The Testimony of The Church at Thessalonians
v2: Familiar opening for Paul’s epistle. However Paul did not just write it, he actually love the church and pray for them. How often do you pray for others?
v2: Paul thank God because the church in Thessalonians has work, labor and endurance (v3).
v3: Three most importance characters of Christians: faith, love and hope. Their faith produced work, their love produced labor, their hope produced endurance.
v5: Paul did not only preached the gospel, his life is consistence with his preaching (v5)
v5: The words of God, together with the Holy Spirit convicted their hearts to believe in the gospel. Lacking the words or the the Holy Spirit mean our preaching will lack of the power of God. We need to study His word diligently, and pray earnestly.
v7: The Thessalonians imitate Paul who imitate Christ. Their testimony has became well known to all the believers in Macedonian, Achaia and everywhere (v8), They themselves became the model for other Christians. This is the principle of spiritual growth, by living our life that is consistence with our words, and we share the life of Christ to other with our actions and words.
v8-9: The Thessalonians’ faith in God includes three elements:
- Turning away from idols
- to serve the living and true God
- to wait for the return of Lord Jesus (v9)
v10: [..who rescues us from the coming wrath..] On the Lord Jesus second return, the wrath of God will be poured out to the nonbelievers. Jesus would rescue all the believers from the wrath. It is also referred in OT as “time of trouble for Jacob” (Jer 30:4-7).