow, there’s never any shortage of reasons to thank God for what God is doing in God’s people.

“We always [pantote*] thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers,” Paul tells Thessalonica’s Christians in verse 1. In doing so, the apostle insists every time he thinks about his Thessalonian brothers and sisters in Christ, he thanks God. He, in fact, figuratively never stops prayerfully mentioning them to the Lord.

This is a subtle reminder that prayer to God virtually always includes thanksgiving. There are, of course, times when we have little time or energy for more than intercession or supplication. But while our natural inclination is to ask God only and always for things, Paul reminds us thanksgiving to God is one of the most important elements of prayers to God. Because every good thing we have is a gift from God, we never run out of things for which to prayerfully thank God.

1 Thessalonians 1, however, suggests prayers are more than generic expressions of thanksgiving to God. Jesus’ friends aren’t generally thankful to God. Our gratitude always has specific content. In Paul’s case, it’s the tangible effects the Spirit is having on the Christians in Thessalonica.

In verse 3 he says, “We remember [adialeiptos mnemoneuomntes] 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.” Paul, in other words, constantly thanks God for gifting Thessalonica’s Christians with the “trinity” of grace that is pisteos (“faith”), agapes (“love”) and elpidos (“hope”). 

That trinity has, in turn, fueled their ergou (“work”), kopou (“labor”), and hypomones (“endurance”). So while Paul thanks God his readers are living and acting in Christ-like ways, he knows they’re growing because of God’s good work in and through them.

This good work, the apostle goes on to write in verse 4, is a sign that God has lovingly “chosen” [eklogen] the Christians in Thessalonica. No matter how exactly Jesus’ friends think about this “election,” we agree it’s never just for the sake of our personal wellness, but also our neighbors’. 

The apostle can thank God because God’s choosing of God’s dearly beloved people is not all talk; it’s also empowerment. God graciously partners God’s choosing of us with both “power” and “conviction.” God always graciously lays God’s hands on God’s adopted children in order to, in part, bless the people with whom God surrounds us.

In verse 5 Paul recognizes that God made Silas and him public examples of such a “neighborly” impact of Christians’ election: “You know how we lived among you for your sake [di’ hymas].” God equipped the apostles, in other words, to live among the Thessalonian Christians not just for the glory of God, but also for the sake of their siblings in Christ.

Paul can go on to thank God for the way their love for their neighbors also helped produce those neighbors’ love for their own neighbors. The apostles’ Christlikeness produced a kind of chain reaction of grace. First, “you [Thessalonian Christians] became imitators [mimetai] of us and the Lord,” he writes in verse 6, “for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.”

The apostles can go on to then thank God for the way this power of the Holy Spirit turned this first chain reaction into another kind of “explosion.” In verse 7 he marvels at how Thessalonica’s Christians “became a model [typon] to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.” In fact, Paul goes on to wonder in verse 8, their “faith in God has become known everywhere.”

In other words, God’s rescue of the apostles positively impacted not just Jesus’ friends in Thessalonica but also all people en panti topo (“everywhere”). The Message paraphrases Paul’s hymn of thanks to God for God’s work in the Thessalonians as “Your lives are echoing the Master’s work, not only in the provinces but all over the place. The news of your faith in God is out.”

In fact, Paul admits he doesn’t need to sing the praises of the Thessalonians’ praise to God. People throughout the Roman Empire are already doing that. So he can thank God, that everyone he meets everywhere unprompted “report[s] what kind of reception [eisodon]” (9) the Thessalonians offered the apostles. “They keep talking,” as the NLT paraphrases this, “about the wonderful welcome you gave us.”

Not only that, the apostles go on to tell Thessalonica’s Christians in verses 9b-10, people also “tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” Paul can thank God because the Spirit is profoundly affecting not just the Thessalonians’ actions, but also their faith.

They have turned away from everything and everyone that others assume can rescue them and toward the living God. Paul thanks God how the Spirit has even empowered Thessalonica’s Christians to faithfully await the second coming of the Jesus whom God raised from the dead. They don’t just believe; they also wait. In fact, we might suggest, Jesus’ followers can wait because we believe.

Preachers might follow the Spirit’s promptings to note a couple of characteristics of 1 Thessalonians 1’s great hymn of thanksgiving to God. We might, first, argue Paul would find it harder to offer his thanks to God if he weren’t paying such close attention to what God is doing in his brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Christians who are thankful don’t focus on ourselves and our own needs. We are, instead, highly attentive to the work of God not just in our own lives, but also in the lives of the people with whom God surrounds us. Jesus’ thankful friends don’t just pay careful attention to what God is doing in and for us. We also cultivate a kind of holy watchfulness for the ways God is blessing us through God’s dearly beloved people.

What’s more, Paul’s thanksgiving to God doesn’t just express itself toward the God who is the generous giver of all good gifts. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson also demonstrates his willingness to tell the Christians in Thessalonica how grateful to God he is for them. In fact, the apostle is quite concrete in his description of the way God is blessing not just him, but also all people everywhere. 

God’s adopted children don’t keep the evidence of God’s amazing grace to and in others to ourselves. Jesus’ thankful friends also share our gratitude with everyone with whom God brings us into contact.

Preachers might also note that while this is a season in which North American culture talks about “being thankful,” verses 2 and 3 of this text remind us that we’re thankful to God. Jesus’ friends aren’t just grateful in general. We are now and always will be grateful to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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

Illustration

In his chapter entitled “God and a Grateful Old Man” in his book, My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir, Lewis B. Smedes writes, “I learned long ago that if anything can be better than getting a gift, it is the gratitude we feel for getting it. There is no other pleasure to compare with it – not sex, not winning a lottery, not hearing lovely music, not seeing stunning mountain peaks, nothing. Gratitude beats them all.

“I have never met a grateful person who was an unhappy person. And, for that matter, I have never met a grateful person who was a bad person (possible exception, Mrs. Turpin in Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” who is grateful for her superiority to “******* and white trash”). 

“I know that, in one sense, there is a kind of duty to be grateful, but gratitude feels to me more like a reflex reaction to gifts that I am given than a virtue that I have labored to achieve. All we need to be grateful is the insight to recognize a real gift when we get one. 

“A gift is not just something we get for nothing. Things we get for nothing can have a hook inside them – ask a bass who just bit into a free worm. I heard once of a wife who said that every time her husband gave her something unusually nice, she knew that he was bribing her to forgive him for something not so nice. Yes, things we get for nothing can have a hook in them, but a real gift is given only to give pleasure and comfort to the one who receives it.”