1 Thessalonians 12-10
Tom Shrader walks through 1 Thessalonians 1, tracing the background of the Thessalonian church from Acts 17 and explaining how Paul's thanksgiving centers on three evidences of real conversion: the work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope. He unpacks the doctrine of election as a source of assurance, holiness, humility, and witness, arguing that God's choice of believers should produce transformed lives that make the invisible God visible to those around them. The chapter closes with the call to turn from idols to the living God and to wait expectantly for Christ's return, which Paul returns to throughout the entire letter.
“False gods never fail to fail. Whatever you're trusting, if it's anything other than Jesus, it can't deliver joy, peace, or happiness.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: In Light of His Coming
Recorded: 2011 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 48 min
Themes: faith, hope, love, election, conversion, idolatry, Christ's return, assurance, new believer, questioning salvation, struggling with assurance, young adult, seeker, new to church, waiting on God, spiritually curious
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, 1 Thessalonians 2:19, 1 Thessalonians 3:13, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, Acts 17:1-7, Acts 17:16, 2 Corinthians 10:10, Ephesians 1:15-18, Romans 5:1, Romans 5:8, 1 John 5:21, Matthew 6:24, 2 Timothy 4:6-8
Theological Themes: doctrine of election, soteriology, sanctification, becoming holy, eschatology, second coming, regeneration, true conversion
Full Transcript
Introduction and Background
Let us open our Bibles. If you need a Bible, raise your hand and someone will bring you one. Turn to page 640 in the Bible we provide. We also have a study guide, and on the very front page it lays out the schedule for this series, which will take us through to Christmas. We have called it "In Light of His Coming" — the idea being not just His coming at Christmas, but Advent as well, and the question of how we should live in the light of His coming. It should be a great time as we work our way through these weeks.
Last week, Tim began the study in 1 Thessalonians by doing a biographical sketch of the Apostle Paul. That came out of a lot of discussions. What we are finding, as we sit and talk about the churches — all of them, including Gilbert — is that so many people are brand new to church. When we talk about Paul, most of you can click off a whole biographical sketch from memory, but many people cannot. So it was important to spend last week focusing on Paul and who he was.
This week we are looking at all of chapter one. I have not found Susan's first Bible yet, but in that Bible, next to 1 Thessalonians, it says "Tommy teaches for the first time." The first time I ever taught a lesson was in Les Taylor's Sunday school class, and it was on 1 Thessalonians. Les was going to be gone and he asked me if I would teach. It was a great time. I have an affinity for this chapter for those reasons, and I love the way this chapter tees up, in many ways, what we should be looking at in terms of a normal Christian life.
The Letter's Opening
There is a pattern you would see in ancient letters. They would identify the sender, identify the recipients, and then offer a well-wish or thanksgiving. All of those are present here. The letter is from Paul, Silas, and Timothy. Paul is really the author; Silas and Timothy are part of his team. They are not co-authors — he is simply greeting the recipients on their behalf. It is addressed to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace.
How the Church at Thessalonica Began
We know something about Thessalonica and about this church. If you want to turn left to the book of Acts, page 591 in the Bible we provide, Acts chapter 17, we can see how this church got started. Paul is on his second missionary journey and making several stops. He arrives at Thessalonica.
In Acts chapter 17, verse one, Paul does what is his established pattern. He knows that Thessalonica had a large enough Jewish population to have a synagogue, so he goes there. Verse two tells us that according to his custom, he went to them for three Sabbaths — about three weeks — and he reasons with them from the scriptures. He is explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, saying, "This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ."
There is a distinctively different pattern Paul uses later in the same chapter. In Acts 17, verse 16, Paul goes to Athens. He wanders around the city, makes observations, and when he speaks to the people there, he talks about Jesus but does so in a different context. He does not use scripture, because it would mean nothing to people who did not believe in scripture. Instead he uses their culture. He observes that in Athens there are altars to many gods, including one to an unknown God, and he says, in effect, "I am here to speak to you about that unknown God."
Back in Thessalonica, by contrast, he is speaking to Jews, so he reasons from the very scriptures they already believe. He works through the Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah — that the Messiah would suffer, that the Messiah would die, and yet that the Messiah would rise again. He takes all of those and shows that they now point to Christ. That is his reasoning.
Uproar in the City
What happens next is what often happens. Verse four tells us that some of them are persuaded and join Paul and Silas, along with a large number of God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women. But the Jewish leaders become jealous. Taking along some wicked men from the marketplace, they form a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attack the house of Jason, which is where they expected to find Paul and Silas. Not finding them there, they drag Jason and some of the brethren before the city authorities.
Here is their declaration, Acts chapter 17, verse six: "These men have upset the world and they have come here also." Some paraphrases render it this way: these men have turned the world upside down, and now they are here. This is really important. Paul and Silas and Timothy, and the teaching they were doing, were not turning the world upside down — they were turning the world right side up. We looked at this when we studied those thirteen weeks on doctrine. God creates, God empowers man, man comes into the world, man is in paradise, he sins —
The World Turned Right Side Up
When Adam sinned, he took God's system and turned everything upside down. When I come to Christ in repentance and faith, when God opens my eyes to see this truth, all of a sudden I see things as they really are. It is not that He is turning the world upside down — He is turning the world right side up.
Years ago, Tony Campolo wrote a book called *Who Switched the Price Tags?* In this book, Campolo talked about when he was a kid. He said they would go into a drugstore, and if there was a fountain pen that was a dollar and a radio that was five dollars, and they wanted to buy the radio but only had a dollar, they would switch the price tags and then go buy the radio for a buck. He said that when he got older and looked around at the world, it seemed like somebody had switched all the price tags. What God said was valuable and important was not valued by the world, and what the world said was really important did not seem to be equally important in the eyes of God.
That is exactly what Paul and Silas are doing with this message. As they are encountering the culture, it is not just new to us here in 2011 — they are encountering all the cultures since Adam turned everything upside down. When I come to Christ, there is a reevaluation: my allegiance changes, my perspective changes, and I see things differently.
The City of Thessalonica
Thessalonica is a city with a natural harbor. It was founded in the fourth century BC, and it held a strategic position on the main route between Rome and the East. It is the capital of the province of Macedonia. One author suggests that it "narrowly escaped being made the capital of the world." Today it would be the second most important city in Greece.
That is the background. Paul comes, and I think it is important to note this: when we think of Paul, we think of a powerful figure, but Paul speaks autobiographically in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 10. Speaking of himself, he says, "His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal appearance is unimpressive and his speech contemptible." So in comes Paul, perhaps with a certain level of disappointment from those who had heard of him, and he begins to speak and to live with these people and minister to them — and something important happens.
God moves in this city, in this church. William Barclay, in his commentary, writes this: "It is impossible to overstress the importance of the arrival of Christianity in Thessalonica. If Christianity was settled there, it was bound to spread east until all Asia was conquered, and west until it stormed even the city of Rome." The coming of Christianity to Thessalonica was crucial in the making of it into a world religion. God was using His system to spread the gospel.
A Church Only Months Old
Paul writes to this church, and you must keep this fresh in front of you: these people have probably only been believers for a few months. This is not a church where some have been believers for decades, or a congregation that has been meeting for twenty years. When you read about this church at Thessalonica, it is impressive — truly impressive — when you understand that it is a church only three or four months old.
Paul opens with this, at the end of verse one: "Grace to you and peace." Those two ideas always appear in that order, and they become the basis for everything that makes us Christian. I have grace with God, and because I have grace with God I can now have peace with God, and because I have peace with God I can have the peace of God.
In the whole world we live in, there is this constant search for peace. One of the Kardashians spent twenty million dollars on a wedding that lasted seventy-two days. The thinking is: if I find him, I will have peace; if I have the big wedding, I will have peace. But what God says in His Word is that real peace is not the absence of turmoil — it is His presence. That is the whole idea in Romans chapter 5: "Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ."
Saved, Delivered, Rescued
Let us use words like *saved*, *delivered*, and *rescued* — but let us define them rather than leave them hanging. Saved, delivered, and rescued from what? From the peril of being separated from God because of my sin, with nothing I can do to make it right or to fix it. God comes along in grace — and there are different ways to describe grace: unmerited favor, the acronym God's Riches At Christ's Expense — but whatever it is, it is God moving and extending to us not what we deserve, but something we do not deserve. In spite of us, not because of us, God saves us, God redeems us, and God puts us in right relationship through His Son Jesus.
Thanking God for What He Sees
Then Paul says this: "We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers." If you are someone who circles or marks in your Bible, this is the time to mark verse 3: "Constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and your steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."
He says: we are thanking God always when we think of you, and we immediately begin to thank God for you. What he thanks God for is what he will give us throughout the rest of the book — and for our focus today, throughout the rest of this chapter. We thank God for these things that we saw in you.
Faith, Love, and Hope as Marks of the Christian Life
The fruit that we saw was the work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope. Those three words — faith, love, hope — appear often throughout Paul's writings. Writing to the church at Ephesus, Paul says, "For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you." There again is that same pattern: faith, love, hope.
Now remember, for the Thessalonians it is their work of faith, their labor of love, their steadfastness of hope. These are people who had been converted a matter of months, who had a whole new belief system, a whole new set of standards, a whole new set of convictions — and immediately they faced persecution. That is what we saw back in Acts chapter 17. There were some who believed, but there were others who did not, and they were going to aggressively try to stop this movement as quickly as they possibly could.
The Work of Faith
When we talk about faith, we are talking about believing and trusting God — entrusting God to do what He says He will do and to be who He says He will be. I know for me personally, I have moments where I get hypersensitive about the health, wealth, and prosperity teachers. I had a great deal of exposure to that during the time Susan was sick, and the idea being presented was that if you have faith, you will be healed.
That is simply not true. It was never a matter of having faith that somehow obligated God to heal her. I had faith that He could heal her if He desired to, but regardless of the outcome, He was going to use whatever came in our life and in that situation for His glory and for our good. So be very careful with how faith is understood.
Faith involves synonyms like trust. It means not necessarily having every answer in every situation. It means being able to be in a place where I can say, "Here is my work of faith: trusting God and believing Him, even though I do not have all the answers and may not be given the answer I want." Yet in the ultimate sense, it is exactly the answer I want, because I want His will to be done.
For some of us, as for those people at Thessalonica, faith was simply what got them through the day — faith for food, for work. Most of us have life so arranged that we do not feel we really need much faith. We feel strong enough to pull it off on our own.
The Labor of Love
Alongside the work of faith, there is the labor of love. There is action associated with this. Faith may be a belief, but now there is action that flows from it. We are going to be characterized by the greatest of all traits, and that trait is love — love for our neighbors, love for our enemies, love for those inside the church and those outside the church, and love that is strong enough to forgive. That theme runs all throughout Scripture.
The Steadfastness of Hope
Hope carries with it the idea of stability, and that is key. I spent a great deal of time intensively over the last month at home with Susan, or in hospice, wherever we happened to be. During that time I watched a lot of television and observed the world around me, and I grew very discouraged. I do not see any reason to think the economy gets better. I look at Greece and think about the things they need to do that they simply do not want to do. I look at the banking situation and every kind of circumstance, and I grow very, very discouraged.
When you look at the future in that state, there are four reactions I can identify. I can be frustrated — they were interviewing a girl the other day who had borrowed a hundred thousand dollars to go to college and was offended that she had to pay it back, and I was offended that she was offended. I can get angry. I can get fearful. Or I can simply resign myself and say there is nothing I can do.
But here is what hope says. Hope says: it may appear to you to be hopeless, but that is no reason to be frustrated, or fearful, or to throw in the towel. In the midst of all of this, you work knowing that God controls the results. Through that whole process, I can have stability in the most unstable environments — not because I know the future, and I know that sounds like a bumper sticker, but because I know the One who does.
The Normal Christian Life
That is what Paul is pressing on here, and I want to make the point that this is the normal Christian life. Anyone who says Jesus is Lord should exhibit a work of faith, a labor of love, and a steadfastness of hope. All three are outward-directed. My faith is directed toward God, my love is directed toward others both inside and outside the church, and my hope is directed toward the future.
One author writes this — and my daughter Haley says whenever I have a lot of quotes I have nothing to say, so she may be right — but I love this distinction: "Every Christian without exception is a believer, a lover, and a hoper — not necessarily an optimist, since optimism is a matter of temperament. Hope is theology." He goes on: "Faith, hope, and love are thus sure evidences of regeneration by the Holy Spirit." Together they completely reorient our lives as we find ourselves being drawn upward toward God in faith and toward the people around us in love. The new birth means little or nothing if it does not pull us out of our fallen life and direct us toward God and toward others.
Faith, Hope, and Love in the Church at Thessalonica
Faith and hope and love are present in this church at Thessalonica individually, and they are present corporately. It gets very interesting in this discussion when Paul gets to verse 4. He says, "knowing brethren beloved by God, His choice of you." He interjects the idea that their salvation was not something they generated, but something God generated in them.
He introduces this idea and drops it in without explanation. He doesn't try to unpack it, doesn't say go back to the book of Romans and check out chapters 8 and 9. He simply says, here is what I know: there is a connection between your work of faith and your labor of love and your steadfastness of hope, and the way the gospel was received. I know you were chosen by God.
The Doctrine of Election
What the Bible teaches clearly is that before the foundations of the earth, God decided that He would invade some lives and not others — never based on anything within you, but totally within God's love. The vocabulary of election is deliberately transferred from the Old Testament, where the author speaks of Abraham, into the New Testament. The topic of election is nearly always introduced for practical reasons.
The doctrine of election creates in us, practically, four things: assurance, holiness, humility, and witness. We will come back and unpack each of those. But the doctrine of election produces in me assurance, not presumption.
Assurance, Not Presumption
This week I heard from people I know are not Christians. I heard from them the declaration that Susan is in a better place — which I believe she is. But their idea is that death itself puts you in a better place. I believe Susan is in a better place because God invaded her heart and gave her the capacity, desire, and ability to believe, and therefore she is in heaven today based on what Christ did, not based on anything she did.
That is assurance, not presumption. I am not being ostentatious. I am simply saying God said He would do that, and He also said that whoever began the good work would continue it. Last Sunday, Tyler had the boys in the car and told Braden and Yale that Nana went to be with Jesus — and they both clapped and cheered. That is amazing theology. You can call it childlike faith, or you could imagine someone mocking it in a moment of cynicism, but I think it is beautiful.
There is still sadness, of course. When I walked in yesterday, the first thing Brooklyn said to me was, "Where's Nana?" She is a year and a half and trying to sort this out. When I heard Braden's and Yale's reaction, that was my reaction too — just a little more tempered. But that is good theology.
Holiness Through Motivation
It is not just assurance — there is also holiness. It is not just going through the motions. All of a sudden, understanding that God has saved me and that I am now His child means I should look like Him, think like Him, act like Him, and be like Him. It is not simply about following rules.
I read a simple sentence this week: discipline without motivation is drudgery. If all you do is practice, practice, practice, and hit balls but never play a game, that is drudgery. Discipline for the sake of discipline is no good — but when you add motivation, discipline makes sense. Second Timothy, chapter 4, verses 6, 7, and 8 gives us that motivation: "fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith, and there is stored up for me a crown of righteousness, which the righteous judge will award to me on that day." That motivation is what makes holiness not a burden but a pursuit.
Humility Before God
There should be nobody who understands the doctrines of grace who has the slightest amount of arrogance in them, because God saved you in spite of you, not because of you. You should not for one second think that God was in heaven surveying seven billion people and concluding that if He could get you, that would be a real prize. Romans 5 is clear: while I was an enemy, while I hated God, while I spit in His face, while I said I wanted nothing to do with Him — He saved me in that moment. There is no source of pride in that at all.
I could perhaps find some pride if I thought I had made a decision for Jesus. I might, in my own mind, think I was smart enough or clever enough to figure it out. But what Paul is saying here is that God chose you — and that is a source of humility, not of boasting.
Witness to the World
And then lastly, the doctrine of election is a source of witness. Because the Word is true and I understand it, I now want to take that Word everywhere. That is exactly what you see in verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 — the gospel going out from Thessalonica into the surrounding world.
So Paul says, "We know, beloved, that you were His choice." The natural question to write next to that is: how do you know that? How do you know that somebody is a follower of Christ, or that somebody has been chosen by God? There are two tests — and the first is doctrinal.
The Power Behind the Gospel
Knowing, brethren, beloved by God, is the choice of you, for our gospel did not come to you in word only. Paul says he didn't just say it, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction, just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you. He said we didn't just talk this. There was power, and the power was generated by the Holy Spirit.
I want to make a strong point here. I was somewhere last year speaking, and the guy ahead of me was talking along and makes the comment — he quotes St. Francis of Assisi, that very familiar quote: "Preach the gospel; if necessary, use words." I hate that quote. What's behind it — if what you're saying is live the gospel, I'm good with that. But if what you're saying is just live the gospel and that's enough, that will never get it done.
Our task is to make the invisible God visible and then to speak the truth boldly. You can't separate those two. What Paul is saying is: we came in deed, and we'll talk about deeds in a minute, but the word came and the power came — and the power wasn't in his persuasion. Remember what we saw in 2 Corinthians 10:10? Very unimpressive in person. There is all sorts of conjecture about his physical appearance — shorter in stature, bald, hooked nose, a thorn in the flesh. Many believe it was an eye condition that continually oozed. So here's our speaker tonight, and he just comes walking up like a phantom of the opera or something.
Paul is saying that wasn't the power. The power wasn't him — the power was the Holy Spirit. You're wasting your time if you're just preaching and the Holy Spirit doesn't apply it. That's where the conviction comes, that's where the decision comes, and that's where the life change comes — when the Holy Spirit is there.
Our Task Is Proclamation, Not Conversion
For you and me — me on a Sunday here, and all of us talking to people all week long — our responsibility is to present the truth the best way we can, in honest, loving context, and then at that point it's up to God whether anything happens or not. I find great freedom there. You can't win a person to Christ. The Holy Spirit wins people to Christ.
Our task is not to convert people. Our task is to proclaim the gospel. There's a big difference there. Our task is not to drive toward a decision and get a decision. We hope that happens, we hope God saves people when we talk to them, but that is not our task. Our task is to be faithful and to communicate the truth. If God is going to do something, He does it. We make the invisible God visible. We speak the truth boldly.
So Paul is saying to this church — people who had been converted just three or four months earlier — I know you were chosen. I saw the gospel, for those three or four weeks I was there, come to you in power.
Imitators Who Became Examples
Verse six: "And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation and with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became examples to Macedonia and all the areas." He said, here's what happened — all of a sudden you began to follow us as we follow Christ. You began to be a disciple of Jesus. You didn't just play at this; you followed Him, and tribulation came, and you found joy in the midst of the tribulation. The only way you can do that is if the Holy Spirit is producing that in your life. And now you're an example everywhere else — the people all around are seeing you in that.
Let me stop and try to apply this. Paul is saying: you heard the gospel, lived the gospel, shared the gospel, prayed for the gospel. The Holy Spirit moved. That's what the Holy Spirit is going to do — that's John 3, as the wind blows, that's where He goes. I think it's Tim Mahon's definition, but it's a great definition of preaching to me: a hostile takeover of the heart by the Holy Spirit applying the Word of God. That's conviction. That's what happened there.
The Word Sounding Forth
As a result of that, verse eight: "The word of the Lord has sounded forth." That word translated "sounded" is the only time it's used in the New Testament. It means to sound, to ring, to boom. The word came to you in power and in truth, and now you lived it. You proclaimed it.
That's God's plan. God's plan for the expansion of the kingdom is to have people like us see our hearts transformed, to see our minds informed, to see our lives become radical — and now we become instruments that God and the Holy Spirit begin to use among the people around us. So everywhere you go, there should be people who are looking at you and saying, there's something different about you. Not odd — different.
When Did Someone Last Notice?
Let me ask you this: when is the last time you had that happen to you? When is the last time somebody who is observing you — maybe your barista, or someone you see at the gym, or someone in the neighborhood, or at work, or at the same restaurant you frequent — when is the last time one of them said, what's up with you? You're really different, weird in a good way — I kind of want what you have. When is the last time that happened to you?
I want to suggest that if that's not happening fairly regularly, something is probably wrong with us. Now, they may express it differently — they may look at you and say something else entirely.
The Witness of a Transformed Life
When people around you observe that your family seems to work, or that you hit bumps in the road and keep going and even thrive in the midst of them, that is their way of saying, "Tell me about Jesus." The more they watch you, the more they are intrigued, because you just don't fit. You're not like anything else around them. That should be a steady flow.
Paul is saying that this is exactly what happened in the church at Thessalonica. All of a sudden, these people who were newly converted — right out of paganism or Judaism, maybe God-fearing Greeks or followers of Jewish law — there was a change taking place, opposition came, and this, I would contend, is the normal pattern. Families gather together for Thanksgiving and Christmas with people who know you well but don't understand you, and that is a great opportunity for them to see Jesus in you.
Now, let me address the idea of "preach the gospel, and if necessary use words." Through your behavior, God creates a hunger and thirst in the people around you, and that gives you the opportunity to speak the truth boldly. If you don't speak the truth boldly, then all you've done is create a hunger and thirst, and they will write it off to the fact that you simply have a better disposition or are wired differently. Paul makes clear that something happened in this church, and it was very different from that.
The Three Tests of Genuine Conversion
Paul says he is absolutely sure the Thessalonians' faith is real, and he points to specific evidence. Look at verse three: the work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope. Then look at verse nine: "How you turned to God from idols" — that is the work of faith. "To serve a living and true God" — that is the labor of love. "To wait for His Son from heaven, whom God raised from the dead, Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come" — that is the steadfastness of hope.
These two passages map directly onto one another, and I think that is genuinely remarkable. The work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope in verse three are each illustrated concretely in verse nine. This connection is not accidental.
Idols and the Work of Faith
The work of faith is this idea of transformation — particularly as we begin to look at our lives and recognize that there are idols in them that need to be dethroned. An idol is really simple: an idol is anything that occupies a place in your life that is reserved exclusively for God.
First John is a fascinating book, and it ends in a striking way. After laying out so much rich theology, John closes in 1 John 5:21 with this: "Little children, guard yourselves against idols." It is an odd and abrupt ending, but it is very wise. John Calvin said the human heart is an idol factory, meaning it is constantly producing something to worship. The work of faith is to turn from sin to Christ, from darkness to light, from idols to God.
We live in a time and in a culture that is absolutely custom-made to feed into this. The messages are everywhere: you are not really a person until you have this, you are not really significant until you have that. Radio Shack had a tagline a few years ago that said, "We have thousands of things you never knew you needed." That was their actual advertisement — and that is precisely what our culture keeps telling us.
Identifying the Idols in Your Life
Here is an easy test for identifying the idols in your own life. Simply complete one of these sentences: "If I didn't have blank, life wouldn't be worth living," or "If I only had blank, I'd be happy." Whatever you put in that blank — if it is anything other than Jesus — that is an idol.
Think of the teenager, boy or girl, who says their life is over because they lost some particular thing. That is an idol. It could be anything. People build idols out of retirement — the culture constructs this vision of finally going to live for yourself. But that is not biblical. My heart is an idol factory, and I live in a culture that is constantly pointing to the next one and saying, "Look at this idol, look at this."
Turning from Idols to the Creator
The work of faith is to turn from these dead, dormant idols — these false gods — and turn from created objects to the Creator. Here is a fundamental, basic principle about false gods: false gods never fail to fail. Whatever you are trusting, thinking you will find your joy, peace, and happiness if you get that one thing — if it is anything other than Jesus, it cannot deliver. Tom experienced this firsthand with Susan. He married her hoping she would make him happy and hoping she would change him. Three months into the marriage he realized he was not happy, that she could not change him, and it took a couple of decades of distance to see clearly that he had been asking her to do what only Christ can do.
One author writes that we could say this Christian life is an exchange of one slavery for another, so long as we understand that the new slavery is real freedom. We are slaves to sin, slaves to all these things, and we get rid of that — but then we take on the same identity Paul describes when he calls himself a bondservant, a slave not of sin but of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are never the master. You are always the slave. It is simply a matter of who you are enslaved to. As Jesus says in Matthew 6, you cannot serve two masters; you cannot serve God and the world — you will love one and hate the other.
The Labor of Love
Out of this flows the labor of love. Life is now moved by service. Paul says, "Be an imitator of me as I was an imitator of Christ," and suddenly, when Jesus said He came not to be served but to serve, He is saying: this is your lot. You are here to serve. As one member of the congregation put it so beautifully: "I don't mind being a servant until somebody treats me like one." That tension is real — and it points to just how costly this labor of love truly is.
The Steadfastness of Hope
Then there is the steadfastness of hope. What is that? Verse 10 tells us: to wait for His Son from heaven. It is to wait for Jesus. It is to live with the understanding that He could come back at any moment. That is, in fact, why this series is titled "In Light of His Coming" — that theme runs all the way through the book of 1 Thessalonians.
In chapter 2, verse 19, Paul writes: "For who is our hope or joy or crown of exaltation? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord at His coming?" Chapter 3, verse 13: "So we may establish your hearts without blame and holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Chapter 4, verses 13 through 18, takes up the whole idea — He will descend from heaven with a shout. And chapter 5, verses 9 and 10: "For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live with Him together" when He comes back.
The Call to Every Church
Paul says to the church at Thessalonica — and this applies equally boldly to every church in every place — that the church itself, and therefore the people in it, should be about the work of faith, the labor of love, and the steadfastness of hope. There should be in our lives a constant sense of the work of faith. We come to Christ in repentance and faith — indeed, there is that one defining moment — but we are also constantly battling to knock idols off the shelf, because they want to climb right back on. There is also the ongoing faith that God is who He said He was, that He defines Himself in His Word and it is not up to us to define Him.
There should be a constant sense of giving, serving, and sharing — the manifestation of faith in action. As James says, it does you no good to claim you have faith if there is no corresponding love that joins it. And holding it all together is the steadfastness of hope: the conviction that this is not the end, that we are in the land of the dead and will one day go to the land of the living, and that Jesus will come again.
Watching and Waiting
As for when that will happen — nobody knows. Watching the news, it is hard to miss troubling developments: the situation with Iran, a nation being allowed to acquire nuclear weapons by what appears to be an incompetent and reckless failure of leadership. It is a sad and scary thing. But in the middle of what felt like a dark moment, something shifted. The thought arose: Iran gets them, Syria gets them, they move to bomb Israel — and suddenly a very dark moment became a very bright one. Maybe Jesus is near. He might be months away.
That said, the caveat must be added: people have been saying that for 2,000 years. This is not a call to panic or to give everything away. It is simply an acknowledgment that we do not know. Here is what we do know: whether Jesus comes or we die, either way God is the One who ultimately reigns. Jesus is the One who ultimately reigns. That is what chapter one of 1 Thessalonians sets before us, and we will spend the remaining weeks finishing our time in this remarkable book.
Opening Prayer
Father, thank you for the amazing truths that we see in Your word. God, I pray that we would be individuals in a church that would be marked by a work of faith and a labor of love and that steadfastness of hope. God, let us stand firm based on the conviction and the power of Your Holy Spirit. Jesus, thank you, and we praise You in Christ's name. Amen.