"Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came
to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: and Paul, as his
custom was, went in unto them, and for three sabbath days reasoned
with them from the scriptures, opening and alleging, that it behoved
the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead; and that this
Jesus, whom, _said he_, I proclaim unto you, is the Christ. And
some of them were persuaded, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and
of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a
few. But the Jews, being moved with jealousy, took unto them certain
vile fellows of the rabble, and gathering a crowd, set the city on an
uproar; and assaulting the house of Jason, they sought to bring them
forth to the people. And when they found them not, they dragged Jason
and certain brethren before the rulers of the city, crying, These
that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom
Jason hath received: and these all act contrary to the decrees of
Cæsar, saying that there is another king, _one_ Jesus. And they
troubled the multitude and the rulers of the city, when they heard
these things. And when they had taken security from Jason and the
rest, they let them go."--ACTS xvii. 1-9 (R.V.).
"Paul, and Silvanus, and Timothy, unto the church of the
Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to
you and peace."--1 THESS. i. 1 (R.V.).
Thessalonica, now called Saloniki, was in the first century of our era
a large and flourishing city. It was situated at the north-eastern
corner of the Thermaic gulf, on the line of the great Egnatian road,
which formed the main connection by land between Italy and the East.
It was an important commercial centre, with a mixed population of
Greeks, Romans, and Jews. The Jews, who at the present day amount to
some twenty thousand, were numerous enough to have a synagogue of
their own; and we can infer from the Book of Acts (xvii. 4) that it
was frequented by many of the better spirits among the Gentiles also.
Unconsciously, and as the event too often proved, unwillingly, the
Dispersion was preparing the way of the Lord.
To this city the Apostle Paul came, attended by Silas and Timothy, in
the course of his second missionary journey. He had just left
Philippi, dearest to his heart of all his churches; for there, more
than anywhere else, the sufferings of Christ had abounded in him, and
his consolations also had been abundant in Christ. He came to
Thessalonica with the marks of the lictors' rods upon his body; but to
him they were the marks of Jesus; not warnings to change his path, but
tokens that the Lord was taking him into fellowship with Himself, and
binding him more strictly to His service. He came with the memory of
his converts' kindness warm upon his heart; conscious that, amid
whatever disappointments, a welcome awaited the gospel, which admitted
its messenger into the joy of his Lord. We need not wonder, then, that
the Apostle kept to his custom, and in spite of the malignity of the
Jews, made his way, when Sabbath came, to the synagogue of
Thessalonica.
His evangelistic ministry is very briefly described by St. Luke. For
three Sabbath days he addressed himself to his fellow-countrymen. He
took the Scriptures into his hand, that is, of course, the Old
Testament Scriptures,--and opening the mysterious casket, as the
picturesque words in Acts describe his method, he brought out and set
before his auditors, as its inmost and essential secret, the wonderful
idea that the Christ whom they all expected, the Messiah of God, must
die and rise again from the dead. That was not what ordinary Jewish
readers found in the law, the prophets, or the psalms; but, once
persuaded that this interpretation was true, it was not difficult to
believe that the Jesus whom Paul preached was the Christ for whom they
all hoped. Luke tells us that some were persuaded; but they cannot
have been many: his account agrees with the representation of the
Epistle (i. 9) that the church at Thessalonica was mainly Gentile. Of
the "chief women not a few," who were among the first converts, we
know nothing; the exhortations in both Epistles make it plain that
what Paul left at Thessalonica was what we should call a working-class
congregation. The jealousy of the Jews, who resorted to the device
which had already proved successful at Philippi, compelled Paul and
his friends to leave the city prematurely. The mission, indeed, had
probably lasted longer than most readers infer from Acts xvii. Paul
had had time to make his character and conduct impressive to the
church, and to deal with each one of them as a father with his own
children (ii. 11); he had wrought night and day with his own hands for
a livelihood (2 Thess. iii. 8); he had twice received help from the
Philippians (Phil. iv. 15, 16). But although this implies a stay of
some duration, much remained to be done; and the natural anxiety of
the Apostle, as he thought of his inexperienced disciples, was
intensified by the reflection that he had left them exposed to the
malignity of his and their enemies. What means that malignity
employed--what violence and what calumny--the Epistle itself enables
us to see; meantime, it is sufficient to say that the pressure of
these things upon the Apostle's spirit was the occasion of his writing
this letter. He had tried in vain to get back to Thessalonica; he had
condemned himself to solitude in a strange city that he might send
Timothy to them; he must hear whether they stand fast in their
Christian calling. On his return from this mission Timothy joined Paul
in Corinth with a report, cheering on the whole, yet not without its
graver side, concerning the Thessalonian believers; and the first
Epistle is the apostolic message in these circumstances. It is, in all
probability, the earliest of the New Testament writings; it is
certainly the earliest extant of Paul's: if we except the decree in
Acts xv., it is the earliest piece of Christian writing in
existence.[1]
The names mentioned in the address are all well known--Paul, Silvanus,
and Timothy. The three are united in the greeting, and are sometimes,
apparently, included in the "we" or "us" of the Epistle; but they are
not joint authors of it. It is the Epistle of Paul, who includes them
in the salutation out of courtesy, as in the First to the Corinthians
he includes Sosthenes, and in Galatians "all the brethren that are
with me"; a courtesy the more binding on this occasion that Silas and
Timothy had shared with him his missionary work in Thessalonica. In
First and Second Thessalonians only, of all his letters, the Apostle
adds nothing to his name to indicate the character in which he writes;
he neither calls himself an apostle, nor a servant of Jesus Christ.
The Thessalonians knew him simply for what he was; his apostolic
dignity was yet unassailed by false brethren; the simple name was
enough. Silas comes before Timothy as an older man, and a
fellow-labourer of longer standing. In the Book of Acts he is
described as a prophet, and as one of the chief men among the
brethren; he had been associated with Paul all through this journey;
and though we know very little of him, the fact that he was chosen one
of the bearers of the apostolic decree, and that he afterwards
attached himself to Paul, justifies the inference that he heartily
sympathised with the evangelising of the heathen. Timothy was
apparently one of Paul's own converts. Carefully instructed in
childhood by a pious mother and grandmother, he had been won to the
faith of Christ during the first tour of the Apostle in Asia Minor. He
was naturally timid, but kept the faith in spite of the persecutions
which then awaited it; and when Paul returned, he found that the
steadfastness and other graces of his spiritual son had won an
honourable name in the local churches. He determined to take him with
him, apparently in the character of an evangelist; but before he was
ordained by the presbyters, Paul circumcised him, remembering his
Jewish descent on the mother's side, and desirous of facilitating his
access to the synagogue, in which the work of gospel preaching usually
began. Of all the Apostle's assistants he was the most faithful and
affectionate. He had the true pastoral spirit, devoid of selfishness,
and caring naturally and unfeignedly for the souls of men (Phil. ii.
20 f.). Such were the three who sent their Christian greetings in this
Epistle.
The greetings are addressed "to the church of (the) Thessalonians in
God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." No such address had ever
been written or read before, for the community to which it was
directed was a new thing in the world. The word translated "church"
was certainly familiar enough to all who knew Greek: it was the name
given to the citizens of a Greek town assembled for public business;
it is the name given in the Greek Bible either to the children of
Israel as the congregation of Jehovah, or to any gathering of them for
a special purpose; but here it obtains a new significance. The church
of the Thessalonians is a church in God the Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is the common relation of its members to God the Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ which constitutes them a church in the sense
of the Apostle: in contradistinction from all other associations or
societies, they form a Christian community. The Jews who met from
Sabbath to Sabbath in the synagogue were a church; they were one in
the acknowledgment of the Living God, and in their observance of His
law; God, as revealed in the Old Testament and in the polity of
Israel, was the element or atmosphere of their spiritual life. The
citizens of Thessalonica, who met in the theatre to discuss their
political interests, were a "church"; they were one in recognising the
same constitution and the same ends of civic life; it was in that
constitution, in the pursuit of those ends, that they found the
atmosphere in which they lived. Paul in this Epistle greets a
community distinct from either of these. It is not civic, but
religious; though religious, it is neither pagan nor Jewish; it is an
original creation, new in its bond of union, in the law by which it
lives, in the objects at which it aims; a church in God the Father and
in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This newness and originality of Christianity could not fail to impress
those who first received it. The gospel made an immeasurable
difference to them, a difference almost equally great whether they had
been Jews or heathen before; and they were intensely conscious of the
gulf which separated their new life from the old. In another epistle
Paul describes the condition of Gentiles not yet evangelised. Once, he
says, you were apart from Christ, without God, in the world. The
world--the great system of things and interests separated from
God--was the sphere and element of their life. The gospel found them
there, and translated them. When they received it, they ceased to be
in the world; they were no longer apart from Christ, and without God:
they were in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing
could be more revolutionary in those days than to become a Christian:
old things passed away; all things became new; all things were
determined by the new relation to God and His Son. The difference
between the Christian and the non-Christian was as unmistakable and as
clear to the Christian mind as the difference between the shipwrecked
sailor who has reached the shore and him who is still fighting a
hopeless fight with wind and waves. In a country which has long been
Christian, that difference tends, to sense at least, and to
imagination, to disappear. We are not vividly impressed with the
distinction between those who claim to be Christians and those who do
not; we do not see a radical unlikeness, and we are sometimes disposed
to deny it. We may even feel that we are bound to deny it, were it
only in justice to God. He has made all men for Himself; He is the
Father of all; He is near to all, even when they are blind to Him; the
pressure of His hand is felt and in a measure responded to by all,
even when they do not recognise it; to say that any one is ἄθεος,
or χωρὶς Χριστοῦ, or that he is _not_ in God the Father and in the
Lord Jesus Christ, seems really to deny both God and man.
Yet what is at issue here is really a question of fact; and among
those who have been in contact with the facts, among those, above all,
who have had experience of the critical fact--who once were not
Christians and now are--there will not be two opinions about it. The
difference between the Christian and the non-Christian, though
historical accidents have made it less visible, or rather, less
conspicuous than it once was, is still as real and as vast as ever.
The higher nature of man, intellectual and spiritual, must always have
an element in which it lives, an atmosphere surrounding it, principles
to guide it, ends to stimulate its action; and it may find all these
in either of two places. It may find them in the world--that is, in
that sphere of things from which God, so far as man's will and intent
goes, is excluded; or it may find them in God Himself and in His Son.
It is no objection to this division to say that God cannot be excluded
from His own world, that He is always at work there whether
acknowledged or not; for the acknowledgment is the essential point;
without it, though God is near to man, man is still far from God.
Nothing could be a more hopeless symptom in character than the
benevolent neutrality which evades this truth; it takes away every
motive to evangelise the non-Christian, or to work out the originality
and distinctiveness of the Christian life itself. Now, as in the
apostolic age, there are persons who are Christians and persons who
are not; and, however alike their lives may be on the surface, they
are radically apart. Their centre is different; the element in which
they move is different; the nutriment of thought, the fountain of
motives, the standard of purity are different; they are related to
each other as life in God, and life without God; life in Christ, and
life apart from Christ; and in proportion to their sincerity is their
mutual antagonism.
In Thessalonica the Christian life was original enough to have formed
a new society. In those days, and in the Roman Empire, there was not
much room for the social instincts to expand. Unions of all kinds were
suspected by the governments, and discouraged, as probable centres of
political disaffection. Local self-government ceased to be interesting
when all important interests were withdrawn from its control; and even
had it been otherwise, there was no part in it possible for that great
mass of population from which the Church was so largely recruited,
namely, the slaves. Any power that could bring men together, that
could touch them deeply, and give them a common interest that engaged
their hearts and bound them to each other, met the greatest want of
the time, and was sure of a welcome. Such a power was the gospel
preached by Paul. It formed little communities of men and women
wherever it was proclaimed; communities in which there was no law but
that of love, in which heart opened to heart as nowhere else in all
the world, in which there was fervour and hope and freedom and
brotherly kindness, and all that makes life good and dear. We feel
this very strongly in reading the New Testament, and it is one of the
points on which, unhappily, we have drifted away from the primitive
model. The Christian congregation is not now, in point of fact, the
type of a sociable community. Too often it is oppressed with
constraint and formality. Take any particular member of any particular
congregation; and his social circle, the company of friends in which
he expands most freely and happily, will possibly have no connection
with those he sits beside in the church. The power of the faith to
bring men into real unity with each other is not lessened; we see this
wherever the gospel breaks ground in a heathen country, or wherever
the frigidity of the church drives two or three fervent souls to form
a secret society of their own, but the temperature of faith itself is
lowered; we are not really living, with any intensity of life, in God
the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. If we were, we would be drawn
closer to each other; our hearts would touch and overflow; the place
where we meet in the name of Jesus would be the most radiant and
sociable place we know.
Nothing could better illustrate the reality of that new character
which Christianity confers than the fact that men can be addressed as
Christians. Nothing, either, could better illustrate the confusion of
mind that exists in this matter, or the insincerity of much
profession, than the fact that so many members of churches would
hesitate before taking the liberty so to address a brother. We have
all written letters, and on all sorts of occasions; we have addressed
men as lawyers, or doctors, or men of business; we have sent or
accepted invitations to gatherings where nothing would have astonished
us more than the unaffected naming of the name of God; did we ever
write to anybody because he was a Christian, and because we were
Christians? Of all the relations in which we stand to others, is that
which is established by "our common Christianity," by our common life
in Jesus Christ, the only one which is so crazy and precarious that it
can never be really used for anything? Here we see the Apostle look
back from Corinth to Thessalonica, and his one interest in the poor
people whom he remembers so affectionately is that they are
Christians. The one thing in which he wishes to help them is their
Christian life. He does not care much whether they are well or ill off
in respect of this world's goods; but he is anxious to supply what is
lacking in their faith (iii. 10). How real a thing the Christian life
was to him! what a substantial interest, whether in himself or in
others, engrossing all his thought, absorbing all his love and
devotion. To many of us it is the one topic for silence; to him it was
the one theme of thought and speech. He wrote about it, as he spoke
about it, as though there were no other interest for man; and letters
like those of Thomas Erskine show that still, out of the abundance of
the heart, the mouth speaketh. The full soul overflows, unaffected,
unforced; Christian fellowship, as soon as Christian life is real, is
restored to its true place.
Paul, Silas, and Timothy wish the church of the Thessalonians grace
and peace. This is the greeting in all the Apostle's letters; it is
not varied except by the addition of "mercy" in the Epistles to
Timothy and Titus. In form it seems to combine the salutations current
among the Greeks and the Jews (χαίρειν and שָׁלוֹם), but in import
it has all the originality of the Christian faith. In the second
Epistle it runs, "Grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ." Grace is the love of God, spontaneous, beautiful,
unearned, at work in Jesus Christ for the salvation of sinful men;
peace is the effect and fruit in man of the reception of grace. It is
easy to narrow unduly the significance of peace; those expositors do
so who suppose in this passage a reference to the persecution which
the Thessalonian Christians had to bear, and understand the Apostle to
wish them deliverance from it. The Apostle has something far more
comprehensive in his mind. The peace, which Christ is; the peace with
God which we have when we are reconciled to Him by the death of His
Son; the soul-health which comes when grace makes our hearts to their
very depths right with God, and frightens away care and fear; this
"perfect soundness" spiritually is all summed up in the word. It
carries in it the fulness of the blessing of Christ. The order of the
words is significant; there is no peace without grace; and there is no
grace apart from fellowship with God in Christ. The history of the
Church has been written by some who practically put Paul in Christ's
place; and by others who imagine that the doctrine of the person of
Christ only attained by slow degrees, and in the post-apostolic age,
its traditional importance; but here, in the oldest extant monument of
the Christian faith, and in the very first line of it, the Church is
defined as existing in the Lord Jesus Christ; and in that single
expression, in which the Son stands side by side with the Father, as
the life of all believing souls, we have the final refutation of such
perverse thoughts. By the grace of God, incarnate in Jesus Christ, the
Christian is what he is; he lives and moves and has his being there;
apart from Christ, he is not. Here, then, is our hope. Conscious of
our own sins, and of the shortcomings of the Christian community of
which we are members, let us have recourse to Him whose grace is
sufficient for us. Let us abide in Christ, and in all things grow up
into Him. God alone is good; Christ alone is the Pattern and the
Inspiration of the Christian character; only in the Father and the Son
can the new life and the new fellowship come to their perfection.
[1] The date cannot be precisely assigned, but it is not later than 54
A.D., and cannot be so early as 52. Most scholars say 54. It was
written in Corinth.