1 Thessalonians 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul reminds the Christians in Thessalonica what his visit was like: he came after being mistreated in Philippi, spoke openly in spite of strong opposition, and did not use flattery, greed, or a demand for honor. He describes working night and day so he would not be a financial burden, and treating them as a nursing mother and a father treat their children. He thanks God that they took his message as God's word rather than a human one, and notes that they suffered from their own countrymen as the churches in Judea suffered. He closes by saying he tried repeatedly to visit and was blocked, and that they are his hope, joy, and glory when the Lord Jesus comes.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • Paul addresses the recipients as brothers.
   • The recipients themselves know about the writers' coming to them.
   • The writers' coming to the recipients was not empty or fruitless.
2. 2:2
   • The writers had previously suffered.
   • The writers had been shamefully and insolently treated at Philippi.
   • The recipients know that this happened.
   • The writers were bold in their God to speak the gospel of God to the recipients.
   • The writers spoke that gospel amid much struggle and opposition.
3. 2:3
   • The writers' exhortation did not come from error or delusion.
   • The writers' exhortation did not come from impurity.
   • The writers' exhortation was not made in guile or trickery.
4. 2:4
   • God approved the writers, having tested them.
   • God entrusted the gospel to the writers.
   • The writers speak in accordance with that approval and trust.
   • The writers do not speak so as to please men.
   • The writers speak so as to please God.
   • God tests the writers' hearts.
5. 2:5
   • The writers never at any time used flattering words.
   • The recipients know this.
   • The writers never used a pretext for greed.
   • God is witness to this.
6. 2:6
   • The writers did not seek glory from men.
   • The writers did not seek glory from the recipients.
   • The writers did not seek glory from others.
   • The writers could have made their weight felt as apostles of Christ.
7. 2:7
   • The writers were gentle among the recipients.
   • A nursing mother cherishes her own children.
   • The writers' gentleness was like that of a nursing mother with her own children.
8. 2:8
   • The writers longed affectionately for the recipients.
   • The writers were pleased to share with the recipients the gospel of God.
   • The writers were pleased to share with the recipients their own lives as well.
   • The recipients had become beloved to the writers.
9. 2:9
   • The recipients remember the writers' labor and toil.
   • The writers worked night and day.
   • The writers worked so as not to be a burden to any of the recipients.
   • The writers proclaimed the gospel of God to the recipients.
10. 2:10
    • The recipients are witnesses.
    • God is also a witness.
    • The writers' conduct among the believing recipients was holy.
    • The writers' conduct among the believing recipients was righteous.
    • The writers' conduct among the believing recipients was blameless.
11. 2:11
    • The recipients know how the writers acted toward them.
    • The writers exhorted each one of the recipients.
    • The writers comforted each one of the recipients.
    • The writers charged each one of the recipients.
    • The writers did this as a father does with his own children.
12. 2:12
    • The writers urged the recipients to walk worthily of God.
    • God calls the recipients into his own kingdom and glory.
13. 2:13
    • The writers thank God without ceasing for this reason.
    • The recipients received the word of God that they heard from the writers.
    • The recipients did not accept it as the word of men.
    • The recipients accepted it as the word of God, which is what it truly is.
    • That word works effectively in the recipients who believe.
14. 2:14
    • The recipients became imitators of the churches of God in Judaea.
    • Those churches are in Christ Jesus.
    • The recipients suffered the same things from their own countrymen.
    • Those churches suffered the same things from the Jews.
15. 2:15
    • Those Jews killed the Lord Jesus.
    • Those Jews killed their own prophets.
    • Those Jews persecuted and drove out the writers.
    • Those Jews do not please God.
    • Those Jews are hostile to all men.
16. 2:16
    • Those Jews forbid the writers to speak to the Gentiles.
    • The purpose of speaking to the Gentiles is that the Gentiles might be saved.
    • The result is that those Jews always fill up the full measure of their sins.
    • Wrath has come upon those Jews to the uttermost.
17. 2:17
    • The writers were torn away from the recipients for a short time.
    • The separation was in presence, not in heart.
    • The writers endeavored all the more to see the recipients face to face.
    • The writers did so with great desire.
18. 2:18
    • The writers wanted to come to the recipients.
    • Paul himself wanted to come once and again.
    • Satan hindered the writers.
19. 2:19
    • The writers ask what their hope, joy, or crown of boasting is.
    • The writers assert that the recipients themselves are that hope, joy, and crown.
    • This will be so in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming.
20. 2:20
    • The recipients are the writers' glory.
    • The recipients are the writers' joy.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

"Brethren" translates the Greek *adelphoi*, literally "brothers," but used as the ordinary address to all the members of a congregation, women included. Paul uses it fourteen times in this short letter, which is why the rendering has "brothers and sisters." The King James "in vain" means empty or without result, not foolish.

2:2

Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia, about a hundred miles west of Thessalonica along the main road. According to Acts 16 Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten with rods and jailed there without trial, which is what "suffered before" points back to. "Shamefully entreated" is not about begging: in 1611 "entreat" meant to treat or handle someone, so the phrase means they were treated with insult and violence. "Much contention" translates *agon*, a word from the athletic arena meaning a contest or hard struggle, here the opposition the preachers met.

2:3

"Exhortation" here means the appeal or preaching itself, not a scolding. "Uncleanness" in modern English suggests sexual impurity, but the Greek word covers any corrupt or impure motive. "Guile" is an old word for trickery or bait, originally the deception used to catch fish or game. The three terms together are the standard charges laid against traveling preachers and philosophers in the ancient world: they lied, they were in it for sex or money, they worked by manipulation.

2:4

"Allowed of God" does not mean merely permitted. The Greek verb means tested and found fit, the way metal or a coin was assayed before being accepted, and the same word family produces "trieth" at the end of the verse. "Put in trust with" is the language of a steward handed property belonging to someone else.

2:5

A "cloke" is a cover or pretext, something thrown over an activity to disguise what it really is. "Covetousness" means greed for money or gain. "God is witness" is an oath formula: calling God to testify to something no human observer could verify, in this case the speakers' inward motives.

2:6

"Glory" here means praise and public honor from other people. "When we might have been burdensome" is deliberately double edged in Greek: the word means to throw one's weight around, and it can point both to claiming the status of an apostle and to claiming the material support an apostle could expect a congregation to provide. "Apostle" means one sent out as an authorized representative; the "we" of this letter is Paul together with Silvanus and Timothy.

2:7

A "nurse" in 1611 English is a wet nurse, a woman who suckles a child. The Greek adds "her own children," so the picture is not a hired nurse but a mother feeding her own baby, the tenderest image available. There is also a genuine dispute about the text here. The Greek manuscripts differ by a single letter between *epioi*, "gentle," which the King James follows, and *nepioi*, "infants," which would read "we became infants among you." The earliest copies favor "infants," most translations print "gentle," and either can be defended.

2:8

"Our own souls" translates a word meaning lives or selves rather than the immortal part of a person. The sense is that they handed over not only a message but themselves.

2:9

"Travail" means exhausting toil, not childbirth. "Chargeable" means financially burdensome, a cost laid on someone. Paid teachers and philosophers in Greek cities either charged fees or attached themselves to a wealthy patron; Paul refused both and supported himself at a trade, which Acts identifies as tentmaking or leatherwork. "Night and day" is the ancient way round of saying it, since the working day of an artisan began before dawn.

2:10

"Holily and justly and unblameably" are three adverbs describing conduct: devout toward God, fair in dealings with people, and giving no one grounds for a complaint.

2:11

"Exhorted", "comforted" and "charged" are three strengths of the same action: urging someone forward, steadying them when they are struggling, and solemnly insisting. The comparison to a father is deliberate, since in a Greek household the father was the one responsible for a child's moral training.

2:12

To "walk" in this kind of writing means your whole way of living, the pattern of your daily conduct. It has nothing to do with literal walking.

2:13

"Effectually worketh" translates a verb meaning to be at work and producing an effect, the root behind the English word energy. It describes something active and ongoing, not a single past event.

2:14

"Followers" in 1611 English means imitators, people whose experience came to look like someone else's, not disciples of those churches. "Church" translates *ekklesia*, an assembly or gathered group of people; there were no church buildings for another two centuries. Judaea is the region around Jerusalem. "The Jews" here translates a phrase that in this context means the particular Judean opponents of the mission just described, set in parallel with the Thessalonians' own pagan "countrymen"; Paul, Silvanus and the Judean congregations he is praising were themselves Jews.

2:15

"Contrary to all men" means hostile to everyone. The charge of hostility to the rest of the human race was a stock accusation made against Jews by Greek and Roman writers of the period, and Paul is using the language his Greek readers would have recognized.

2:16

"To fill up their sins alway" uses the image of a measuring vessel being filled to the brim, a common way of speaking about wrongdoing reaching a fixed limit. The last clause is genuinely ambiguous in Greek. The phrase rendered "to the uttermost" can mean completely, or finally, or at last, or until the end, and the verb can be read as "has come" or "has come at last"; translations divide on whether a past event, a present state, or a certain future is in view.

2:17

"Being taken from you" translates a verb built on the word for orphan. It is the language of bereavement, of a child torn away from parents or parents from a child, much stronger than the English suggests. "Presence" and "heart" are set against each other: absent in body, present in affection.

2:18

"Satan" is a Hebrew word meaning adversary or accuser, carried over untranslated into Greek as a name. "Once and again" is an idiom for repeatedly, not exactly twice.

2:19

The "crown" is a *stephanos*, the wreath of leaves placed on the head of the winner at athletic games or on a guest of honor at a banquet, not a royal crown of metal. "Rejoicing" here carries the sense of boasting, the thing one can point to with pride. "His coming" translates *parousia*, the ordinary word for an arrival or a visit, used in that period for the ceremonial entry of a king or emperor into a city, when the citizens would go out to meet him and escort him in.