1 Thessalonians 1: They Themselves Are the Ones Talking

Most of what gets said about the idols in 1 Thessalonians 1 skips the sentence they sit in. I've got the chapter open next to a spreadsheet I'm ignoring, so this will take me a minute to get through. It's only ten verses, and the greeting in verse 1 is the one stretch that isn't thanks. Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus, grace and peace from the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, and then verse 2 starts in with "We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers" and the chapter doesn't set that sentence down.

They themselves are the ones talking

What he remembers, he says in verse 3, is their work of faith and their labour of love and their patience of hope, in the sight of God and our Father. He's thanking them for things done. Nobody gets thanked for having followed the argument.

Then the chapter does something I don't hear often when this passage gets read out loud. Verse 7 says they became ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. Verse 8 says the word of the Lord sounded out from them through Macedonia and Achaia, and that their faith to God-ward is spread abroad in every place, "so that we need not to speak any thing." Paul is the man who was in the city, and he's telling them the churches around them already have the account. A preacher who's glad the report runs without him is a little unusual. I sat with that longer than I sat with the idols.

For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God;

1 Thessalonians 1:9

"They themselves" are the people in those other places, and they're the ones doing the showing. They shew two things, and the sentence gives them in this order: what manner of entering in the three men had, and how the Thessalonians turned. The half that gets quoted by itself is the idols. That "manner of entering in" is the outside version of what verse 5 says the Thessalonians already know from the inside, "what manner of men we were among you for your sake." Same report, heard from across a province.

I would have written the turning with the leaving first and the arriving after, as if getting out of the old worship were the work and God were just where you ended up. Paul puts it the other way. They turned to God from idols, and the purpose is to serve the living and true God. Verse 10 brings in his Son from heaven, "whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." The chapter keeps the Father and the Son in the same order the greeting used.

The Philippians letter, which I went through in Philippians 4: Paul Thanks Them Without Quite Saying Thanks, circles a gift and never quite lands on the word. This one lands on it in verse 2 and spends the remaining verses telling you what the thanks is for.

Three Sabbaths, then Jason's house

Acts 17 is the visit, and it's short on purpose or short because that's all that happened. I can't tell those apart from the page. Paul, "as his manner was," went into the synagogue, and for three sabbath days he reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ had to suffer and rise, and that this Jesus is that Christ. Some of the Jews believed and consorted with Paul and Silas. With them, a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and of the chief women not a few. So the room, on the evidence of Acts, is a synagogue room full of Jews, Greeks who were already devout and women of some standing. That doesn't look like a city that had never heard of the God of Israel. The letter still says they turned from idols, and I don't know how to square the two beyond guessing that the devout and the chief women weren't the whole of the church. Acts tells me who was in the building and the letter tells me what the other churches heard, and I'd leave a gap between them before I'd fill it from a guidebook.

The week turned on Jason's house rather than the synagogue. The ones who didn't believe gathered a crowd and set the city in an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason looking for Paul and Silas, and when they failed to find them they hauled Jason and certain brethren to the rulers anyway, crying that "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." The charge under that shout is that they act contrary to Caesar's decrees, "saying that there is another king, one Jesus." The rulers took the security and let the men go. "When they had taken security of Jason, and of the other, they let them go." That same night "the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea."

So Paul was on the road after dark, and the people still in Thessalonica woke up with a bond sitting on somebody's house. When the letter says they received the word "in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost," I think of the morning after and not of a speech about what suffering proves. The affliction and the joy share a verse and a comma. Pulling them apart gives you two sermons the verse didn't offer.

Verse 5 puts the arrival and the conduct in a single sentence. The gospel came in word and also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance, and then he says they know what manner of men the three of them were, for the Thessalonians' sake. Much assurance is the phrase I'd least want smoothed into a mood he never described. He sets the men's conduct in the same breath, as if how they were in the city belonged to the coming and not to a later lesson on manners. The next chapter remembers them labouring night and day so they wouldn't be chargeable to anyone, while Acts still gives me three Sabbaths and a departure by night. The gap between a working visit and a three-Sabbath synagogue record is real, and I'm not going to invent a number of weeks to close it.

Labour sits on the love

Verse 3 is the line I'd have a class read twice, and then I'd stay on the middle pair longer than on the other two. Work of faith is close to what you'd expect him to praise. Patience of hope tells you the hope had to last, and verse 10 says they wait for the Son, so the patience and the waiting may be one fact said at both ends of the chapter.

Labour of love is the odd one out, because love is the word we usually let stay soft and he hooks labour onto it, the same kind of word the next chapter uses for working night and day. Whatever the love was in Thessalonica it cost effort and the effort is the part he can't stop remembering. "Remembering without ceasing" is how the verse begins, and the remembering runs through the whole list.

Verse 4 is one clause followed by a period, and it has to carry more than a clause usually does. "Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God." He doesn't say when the choosing happened or how a person would check it. People reach from that word to the council in heaven, and that teaching has its own passages. This verse gives me "knowing" and "beloved" and then goes straight back to how the gospel arrived and what the men were like among them. That's the evidence he treats as enough to say he knows.

"Followers of us, and of the Lord" comes next, in that order, and he doesn't tidy the "us" out of the way. By verse 7 they are ensamples, which is only "examples" in the spelling the translators kept. An example Macedonia and Achaia could repeat is a public fact, and a faith that stayed indoors wouldn't have given those churches anything to shew.

Waiting, and a wrath aimed the other way

Verse 10 is still the thank-you, with the turning, the serving and the waiting for his Son from heaven all counted as things to be glad of. Waiting, in this sentence, is something he's glad to see, and it sits right beside the serving. I don't read it as a person gone quiet.

"The wrath to come" gets aimed back at the church by readers who want a threat in the last line. The verb in that verse is delivered. Jesus delivered us from it, and the same letter says so in plainer words a few chapters on. "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

I wrote about stopping at a letter's famous lines in Colossians 1 Doesn't End at Verse 20, and the same thing happens here. The idols stay on the handout and the sentence around them gets trimmed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long was Paul in Thessalonica?

Acts 17:2 gives three sabbath days in the synagogue, and Acts 17:10 has the brethren sending him and Silas out by night once Jason's house has been searched. That's the stay I can point at. The letter remembers work and a manner of life, so you'll see people add a quiet month. I don't add it.

What idols did they turn from?

The chapter never names a god, and I won't fill the blank from a guidebook. Acts names a different charge, another king, one Jesus, contrary to Caesar, and that's about loyalty to a king. I wouldn't stretch it into a list of statues. All I'd say from the text is that the turning was something other churches could talk about.

Who are Silvanus and Timotheus?

Silvanus is the Silas of Acts, and the letter uses the Latin name. Acts 15:22 calls him one of the "chief men among the brethren," and when Paul and Barnabas split, Paul chose Silas. Timotheus is Timothy of Lystra, son of a Jewish woman who believed and a Greek father, which is Acts 16:1. The same three names stand together again in 2 Corinthians 1:19, preaching, and for this chapter the useful fact is the pronoun. The thanks is "we" from the first line through the last.

What does "in much assurance" mean?

He doesn't define it, and the verse doesn't hand me a definition either. I take it as a gospel that arrived with enough weight that they weren't left talking themselves into it after the men were gone. It shares a verse with the Holy Ghost and with the manner of men, and I read the three as one claim.

Read Acts 17:1-10 in the same sitting as this chapter, then go back to verse 9 and mark "they themselves" before you mark "idols."

— D.