I Thessalonians 1:6 – “How?”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁶And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the Word in much affliction with joy of [the] Holy Spirit.

I look at this verse and remember my (fairly literal) translation of Psalm 111:4: “A memory He has made to His ones being amazed; gracious and compassionate [is] the LORD.” Yes. I am one of His “amazed ones” and this verse causes me to remember “the Lord is gracious and compassionate.” I study the Bible because I want to know Him. I study the Bible because I want Him to change me, to teach me, to fix my head and help me see the world clearly, to have answers for what is otherwise to me a very confusing (if not despondent) world. And now, nearly 40 years down the road, He continues in His grace and compassion to do exactly that. He knows exactly where I am, what I need, what I’m struggling with, and again, and again, and again He shows me things from His Word that feed my soul.

As soon as I focused my attention on this verse, I saw the “much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit” and realized that is exactly something I’m really struggling with right now: affliction and joy. The great paradox of Christianity (if not life itself!). As I told someone, “I’ve definitely got the affliction part down, I’m just not sure about the joy.” I have lamented for years that I’m not sure I know much of Holy Spirit joy. I can look at the “fruit of the Spirit” in Gal 5 and honestly say the Lord has helped me grow in each of the others; but joy? As I look at life, sometimes it’s as if all I can see is how hard it is. It just seems like it’s so painful, I just want it to be over. “I want to go home.” It just all hurts too much. On the other hand, there is no question that the Lord has blessed me far, far, far beyond my wildest imaginations. I woke up this morning and, as I looked back at my still sleeping wife, I stood there utterly smitten by how beautiful she is. How could a dumb country boy like me possibly end up married to the most beautiful princess who ever lived? I have three grown children who are nothing but joy and pride for me. God gave me wonderful parents and before I could even know it, I was growing up in a world where I was always, always, always loved. I have a great job working with wonderful people, live in a beautiful house, in the beautiful Illinois Valley, and have my little garden to putter in! I’m so blessed. But … still there is always this overwhelming sense that life on the whole is just too painful. I long to be in Heaven and be able to enjoy God’s blessings without all this pain.

“Affliction and joy.” Right.

So you see, that is precisely where the Lord found me when my path brought me to I Thes 1:6.

And I have actually lingered over this verse far longer than normal, just because it so speaks to exactly where I’m struggling – and yet it still made no sense (practically) to me. I couldn’t see how to lay hold of this verse and be helped. So, like Jacob, I wrestled with the Angel of the Lord and said to Him, “I will not let you go until you bless me!” “Tell me how!”

And I think He actually did!

But before I get to that, I want to note the opening words of the verse: “And you became imitators of us and of the Lord …” I just want to record the thought that this matter of imitation is actually an expression of the fractal nature of our existence. Think about it: Children are born into this world looking like their parents and one of their earliest impulses is to imitate them. Our lives are then surrounded by teachers and leaders and people we just naturally imitate. Sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it’s bad, but our lives are full of it. Someone once said, “There’s nothing easier to follow than a good example.” I’m always amazed when I’m trying to learn something – I can read about it, watch videos about it, and all the rest, but it’s never so easy as if someone can just simply “show” me. “There’s nothing easier to follow than a good example.” It’s true.

Why? Why is our existence so infused and intertwined with this business of imitation? I would maintain it is because our great God created us to imitate Him. He is the Pattern. It is the grandest, most noble achievement of human existence to be more and more like Him. Among all of Jesus’ other perfections, we can observe this one, that He is the perfect example of what it means to be human and be like God. I like what Canon Liddon said:

“Christ’s Divinity does not destroy the reality of His manhood by overshadowing or absorbing it. Certainly the Divine attributes of Jesus are beyond our imitation. We can but adore a boundless intelligence or resistless will. But the province of the imitable in the life of Jesus is not indistinctly traced; as the Friend of publicans and sinners, as the Consoler of these who suffer, and as the Helper of those who want, Jesus Christ is at once among us. We can copy Him, not merely in the outward activities of love, but in its inward temper. We can copy the tenderness, the meekness, the patience, the courage, which shine forth from His perfect manhood. His human perfections constitute, indeed, a faultless ideal of beauty, which, as moral artists, we are bound to keep in view. What the true and highest model of a human life is, has been decided for us Christians by the appearance of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Others may endeavor to reopen the question; for us it is settled irrevocably.”

It is sad that so few today have risen to any real Christlikeness. I read Paul say, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord …” I wonder, who is there to “imitate?” One is practically left today to scratch out the likeness of Christ from the Word itself. Wesley’s Arminianism has so deeply infected the American church, it nearly precludes the possibility of anyone achieving much more than a faint or isolated similarity to Christ. God help us all. Young people ought to be able to see Jesus Himself in those of us who are older. God help me to, like Mary, be about the one thing that’s “needful,” to sit at His feet and drink who He is. Beholding His image, may we all be changed into that image, from glory to glory.

All that said, what about “affliction and joy??” If I just try to somehow drum up joy in all my afflictions, it doesn’t “work” and never has. I’ve pondered and pondered and pondered this particularly these last few weeks to no avail. Then I noticed there is more to the verse. It says “… receiving the Word in much affliction with joy of [the] Holy Spirit.”  Notice the affliction which also knows joy is part of “receiving the Word!” Yes or no, is it not the receiving of the Word which gives joy in affliction?

That is my encouraging thought – it is the Word that provides the joy.

And how true that is. How many million times has the Lord lifted me with His Word? All those times when I “could barely whisper a prayer,” He would lead my eyes to a verse or bring one to my mind or let me hear it in Christian music, and though still deeply afflicted, yet my heart could soar. That was joy. And it’s joy from the Holy Spirit being given through His Word.

That makes so much sense to me. When I’m afflicted (which seems to be most of the time), instead of wondering how one finds joy, I need to go very deliberately to the Word, and let it produce His joy in my heart. Bottom-line, I would suggest, is that there is no joy in affliction apart from the Word. The world has marveled in ages past at how Christians could actually be joyful in suffering. They could not understand it because they couldn’t know the comfort of the Word. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: … Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God … But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (I Cor 2:9-14).

I like too what Baldwin Brown said, “And let the careless understand that the choice in life is mainly between suffering with joy in the Holy Ghost, and suffering without it. Life is no holiday pastime for any of us; but the true agony of life must be with those who are without God and hope in the world.” … and may I add, “and without His Word which is the conduit of His Spirit’s joy." How often have we all seen it both ways – you find a believer in the midst of pain, you perhaps read or quote a verse of Scripture and their soul rises to feed on it, … then there are the others (too many who might claim to be believers) who respond to the Word like a dead body to a knife – not at all. It means nothing to them.

How sad. Along with the rest of the human race, we believers live in a Valley of Bacah and know more pain and sorrow than we think our hearts can bear. Yet we have a comfort others do not know, a source of strength, a source of joy to which we can repair in the midst of it all – His wonderful words of life.

Just knowing that gives joy to my heart … I know “how.”

Thank you, Lord. You really are “the God of all comfort.”