1 and 2 Thessalonians

John Byron, Scot McKnight

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9780310599159
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Understand What Scripture Says and How To Live It Today

A new commentary for today's world, The Story of God Bible Commentary explains and illuminates each passage of Scripture in light of the Bible's grand story. The first commentary series to do so, SGBC offers a clear and compelling exposition of biblical texts, guiding everyday readers in how to creatively and faithfully live out the Bible in their own contexts. Its story-centric approach is ideal for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and laypeople alike.

Each volume employs three main, easy-to-use sections designed to help readers live out God's story:

• LISTEN to the Story: Includes complete NIV text with references to other texts at work in each passage, encouraging the reader to hear it within the Bible's grand story.
• EXPLAIN the Story: Explores and illuminates each text as embedded in its canonical and historical setting.
• LIVE the Story: Reflects on how each text can be lived today and includes contemporary stories and illustrations to aid preachers, teachers, and students.

 

—1 & 2 Thessalonians—

Paul's letters to the Thessalonians hinge thematically on the ongoing need for them to put their hope in God. Like us, the Thessalonians were living in difficult circumstances—living in the tension between death and the promise of Jesus' final return and triumph. "In-between living" requires daily hope, and Paul infuses his letters with hope without overlooking the challenges of the day.

Edited by Scot McKnight and Tremper Longman III, and written by a number of top-notch theologians, The Story of God Bible Commentary series will bring relevant, balanced, and clear-minded theological insight to any biblical education or ministry.

CHAPTER 1

1 Thessalonians 1:1 – 3

LISTEN to the Story

¹Paul, Silas and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace and peace to you.

²We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. ³We remember 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.

Listening to the text in the Story: Deuteronomy 6:4; Numbers 16:3.

A distinctive feature of early Christianity is that much of its sacred writings are in the form of letters. All but six of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament are either in the form of letters or contain significant epistolary components. This feature sets Christianity off from other religions of the ancient world, including from its origins in Judaism.

With that in mind, modern readers of the Bible don’t always appreciate that they are reading other people’s mail.¹ We forget that Paul’s letters were not originally intended for Christians everywhere but were written to specific churches and individuals. One result of this historical amnesia is that we sometimes overlook the openings and closing to the letters. We quickly read “to the church . . . grace and peace” and move on to get to the “interesting stuff,” to the part where the “real theology” can be found. But readers who are quick to skip to the so-called “good stuff” don’t realize that Paul’s letters are rich with theology and history right from the opening line.

Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians is often categorized by New Testament scholars as a “friendly letter.” But this description seems inadequate in light of the context. The “feel” of this letter is that of the reassured voice of a parent on the end of a phone when they are finally able to speak to that son or daughter who has been missing in a city recently struck by an earthquake or some other disaster. It betrays the mind of a person who has tried to remain confident that everything was “okay,” yet battled doubts. Paul gushes with emotion as he celebrates the good news about the church in Thessalonica.

EXPLAIN the Story

Opening Greeting (1:1)

Paul opens using a formula common to many letters that have survived from antiquity. Most letters in the Greco-Roman period opened with a threefold salutation: the name of the writer, the name of the addressee, and a greeting. It was also common to include thanks to the gods and to bestow well wishes on the recipient.² By way of example, here is a letter in which the writer clearly wants to be in the good graces of the recipient and goes a bit overboard with his well-wishing:

Herm . . . to Sarapion,

Greetings, may you always remain in good health in your whole person for long years to come, since your good genius allowed us to greet you with respect and salute you. For as you also make mention of us on each occasion by letter so I here make an act of worship for you in the presence of the lords Dioskouroi and in the presence of the lord Sarapis, and I pray for your safe-keeping during your entire life and for the health of your children and of all your household. Farewell in everything, I beg my patron and fosterer. Greet all your folk, men and women. All the gods here, male and female, greet you. Farewell.³

As with letters today, a standard format existed, but it was flexible enough to fit each occasion. But as we will see, Paul’s greeting in this letter, indeed in all his letters, is so much more than a formality. In Paul’s hands everything, even the address on the envelope, becomes an opportunity to remind his readers of the work of God in their lives.

While 1 Thessalonians is identified as one of Paul’s letters, in actuality it is a letter from three different people. As in 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and 2 Thessalonians, Paul does not always address letters to a church as being only from himself. He routinely includes his coworkers.⁴ Emphasizing this “shared authorship” is the repeated use of the first person plural pronoun “we” throughout the letter. Nonetheless, three lapses into the first person singular (2:18; 3:5; 5:27) indicate that Paul is probably the primary author who dictated the letter, perhaps to one of his coworkers.

The inclusion of Silas and Timothy is, no doubt, due to their own experiences in Thessalonica. In Acts 17:1 we read that Paul and Silas entered Thessalonica together. Timothy’s whereabouts at this time are a mystery. Acts 16:1 – 5 indicates that he joined the pair on their missionary journey, but he is not mentioned again by name until 17:14. His location when Paul and Silas are imprisoned in Philippi (16:16 – 39) and smuggled out under the cover of night from Thessalonica (17:1 – 10) is unknown. It is possible that Timothy was in both places and that Luke simply chose not to mention him. What is clear, however, from 17:15 and 18:5 is that both Silas and Timothy spent more time in Macedonia than Paul and then joined up with him later in Athens. Timothy in particular does not seem to have attracted the attention of the local authorities and was able to return to Thessalonica. One reason for the occasion of this letter is Timothy’s recent return from Thessalonica bearing good news (1 Thess 3:6). As is the case with other churches, Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica was not a solo mission. He was part of a team even if he was the primary person of that team.

Paul refers to the addressees as “the church of the Thessalonians.” Ekklēsia (“church”) is a term that he uses frequently to address the people to whom he writes (1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1; 1 Thess 1:1; 2 Thess 1:1; Col 4:16).⁵ Various meanings of ekklēsia have been suggested. The etymology of the term, from ekkaleō, means “call out.” It was sometimes suggested that the “church” was those who had been “called out.”⁶ Such imagery might fit well with Paul’s theology of election (Rom 8:33; Col 3:12; 1 Thess 1:4; 2 Tim 2:10), but Paul refrains from connecting these two ideas together. A second option is that Paul used the term in its popular sense, as an assembly of the people with the right to vote. But this too lacks any concrete connection to what Paul seems to mean when he refers to followers of Jesus as the ekklēsia.

The most likely source for Paul’s usage is from the Septuagint,⁷ where ekklēsia appears around a hundred times as a translation for the Hebrew qāhāl, “assembly” or “congregation.” The phrase “the LORD’s assembly” appears several times in the Old Testament as a designation of Israel’s special relationship with God (Num 16:3; 20:4; Deut 23:1 – 4, 8; 1 Chr 28:8; Neh 13:1).⁸ It can also describe the people of Israel as the “assembly” or the “whole assembly” (1 Kgs 8:14; 2 Chr 6:3; 23:3). On a number of occasions Paul employs the phrase “the church of God,” suggesting that he is drawing on the history and experiences of Israel. As James Dunn notes, “there can be little doubt that Paul intended to depict the little assemblies of Christian believers as equally manifestations of and in direct continuity with ‘the assembly of Yahweh,’ ‘the assembly of Israel.’ ”⁹

In the Old Testament the “assembly of Yahweh” often appears in the singular, suggesting the notion of a national, single identity for the Israelites. Paul’s use of ekklēsia, however, does not suggest that idea. He routinely uses the term in the plural “the assemblies [churches] of God,” which suggests that, for Paul, “the assembly of God” could manifest itself in a number of geographical locations all at the same time. In his letters he refers to the churches “at,” “in,” or “of” Cenchreae, Corinth, Galatia, Asia, Macedonia, Judea, and Laodicea.¹⁰ He can be even more specific. Sometimes it is the ekklēsia that meets in the home of men and women like Priscilla and Aquila (Rom 16:3, 5; 1 Cor 16:19), Gaius (Rom 16:23), Nympha (Col 4:15), and Philemon (Phlm 1 – 2). Paul’s use of ekklēsia doesn’t demonstrate the idea of a universal or worldwide church.¹¹ Rather, wherever followers of Jesus gather together, there is the “assembly of God,” the ekklēsia. For Paul, the church, like all politics, is local.¹²

The Thessalonians are identified by more than just their geographical location, however. The rest of Paul’s salutation locates them “in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” In this short phrase is packed the monotheistic commitments of Judaism and the messianic confession of the early church. The confession of “one God” is the bedrock of Jewish faith (Deut 6:4). And Jews held tenaciously to that confession in a polytheistic world and in the face of sometimes violent reaction to it. Paul’s statement in 1 Thess 1:9 about how the Thessalonians “turned from idols to serve the living and true God” underscores their own acceptance of the “one God” confession.

Coupled with this, however, is their acknowledgment of Jesus as both “Lord” and “Christ.” I will further unpack this phrase and its significance below in 3:11, but it bears pointing out that Paul gives the Thessalonians both a geographical and a theological identification. Locally, they are the ekklēsia or “assembly” of the Thessalonians. But theologically, they are in God and Christ. Thus their existence as the ekklēsia of the Thessalonians was brought into being by God the Father and by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their identification as a community, therefore, is directly linked to divine activity. If Paul has any notions of a “universal church,” it can be found here. While the churches are scattered geographically throughout the Mediterranean world and can be repositioned by the simple movement from one city to another or one house to another, their universal identification is discovered in their common confession. They owe their existence to the acts of God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The salutation concludes with a greeting of “grace and peace.” The standard Greco-Roman letter would simply say “Greetings” (chairein). But as with so much else that Paul touches, what is “common” or “standard” to others becomes the gospel in his hands. He does not simply write here, “Greetings.” Instead his words are a blessing. Charis (“grace”) is a theologically pregnant term for Paul.¹³ It reflects the idea of God’s election, that is, his gracious choice of the Thessalonians, a theme he will emphasize in 1:4. The blessing of “peace” is an adaptation of the traditional Jewish blessing shalom, a wish for “wholeness” and “well-being” (see Num 6:24 – 26). Paul will develop this theme further when he requests that they be at peace with one another (1 Thess 5:13) and when, in a prayer for them, he identifies God as the source of peace (5:23). Paul’s reshaping of the standard greeting represents his theological perspective and may have been intended to invoke memories of divine blessings received from God.

Thanksgiving for the Thessalonians’ Faith (1:2 – 3)

Following the greeting, Paul opens the letter with the claim that he and the other apostles “always thank God” for the Thessalonians and “continually mention you in our prayers” (1:2). Structurally speaking, this is a stock feature of Greco-Roman letters. As we noted above, it was common practice to include a prayer or wish for the health of the recipient and an assurance of the writer’s well-being. What we find in 1:2 is typical of many of Paul’s other letters (Rom 1:8 – 10; 1 Cor 1:4; Phil 1:3 – 4; Col 1:3; 2 Thess 1:2; Phlm 4). But we should not be too quick to dismiss this as merely a formality or rhetorical remark. As a Jew, Paul engaged in daily prayer during which time giving thanks and praying for his converts would have been normal. Silas and Timothy’s inclusion with Paul (“we always thank God”) may provide a glimpse into the corporate prayer life of the three missionaries as they met daily to thank God and to pray for the Thessalonians.¹⁴ At the close of the letter Paul says that the Thessalonians should “pray continually” (5:17), an instruction that most likely reflects his desire that they follow as closely as possible the apostles’ example and practice.

Confirming that this is more than a formality is Paul’s recounting of the specific things that he, Silas, and Timothy call to mind w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• The Story of God Bible Commentary Series
• Abbreviations
• Introduction to Thessalonians
• Introduction to First Thessalonians
• Commentary On First Thessalonians
• Introduction to Second Thessalonians
• Commentary On Second Thessalonians
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Author Index