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1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonianschapter 2

20 verses · BSB1 Thessalonians book hub →

Speaks with:2 Thessalonians 3×31 Thessalonians 3×3Romans 1×22 Corinthians 12×2John 5×22 Corinthians 1×2

Summary

Chapter summary

Paul rehearses the ministry among them. Entrance in boldness after Philippi's shameful treatment, words not of flattery, not of covetousness. Gentle among them as a nurse cherisheth her children; then as a father. Ye are witnesses, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves. Paul was taken from them for a short time in presence but not in heart. Satan hindered his return. Ye are our glory and joy. JFB reads the chapter as the apostle's own pastoral autobiography. One of the New Testament's tenderest.

Context

Epistle · Paul — 1 Thessalonians overview

  • A. 1–12 No Flattery, No Greed: Gentle as a Nurse, Firm as a Father
  • B. 13–16 You Took It as the Word of God, and It Cost You
  • C. 17–20 Torn Away: You Are Our Crown of Rejoicing

The outline

  1. A.No Flattery, No Greed: Gentle as a Nurse, Firm as a Fathervv. 1 to 12

    Read vv. 1 to 12 →

  2. B.You Took It as the Word of God, and It Cost Youvv. 13 to 16

    Read vv. 13 to 16 →

  3. C.Torn Away: You Are Our Crown of Rejoicingvv. 17 to 20

    Read vv. 17 to 20 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

The coming of the Lord closes every chapter

Pattern

Every chapter of 1 Thessalonians ends on the coming of the Lord: waiting for his Son from heaven, the crown of rejoicing at his coming, hearts stablished unblameable at his coming, the dead raised and the living caught up, and the whole person preserved blameless unto the coming.

A church a few weeks old was taught to live with this horizon. The letter's frame makes the coming of the Lord the ordinary hope of ordinary believers, and 4:15-17 gives the fullest account of the catching up in Scripture.

  1. 1 Thessalonians 1:10

    To wait for his Son from heaven

    The model church turned to God from idols to serve, and to wait for his Son from heaven.

  2. 1 Thessalonians 2:19 you are here

    The crown of rejoicing at his coming

    Paul's hope and joy is the Thessalonians themselves, in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming.

  3. 1 Thessalonians 3:13

    Unblameable in holiness at the coming

    Hearts stablished unblameable in holiness at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

  4. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17

    Caught up together to meet the Lord

    The Lord himself descends, the dead in Christ rise first, and the living are caught up together with them in the clouds.

  5. 1 Thessalonians 5:23

    Preserved blameless unto the coming

    Spirit and soul and body preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The world behind this chapter

1 Thessalonians 2
When
The second missionary journey · c. AD 50–51
Where
A defense of how the missionaries had behaved while living and working in Thessalonica
Who first heard it
Converts hearing their absent teacher accused of being one more traveling salesman of religion

The history

Traveling speakers were a familiar sight in Greek cities. Some were street philosophers who begged, some were hired lecturers who charged well, and some were priests of foreign cults collecting for a shrine. All of them worked a crowd and all of them wanted money, so a stranger who preached was assumed to be after something.

Paul's answer was his hands. He worked a leather and tent trade, the sort of job done in a rented front-room workshop that opened onto the street. Craftsmen started before dawn and talked while they worked, so the shop bench was itself a place to preach — and manual labor was exactly the thing respectable teachers refused to do.

The nurse picture in this chapter came from ordinary life. Wet-nurse contracts survive on Egyptian papyrus, spelling out how long a woman would feed and care for a child. A hired nurse fed someone else's baby; the point of the comparison is a nurse caring for her own.

The trouble in the city had been legal as well as social. The charge shouted before the politarchs was that these men proclaimed another king, which in a loyal free city was the most dangerous accusation that could be made.

What it meant to them

The hearers were being asked, by neighbors and probably by relatives, why they had trusted a man who ran. Paul answers with things they could check themselves: they watched him work, they knew he took no fee, they knew whose door he ate at.

Then he tells them their suffering is not a sign that they picked wrong. The churches in Judea had been through the same thing first. Being hurt by your own townsfolk put them in company, not out of it.

Sources cited

  • Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
  • Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on 1 Thessalonians 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

This page draws on James Denney, The Epistles to the Thessalonians (Expositor's Bible); Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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