1 Thessalonians1chapter 1

1 Thessalonians 1:1

Three names stand over one of Paul's earliest surviving letters: the mission team of Acts 17 writes together from Corinth, months after the Thessalonian mob cut the work short. Silvanus is the Silas of the Philippian jail, and Timothy has just returned from the visit chapter 3 describes. The church is located twice over, in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, a young assembly given the deepest address there is.

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

The thanksgiving remembers three things without ceasing, and each grace wears its labor: work of faith, labour of love, patience of hope, faith that acts, love that toils, hope that holds out under pressure. The triad will return at 3:6 and again as armor at 5:8, the letter's own summary of the Christian life. Hope is anchored where the letter always anchors, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and the whole is lived in the sight of God and our Father.

1 Thessalonians 1:4-5

Paul claims to know their election, and verse 5 gives his evidence: the gospel came not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, God's visible working in the preaching and in its reception. The order runs from what was seen to what it proved, the fruit demonstrating the root. What manner of men we were among you adds the preachers' lives as part of the message's credentials.

1 Thessalonians 1:6-7

The imitation ran upward, followers of us, and of the Lord, and its school was suffering: they received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost, the pairing that marked the Lord himself. The result reverses the direction: the imitators became ensamples, tupoi, the stamp others are struck from, to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. A church weeks old under persecution became the region's pattern.

1 Thessalonians 1:8-9

Sounded out is a trumpet's verb: from Thessalonica, a free city astride the Egnatian Way with a harbor on the Aegean, the word rang along the trade routes until Paul found his own report already delivered wherever he went. The content of that report is the model conversion, ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, turning, serving, and, in the next verse, waiting. Serving comes before waiting; the letter never lets the hope idle the hands.

1 Thessalonians 1:10

The first chapter ends where every chapter of this letter ends, on the coming of the Lord: to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead. The waiting is expectancy, not idleness, and its object is a person, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come, the deliverance stated as his settled office. The wrath to come names a real day ahead, and the letter will teach at 5:9 that God hath not appointed us to wrath; the two verses belong together.