1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 Commentary

In verse 4’s heart of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson lies a perhaps largely unnoticed but most extraordinary claim: God has “entrusted” [pisteuthenai*] Jesus’ friends “with the gospel [euangelion].” 

No news is greater than that of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we receive with our faith. Yet the apostle audaciously claims that God has trusted God’s adopted children with this best of all good news.

The gospel is God’s arguably second greatest gift to the world – after salvation through Jesus Christ. Yet Paul insists God doesn’t just entrust that most precious gift to God’s adopted children. God also entrusts the proclamation of that extraordinary gift to naturally “ordinary” people like Jesus’ friends.

Preachers who sense the Spirit prompting us to organize our message around this remarkable profession might begin by offering some kind of analogy. Might we compare God’s entrusting of the gospel to people to entrusting our life’s savings to swindlers or conmen? 

Might we compare the proclamation of that gospel to entrusting a precious jewel to a toddler who will put anything in her mouth? Under the Spirit’s guidance preachers should feel free to create their own analogies for the extraordinary nature of God entrusting the gospel to ordinary people like us.

Of course, we might note while those whom God entrusts with this precious gift are naturally common, God has graciously made the gospel’s stewards fundamentally uncommon. After all, in verse 4 Paul refers to Jesus’ followers as “approved [dedokimasmetha] by God.”

The ease of understanding this concept is not helped by its biblical rarity. 1 Thessalonians 2:4 is the only instance in which the Bible uses the term dedokimasmetha. In fact, the New Testament only employs variations of its root word dokimazo 22 times. 

It may help to remember and explain that the Greek word the NIV and NRSV translate as “approved” can also mean “test,” “allow” or even “examine.” The Message paraphrases dedokimasmetha as “qualified.” Together those interpretations suggest that while God knows those God entrusts with the gospel are naturally flawed, God, for Jesus’ sake, chooses to qualify us for sharing that great news anyway.

To use an agricultural analogy, God’s dearly beloved people are naturally “foxes in the chicken coop.” Yet Paul insists God graciously trusts the Spirit’s work in us enough to entrust us with the privilege of caring for both the valuable chickens, their eggs and, yes, even other foxes.

That knowledge may help set up preachers to explore with our hearers this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. It helps Jesus’ friends to think together about and ask ourselves, “What will we do with not only this precious gift but also God’s gracious confidence in us?”

Paul begins this Lesson by reminding Thessalonica’s Christians that “with the help of God we dared to [eparresiasmetha] tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition [pollo agomi]” (2). It’s a sobering reminder that the 21st century didn’t give birth to agomi (“opposition”) to the gospel, as well as its proclamation and proclaimers. That opposition has always been and remains fierce. 

For the apostles it included what verse 2a calls suffering [propathontes] and outrageous treatment [hybristhentes]. Their sharing of the gospel produced not physical health and material wellness, but the kind of misery that continues to echo throughout parts of modern Asia and North Africa.

Yet Paul insists while people naturally treat the most precious gift that is the gospel and its proclaimers like so much trash, God qualifies, equips and summons God’s people to share it anyway. So Jesus’ followers in whom God has enough confidence to entrust the gospel aren’t deterred by fierce opposition. 

We realize the gospel is so precious that it needs to be shared. In fact, we remember that even those who oppose its disbursement desperately need its great news of salvation through Jesus Christ. So Christians never stop acting and talking in ways that courageously, humbly and gently share it with those who don’t yet believe.

In verse 3 Paul goes on to insist Jesus’ friends don’t make the “appeal” [paraklesis] that is the greatest news’ proclamation for mistaken or unholy reasons. “The appeal we make,” he insists there, “does not spring from error or impure motives.” The apostles shared the greatest news the world will ever hear that God had entrusted to them because the Spirit had graciously convinced them the world was dying to hear it.

Paul and his colleagues weren’t trying to con their hearers into accepting something that would harm them. They weren’t, according to verse 3b, trying to “trick” [dolo] the Thessalonians. Nor did the apostles use “flattery” [kolakeias] or cover up their greed with various masks [pisteuthenai]. The Message paraphrases this as Paul telling the Christians in Thessalonica, “You’re guaranteed that both we and the Message are free of error, mixed motives [and] hidden agendas.”

We sense from these and subsequent assertions that Paul has some kind of “backstory.” We get the impression some of the apostles’ contemporaries were accusing them of being motivated by greed or perversion of who God is and what God does. Those who oppose the sharing of the gospel continue to, in fact, challenge and even reject our reasons for doing so.

This reminds Christians whom God has entrusted with the gospel to always aim to be transparent in our proclamation of it. We long to let the Holy Spirit so sanctify us that we feel free to make our lives an “open book,” as it were. Those in whom God has enough confidence to entrust the gospel to us long to be genuine, honest and open proclaimers of it.

In fact, Paul continues, the apostles weren’t even primarily concentrating on the reactions of people to whom they proclaimed the gospel God had entrusted to them. In verse 4b he insists, “We are not trying to please [areskontes] people.” In verse 6 Paul goes on to write, “We were not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else.” 

The apostles understood few things more easily deter God’s dearly beloved people from sharing the gospel than our desire to be liked and accepted. We easily hold back and keep silent because we want people to like rather than reject us. That’s a reason why those who share the gospel God had enough confidence in to entrust them with it always remember who we’re trying to please. We long for God rather than people’s approval (4b). 

The apostles were far more interested in God’s evaluation of the way they handled and shared the gospel than people’s. The Message paraphrases this assertion as “We never threw our weight around or tried to come across as important, with you or anyone else.”

Yet even as the apostles felt primarily called to please God, they also felt called to care for the Thessalonians. While Paul didn’t care about people’s approval, he did passionately care about their well-being. In verse 7b-8 he tells Thessalonica’s Christians, “Just as a nursing mother [trophos] cares for [thalpe] her children, so we cared for [homeiromenoi] you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted [eudokoumen] to share [metadounai] with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”

It’s among the tenderest imagery in all of the Scriptures. It reminds us while the apostles didn’t care about the Thessalonian Christians’ opinion of them, they did deeply care about their wellness. In imagery reminiscent of Isaiah’s comparison of a bird that cares for her young to God, Paul describes the depth of his tender care for his brothers and sisters in Christ. He insists he loved them so deeply that he shared not just the gospel God had entrusted to him, but also his very life with them.

The Holy Spirit used this care, verse 1 at least suggests, to wedge open the Thessalonians’ hearts, minds and lives to the gospel’s great news. There, after all, Paul writes, “Our visit to you was not without results [ou kene].” It was not what the NLT paraphrases as “a failure.” The apostle doesn’t explicitly identify the beneficial effects of his visit. However, chapter 1 strongly suggests the results of the apostles’ sharing of the gospel with them included the Thessalonians’ faithful reception of God’s amazing grace.

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

Illustration

In his seminal work on the preaching of the gospel God has entrusted to us entitled The Four Pages of the Sermon, Paul Scott Wilson writes, “Sermons need to major in God and in grace. Social justice liberals and evangelicals alike tend to give us shoulds, musts, and have-tos. 

“We don’t get enough Easter, Pentecost, Ascension. We get Emerson under other names. We get self-reliance preached to us, and it can’t save us. Preachers avoid grace because it ‘lets people off the hook.’ But God does it. Why must we be such unmerciful servants? We need faith, hope, and love in sermons, not just conviction of sin and dereliction of duty. 

“Yes, the addict must stop taking drugs, the tax cheat must straighten up, and the whore get chaste, but where’s the good news that the power of sin died on the cross? Good news is like a good sacrament. It will liberate …

“Let the sermon show God’s work in the world, too. Give God a little credit for a Peace Accord, not just discredit for hurricanes. Let a congregation leave church on Sunday with more faith, hope, and love than when they came in. 

“So frame up themes in sermons not as ‘Jesus wants us to repent’ but as ‘Jesus brings us to repentance.’ Preach some gospel. Not just ‘God feels your pain,’ but what God does to address your pain. The Bible is the church’s book, and we may choose to preach gospel out of it. That’s where our focus should be because that’s where the Bible’s focus is.”