We're looking here at 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 and what we read in these few verses gives us a great
insight into how the emphases of the Apostles’ teaching were contextualised to match the situation of the people they were addressing ... in this case, the church at Thessalonica.
The Thessalonians lived through a time of
persecution and in a society and an economy that had slavery at its foundation.
That radically affected their charity, their
ambitions in life and their employment situation.
The apostolic team addressed those issues
directly.
Now, as the church in Wales at the moment we tend to believe that the obstacle to our mission here is the COVID pandemic.
Our attention is on surviving and advancing through that.
I have a creeping suspicion that we may look back in 20 years time and conclude that COVID took our eye off the ball, because there are greater threats to Biblical Christianity floating around at this point in time that hold potential to do Biblical Christianity far more harm than COVID.
Already people holding publicly to consistent Christian positions, for example on sex and sexuality, are getting booted off social media and useful utilities like Survey Monkey and Mailchimp ... which we use regularly and which help us out with other state regulations like GDPR ... those are threatening to throw people off their services as well.
This week the London Government (which has authority over Wales in these matters) declared its' intention to legislate against 'hate speech' which includes the freedom to put the Biblical teaching about a range of issues to anyone.
Both Welsh political parties with any realistic
prospect of gaining power have already expressed strong support for 'hate speech' legislation so soon you will in all likelihood (for example) not only be guilty
of breaking the law if you are ghastly to someone who is physiologically male
but declares himself to be female (which you really SHOULDN’T DO), but you will
also be breaking the law if you do not affirm their 'choice' of gender.
That means not challenging men who walk into Ladies’ toilets, for example.
This sort of thinking has already proved
problematic to the prison service and rape charges have, I understand, followed.
Scotland has already passed 'hate speech' legislation, but their legislation
is currently being challenged.
So in that sort of situation, HOW should Christians respond?
The first priority seems to be to go on loving
one another.
"Now
about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you
yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia.
Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more."
So, Paul transitions from teaching them
about holiness in the earlier part of this chapter to dealing with the subject
of love.
It’s not that they are failing in this
area, but that he is giving them encouragement to press on in the where they
should go.
You've got
to bear in mind here that the natural human response when you come under
pressure as a church (pretty much like when you come under hostile fire) is to
keep your head down, dissociate from anyone anywhere near where the trouble is
and sneak away.
We see a living example of that (as we mentioned in our Thought for the Day on the subject of 'Shaming'
this week) towards the end of Paul's life as he is imprisoned in a cold, damp
gaol at Rome by the Emperor Nero around 66-67 A.D.
2
Timothy 4:16-17
"At my first defence, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me.
May it not be held against them.
But the Lord stood at my side and gave me
strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the
Gentiles might hear it.
And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth."
The
apostolic team here commends the Thessalonians for NOT embracing that sort of
attitude.
They are
commended for their ongoing love ‘for one another’.
Paul doesn't need to teach them this ... because first of all
they’ve been taught this in the premature enforced absence of the apostolic
team, and they’ve been taught it by God Himself.
"... we do not need to write to you, for you
yourselves have been taught by God to love each other"
φιλαδελφία is the word used here is the word for the love of
brothers or sisters, brotherly love.
In the New Testament this is the word used for
the love which Christians cherish for each other as brethren.
In
first century Greek this word was used solely of those who shared common biological
descent … regardless of gender.
It’s
family love not brotherly love then, you see?
But Paul’s
letters and the New Testament in general extend this way beyond the family and
even beyond the Jewish people (as Jeremiah referred to that as bound by
brotherly love) to ‘the family of believers’ (Galatians 6:10 as 1 Peter 2:17,
too).
Paul
follows up on this by calling the believers in the whole of Macedonia as ‘brothers
and sisters’ in v. 10
But we need
to recognise how really unusual it would have been for Paul to be comfortable using
this term for people who weren’t related biologically.
It was
so ODD in that culture that the second century Roman Marcus Cornelius Fronto criticised
the Christians for it like this:
“Indiscriminately
they call each other brother and sister, thus turning even ordinary fornication
int incest by the intervention of these hallowed names.”
I'm not quite clear what exactly he was going on about, but he was certainly quite upset about it!
It was
seen as scandalous to call any and every Christian ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ by
using this term.
Writing
a few decades after 1 Thessalonians, Plutarch (in his essay Peri Philadelphia …
‘On Brotherly Love’) describes how brotherly love is superior to friendship
noting that it is characterised by tolerance, loyalty and forgiveness.
Gupta: “This is noticeably relevant to what Paul has to say to the Thessalonians, especially when there may have been situations where some were inappropriately taking advantage of others in the church.”
ii) You have been taught this by GOD
Paul
makes an emphatic statement here, they don’t need to be taught
love because they’ve got the memo.
He uses the pronoun ‘’you’ then he underscores it by saying ‘yourselves’ … Shogren suggests we’re to understand Paul to be saying ‘You yourselves, yes I’m talking to YOU, have been taught this already by God’.
Now, you may want to say, ‘well yes, of course, they have their Bibles with them and the Bible says we must love one another, and …’
Wow!
Just hold on there!
Have
they?
YOU
have got your Bible, sure enough.
We
don’t know what they had or didn’t have.
This
is really early in the history of the church and most of the New Testament hasn’t
been written and certainly hasn’t been collected yet.
They
may have heard some of the oral tradition about the Lord Jesus and from what we
read about the start of the church in Thessalonica, there are likely to be some
amongst them with copies of the Old Testament Law, Prophets and Writings having
had contact with the synagogue.
It's
not a lot.
And it’s probably not what
the apostolic team would have meant by the phrase they use here: “for
you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other"
Psalm
16 used similar language describing how there was an inward testimony of God’s
Spirit with David’s own spirit in Psalm 16:7.
But
that certainly doesn’t exhaust the reference here.
It seems very likely that this is what Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 54:13:
It seems very likely that this is what Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 54:13:
There
is also John 6:45 where the Lord says “It
is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God’.”
(That
seems to be a reference back to Isaiah 54).
It
does really look as if what Paul is referring to here is what has happened since
Pentecost, the transformative, inner working of the Holy Spirit.
Now, that is not something we can say we would prefer to the daily hassle of doing our Bible readings, and nip back under the quilt for another forty winks! It is normally going to be both-and, not either-or, and to be honest someone with no passion or hunger to read Scripture needs to set to and sort out smartly what's going on because that can be a sign of being in spiritual trouble.
We know
from 1 Thessalonians 1:5 “our
gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy
Spirit and deep conviction ..." that this is a church where they have known the Holy Spirit powerfully and transformingly at work in them.
This is a church that knows the personal, powerful work of the
Holy Spirit in their midst … God the Spirit Himself has been at work in them.
And
we know from what Paul writes to the Galatian church that (Galatians
5:22) “the fruit of the Spirit
is love, joy, peace …”
If
the Spirit of God is at work in a group of believers then the very first fruit
to be formed of His being there is the love that God sheds abroad in their
hearts by the Holy Spirit, as Romans 5:5 has it: “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has
been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,
who has been given to us.”
So as the apostolic team
write here: “you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other", and that is no
surprise.
This is fundamental.
Funnily enough it is old Calvin (Commentary on 1 Thessalonians ad.
loc.) “Their hearts were framed for love; so that it appears that the Holy
Spirit inwardly dictates efficaciously what is to be done, so that there is no
need to give injunctions in writing.”
Not simply that they OUGHT TO love one
another.
Nor that He had given them a theology
of love.
He has taught them with the result
that they DO love, they practise and they practise it towards one another.
Augustine (‘On the Grace of Christ’):
“It is through grace that we not only discover
what ought to be done
but also that we do what we have discovered.
but also that we do what we have discovered.
That is, not only that we believe what
ought to be loved
but also that we love what we have believed …
but also that we love what we have believed …
All this is in such a way that God not
only exhibits truth but likewise imparts love.”
But that doesn’t get us past the fact that
it was a WEIRD way to behave in Roman culture and society to show family love beyond blood relations in this way.
Graeco-Roman
values were not very loving at all.
In contrast, genuine believers give
evidence of the fact that they are genuine believers by the fact that they do
not abandon one another at the first sign of pressure … the way so many find it
easy to do … but under pressure it becomes oddly apparent that they LOVE ONE
ANOTHER!
And
yet – not EXCLUSIVELY so.
You've been loving one another - family love.
You've been taught it by God.
Their
love is not 'parochial', the way it was in the 'societies' that existed in
places like Thessalonica and across the Empire..
" you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia."
There is a word dropped from the translation there, it is the word ‘even’ … you EVEN love the people who follow the Lord outside your family, your congregation and your own city.
Astonishing in that culture.
The engagement of the Thessalonian church with the other churches in Macedonia has come up before in this letter.
1 Thessalonians 1:7 & 8 read:
All
the believers in Macedonia would at this point have been the people who were in
the churches in those three places.
Paul
& co had moved on to Corinth in Achaia and the two regions of Macedonia and
Achaia were often linked together: ‘Macedonia & Achaia’ is the phrase that
crops up in v. 8.
But
the news of the faith and spiritual life of the Thessalonians has spread
through the transport hubs that existed in that part of the ancient
Mediterranean world so that “your faith in God has become known everywhere.”
When
you are a small church, pushed to the edges of your society, that is sure to be
a hugely encouraging thing to hear.
So
now, say the apostles to this small new church under pressure, that’s the way you’re on … get on with that!
C. Progress in this
The Greek of this urging is that they
should περισσεύειν μᾶλλον
The adverb here has the idea of ‘to a
greater extent, more’.
The apostolic team call on the
Thessalonians to excel in the way they are currently going with love and do so more
and more.
Compare this statement to Paul’s more famous exhortation to believers
to love one another in the Corinthian correspondence (1 Corinthians 13) where a
whole heavy-weight chapter aims to correct the Corinthians’ imperfect love
which had led them to sin against others (1 Corinthians 8:12) and leverage
their spiritual gifts to serve themselves not the Lord or one another (1
Corinthians 14:4 & 13-19).
The contrast lies in that in this verse Paul simply encourages them to
press on with what they were doing.
There is a parallel in Philippians 1:9 “And this
is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of
insight …” but in Philippi Paul had to go on to correct the
divisive behaviour of two prominent women Euodia and Syntyche, whilst he has nothing
of the sort to deal with in Thessalonica.
And then he says, live a quiet life ...
Paul seems to be using a verb here for ‘ambition’
or ‘to aspire’ which is linked to the practice of the Roman elite.
In lieu of taxation, the wealthy were expected to
make generous donations to their cities … public works projects,
entertainments, food distribution and so on.
In many cases this became very competitive, a
matter of seeing who could outstrip their peers in their generosity.
But Paul speaks of making it their aspiration to render
service NOT to gain public admiration but to serve God.
That was the quiet life.
That verb which relates to striving to render
service usually related to one subject, but here it covers three:
To live peaceably, to keep your own business and
to work.
i)
The quiet life
i)
The quiet life
Strive to lead a quiet life.
The use Paul makes of this word is different
from the way it is used in other first century writing.
As in 2 Thessalonians 3:12 Paul uses it here to
describe a quiet life-style linked to diligent work.
ii) Minding your own business
This is not a thought that would thrill the ambitious, competitive philanthropists of the ancient world!
πράσσειν τὰ ἴδια is a known idiom that meas to
mind one’s own affairs.
This isn’t about neglecting the business of others where
they need assistance but MEDDLING in others’ affairs.
"work
with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the
respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."
So, throughout the whole letter Paul underscores the importance of work and labour!
(1:3, 2:9, 3:5, 5:12-13)
So, throughout the whole letter Paul underscores the importance of work and labour!
(1:3, 2:9, 3:5, 5:12-13)
When it comes to how to pursue your employment in a slavery and persecution based society, the apostles say ...
A. Work with your hands
It seems that not many people in churches then or
now value or aspire to a trade.
Here’ something that needs careful thinking
about.
I started thinking this through when we were restoring
a derelict chapel to start or re-start a church in it decades ago, when I
realised the main man who founded it back in the 1850s had been a bright,
talented man who was a JOINER by trade.
He became very affluent in business and actually patented
the Gallery Kiln method for manufacturing Portland Cement and started and ran
his own profitable cement works making this cement.
He did lots of scientific work and research and
stuff like that … he was clearly a BRIGHT guy … why hadn’t he gone to university
and had that sort of career?
It was because Isaac Charles Johnson was a Protestant
Dissenter of the Baptist denomination and as a result was not ALLOWED by the
persecuting religious laws of the time to enter a university or profession … you had to be a member of the Anglican church for that ... so
Bible believing Christians got apprenticed to a trade, got their heads down and
worked quietly for God’s Kingdom because a trade was something no-one could
take from you.
The rabbis were expected to learn a trade too,
and I wonder if that might also have been for this reason.
If the powers that be were to persecute and take against
you (as at Thessalonica), you could continue to live quietly so far as possible
while providing for daily necessities if you were able to practise a sought-after
trade.
But there may be just a little more to it when the Apostle says that the Thessalonians should aspire to work with their OWN hands.
B. Work with your OWN hands
It stood
only because of its’ system of slavery and would have got nowhere without the steady
stream of slaves being brought towards the centre of the Empire from its’ military
conquests at its’ military conquests at the frontiers.
Paul has
been talking in the previous verses about not exploiting one another by sexual
immorality.
It seems likely then that this reference to working with your OWN hands was a covert reference to not exploiting someone else’s body for their labour as much as previous verses were about not exploiting someone else's body for sex.
Now, for the apostles to attempt a frontal attack on such a deeply embodied institution as slavery in the Roman Empire would have led to a very dangerous response from the authorities and jeopardised the more crucial issue of bringing people out of slavery to sin to freedom in Christ.
Notice then that to object to Christianity because it tolerated slavery fails to understand the situation in Roman society and is blind to the things the apostles did teach in verses like these.
Conclusion
v. 12 “… so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”
The Thessalonian Christians had come fresh to being persecuted outcasts in their society, for the love of Christ.
They were misunderstood and maligned on every side from Jews and
from Gentiles alike.
They needed for the sake of the Gospel as well as for their own
safety to win the respect of outsiders to their fellowship, and Paul & co
have been teaching them how to do so.
In their position on the back foot (as they now were) they might be
tempted to get any backing, help or support wherever they could, but patronage
liabilities to the people around them were things to be avoided if they were to
be free to remain faithful to Christ ... and so not being dependent on anybody took
on a fresh appearance and perspective.
They needed to be free men and women to be able to serve Christ,
and to do that in a God-glorifying way they should work hard with their own
hands so as not to be dependent on anybody.
I'm suggesting that we are possibly now living at a time when we should consider whether as Bible believing Christians in OUR society we are about to head into the sort of pressurised times for Bible believing Christians that the Thessalonians knew.
I'm suggesting, too, that we have things to learn from these few precious verses for times
of persecution and hostility from our neighbours, things to learn about how to live faithfully,
sustainably and securely for Christ in ways that carry forward His Gospel and
Kingdom.
Use the contact form below to let us know what you think, and to let us know about how we can pray for you as you are impacted by any of these things.
No comments:
Post a Comment