As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
7so that you [pl.] became an
example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia, 8for the Word
of the Lord has been sounded out from you not only in Macedonia and in Achaia
but also in every place [where] your faith which [is] toward God has gone out,
so that we have no need to say anything.
Verse 8 particularly suggests something I think worth
noting. I have long contended that we do not emphasize enough how important are
the lives Christians live. I fear in American Christianity we emphasize
evangelism and “church ministry” to the extent we leave people thinking their
daily lives are unimportant. I fear this robs the church of one of its greatest
powers of influence. We read how “the Word
of the Lord has been sounded out from you ...” but I believe Paul is
speaking more of how the Thessalonians lived than what they said.
Several of the older commentators noted the same thought, so
I am recording their thoughts:
“[The Word
of the Lord] must be sounded by living men. A written gospel is not
enough. Soul must stir soul ... It must be sounded in the conduct of
Christians. It would seem that St. Paul was thinking rather of the
influence of the heroic endurance of the Thessalonians and of their spiritual
prosperity than of the missionary labors of evangelists sent out by them, for
he writes of how they became an ensample to all that believe in Macedonia and
in Achaia, and how in every place their faith to God-ward was gone forth. The
loudest, clearest, most eloquent, most unanswerable proclamation of the gospel
is the unconscious testimony of Christian living” (W.F. Adeney).
“No man or woman of the
humblest sort can be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being
the better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very
existence of that goodness” (Phillips Brooks).
“We can do more good by being good
than in any other way” (Rowland Hill).
“Then, still further, take another
thought that may be suggested from this metaphor, the silence of the loudest
note. If you look at the context, you will see that all the ways in which the
Word of the Lord is represented as sounding out from the Thessalonian Church
were deeds, not words. The context supplies a number of them. Such as the
following are specified in it: their work; their toil, which is more than work;
their patience; their assurance; their reception of the Word, in much
affliction with joy in the Holy Ghost; their faith to Godward; their turning to
God from idols, to serve and to wait. That is all. So far as the context goes
there might not have been a man amongst them that ever opened His mouth for Jesus
Christ. We know not, of course, how far they were a congregation of silent
witnesses, but this we know, that what Paul meant when he said, ‘The whole
world is ringing with the voice of the Word of God sounding from you,’ was not
their going up and down the world shouting about their Christianity, but their
quiet living like Jesus Christ. That is a louder voice than any other. I do not
mean to say that Christian men and women are at liberty to lock their lips from
verbal proclamation of the Saviour they have found, but I do mean to say that
if there was less talk and more living the witness of God’s Church would be
louder and not lower; ‘and men would take knowledge of us, that we had been
with Jesus’; and of Jesus, that He had made us like Himself” (Alexander Maclaren).
I think all of these quotes are worth serious consideration.
They may seem to run contrary to the typical emphases in American churches, but
the goal of our Bible study is not to find support for our traditions. The goal
is to determine what God says and what He does not. In that light, again, I
think the quoted authors are right, that this passage would teach us it is the
lives of living Christians which sound out powerfully to the world, perhaps
more than the words they may say. I believe if this could ever be taught, God’s
people are a living testimony that could once again conquer kingdoms and we
could see faith advance in our world as it has done in ages past.
May the lives of God’s people once again “adorn the doctrine
of God our Savior in all things.”
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