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.”

I Thessalonians 1:4,5 – “I Know”

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

⁴knowing, brothers loved by God, the choosing of you, ⁵because our Gospel was not produced into you in word only, but also in power and in [the] Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, just as you know what sort [of people] we became among you because of you.

This is an interesting couple of verses, but before I record my thoughts on them, I want to note one more thing about v3: Note it was “your work of faith, labor of love, and endurance of hope.” Someone pointed out that a life can be filled with work, labor, and endurance, and yet lack the three graces of faith, hope, and love. Paul of course warns of exactly this in I Cor 13, “though I …, though I, though I … and have not love, I am nothing.” We can “do it all” and “have not love.” We can work without real faith, labor without real love, and endure without real hope. It is incumbent on each one of us throughout our days to humbly and consciously let the Lord search our hearts and test our motives. People talk about getting “burned out.” I strongly suspect most of the time what really happened is exactly this, that, for whatever reason, they were working without faith, laboring without love, and enduring without hope. If what we’re doing is really for the Lord, if it’s really being done with the graces of faith, hope, and love, then the Bible tells us “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint.” Lord, help me to be honest with You about my motives and may Your grace in fact make me strong even when I’m weak.

Back to vv4,5, I have a different sort of thought to record, but totally not sure how to say it. So I’ll just wade in and see if I can make any sense. Paul says in these verses that he knows the election of the Thessalonians because they didn’t receive the Gospel in word only “but in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance.” In verse 3, we were able to dissect the three graces faith, hope, and love and their fruit and be quite logical and scientific about it all. I don’t think we can do that with vv4,5. In fact, I think we have to be quite unscientific in these verses. What do I mean? (Maybe I’m still wondering myself!) I think in real faith and in real life, there is a subjective element that simply is. It’s like the old song said, “You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.” I remember years ago kind of objecting to those words, thinking they were “feeling oriented,” that such words were not an expression of true confidence but just sort of popular sentiment. “He lives within my heart.” How subjective, I thought. Well, now I’m old and decrepit, and if you ask me how I know He lives, I might just tell you, I know it because “He lives within my heart.” I don’t care if it’s subjective. He lives within my heart. How do I know it? I just know it. Unscientific? Yes. Subjective? Yes.

Where this observation comes to bear on our verse today is trying to figure out what Paul means by knowing their election, because there was “power, the Holy Spirit, and much assurance.” What exactly does he mean by that? And was it on his part as the preacher or on their part as the listeners? I don’t think that matters. And I don’t think anything needs to be “defined.” This is just something that, when it happens, you know it. How do you know it? You just do. Subjective? Yes. But still very true? Yes. There simply are times, and I hope everyone reading this has experienced it, when this is exactly what happened. It could have been the whole group or just in your own heart. You might have been the preacher/teacher or you might have been sitting in the pews. But the Word was preached and it wasn’t just words. It was power. It was the Holy Spirit. And it was in full assurance.

I’ve sat through presentations of all kinds over the years and sometimes you sit through one and say, “That was excellent. Those were really good ideas. I liked that.” That is one thing. It is another thing when the Words of the Living God come alive in your heart. I would suggest that the vast majority of sermons and lessons and even Bible studies we all engage in will always and of necessity be just that -- We sit through it, we work through it, we get up and we go on. Then there are those time when it seems the Lord shoves sticks of dynamite in our ears and lights the fuses.

That’s what Paul is talking about. He started preaching at Thessalonica and that is exactly what happened. The Lord showed up. Paul knew it. Timothy knew it. Silas knew it, and the Thessalonians knew it. It wasn’t just words, it was power, and it was the Holy Spirit, and it was full assurance.

That last one is really important – full assurance. Once again, there is a time when I “know” it’s true. There’s a time when I’m hearing something, reading something, realizing something, and I just “know” it’s true. How do I “know” it? I just do. There’s not a doubt in my soul. One day in 1979 I was getting up from my bed and as I stood up I just “knew” that all this stuff about Jesus, and God, and the Bible was true. I just knew it and I would never be the same. Full assurance. Time and time and time again, I open my Bible because I need a word from the Lord and time and time and time again He speaks to me right off the words that fall before my eyes. It’s Him. I know it. How do I know it? I just know it. And I love the sense of assurance He gives me. It’s the strength to go on, the strength to be brave, the strength to face the obstacles.

So what is Paul talking about in I Thess 1:4,5? If you don’t know, you should. I suspect you do. You can’t know the amazing, infinite God and not know the wonder of His touch.

Is that subjective? Yes. Is it true? Yes.

Ask the Thessalonian believers how they know He lives. I’ll bet I can tell you their answer.

And that’s okay.

I Thessalonians 1:3 – “Faith, Hope, and Love”

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

³…remembering unceasingly your work of faith, and labor of love, and endurance of hope of our Lord Jesus Christ before God and our Father, …

Faith, hope, and love. “And now these three remain – faith, hope, and love – but the greatest of these is love” (I Cor 13:13). As I have studied, it was interesting to find that apparently there was a day when it was generally understood that faith, hope, and love are the three principal graces of Christianity. Matthew Henry, for instance, commenting on I Cor 13:13, wrote, “True grace is much more excellent than any spiritual gifts whatever. And faith, hope, and love are the three principal graces, of which love is the chief, being the end to which the other two are but means.”

One writer called them “the three cardinal virtues.” One even went so far as to maintain that these three graces inhere in the fundamental Trinitary structure of reality. He compared it to, of course, God who exists as a Trinity, and also to light which, in the visible spectrum, is actually made up of the three colors – red, yellow, and blue – that all other colors derive from these three (and in fact white light is the summation of them all). Particularly since I believe the entire universe is logically fractal, I find these suggestions fascinating. I’ve been pondering over the Bible to see if in fact, the case can be made that faith, hope, and love are “the three principal graces.” I Cor 13:13 certainly points toward that conclusion. I think right now I would have to say I’m not 100% convinced, but I am intrigued enough to wander down the path. I think I will consider such a paradigm in this post and then, beyond that, I will start trying to be aware of the proposition as I’m reading and studying through the entire Bible, to see if I think in fact that position is defensible.

Faith, hope, and love.

Another interesting (to me) observation is that the Greek structure at this point is odd. It is literally, “…remembering of you the work of the faith and the labor of the love and the endurance of the hope …” The article “the” is used six times. If anything, Greek tends to drop the article where we, in English, would want to add it. Instead, in English, here in I Thess 1:3,we drop them all – just the opposite of what one usually sees. I wonder why they are multiplied in the Greek? I want to say Paul is making some kind of point, but frankly I don’t know what it is. I don’t remember ever seeing this construction before. Guess I’ll just have to note it and then hope I stumble across something that explains it. None of the commentators I read offered any technical suggestions in this regard.

I also think it interesting to note that the three concepts, faith, hope, and love, are abstract nouns. It is somewhat difficult to define them. One has to do lots of explaining just to pin down exactly what we mean by each of the words “faith, hope, and love.” But Paul turns them very practical by referring not to the concepts themselves, but to their evidences. He remembers their “work of faith, and labor of love, and endurance of hope …”

Real faith works. James, of course, drives this point hard. You cannot truly “believe” something and not have it change who you are and what you do. And that change doesn’t necessarily occur because you’ve decided to change. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God – and when you have seen and understood Biblical truth, it changes how you see the world. It changes what you value. It changes your paradigm of life and reality and, even if it is in some small way, still it will change who you are and what you do.  John Eadie noted, “No principle of action is so powerful as genuine faith …” Real faith works.

Interestingly, Paul notes of the Thessalonians their labor of love. Faith works. Love labors. The word translated “labor” means wearisome work. It refers to a work that goes on to exhaustion. Like faith, love works, but love takes the work of faith and carries it on even to death. Jesus is of course the ultimate example, “Having loved His own, He loved them to the end.” He not only came to “do the work of His Father” but it was love that drove Him all the way to the Cross. I would suggest the clearest and most common human example of this is a mother. It is a lot of work to carry and bear and care for children. It’s a lot of work to change all the diapers and prepare the bottles and make the meals and sew the clothes. But a mother isn’t doing it “dutifully.” It is love that drives her heart. It is love that keeps her doing it when she only gets three hours of sleep a night and when she herself is sick. It is love that makes her not just work but toil to exhaustion for her babies. Like Jacob, even seven years of hard labor mean nothing when love drives us: “So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.”

And so it is in hearts captured by real faith. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave His life for me.” Faith changes how we think. Love lives out what we value. And what real Christianity causes us to value is God and others, to love God and others. Someone wrote, “The labor of love is kindness.” Paul could see clearly that the Thessalonians have truly been captured by Christ because he saw in them “the labor of love.”

I’d like to inject here that it might be worthwhile to consider the opposite of love. What is it? Our most natural response, I think, would be to say it is hate. And that certainly is true, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be more immediately practical to think that the opposite of love is fear. “There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear.” As long as Peter was looking at Jesus, he could walk on water. But what went wrong? He saw the wind and the waves and feared and down he went. As long as his eyes and his heart were filled with Jesus he could do amazing things. But, in that moment, fear conquered his love. I would suggest, if we would love well, we must pray and guard constantly against fear. To be born again is to carry in our very souls the love of Jesus. That love will express itself – unless we give way to fear and let it stop the flow of grace from our hearts. Love labors.

But there is one more grace which must prevail in our hearts: hope. It is hope that gives us endurance. For the Christian, it is particularly the “hope of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as Paul includes here. Faith works and love will even toil to exhaustion, but in this world we face many, many discouragements. Faith sometimes has to work with no apparent success. We all know what it is to pray and strive, only to wonder if it will ever do any good. We all know that love is to a large extent unrequited. In this world, we stick out our heart in love, and all too often those we would love simply step on it. Why should we go on? What keeps us believing and loving in spite of the disappointments? Hope. Hope endures. We Christians have the ultimate hope because we believe we will beyond this life see Jesus, that He sees our work of faith and our labor of love, and that He will say to us, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Every moment of our lives matter because of Him. “Even a cup of cold water” matters to Him. All day every day, I can work and love and keep on working and loving – in spite of the discouragements – because I know it matters to Him. Hope endures.

And, of course, we should also note from the verse it is all “before God and our Father.” For real believers, all the work and love and endurance is not a put-on. It isn’t done for some kind of “show.” It’s all for real, it’s all genuine, it’s all sincere because we do it “before God and our Father.” We “practice the presence of God.” The Thessalonians had “turned to God from idols” and immediately Paul (and all the world – v.8!) could see it was real because he saw in them “the work of faith, and labor of love, and the endurance of hope.” He could see those three graces blossoming in these people’s lives and he knew Jesus had captured their hearts.