"We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in
our prayers; remembering without ceasing your work of faith and
labour of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before
our God and Father; knowing, brethren beloved of God, your
election."--1 THESS. i. 2-4. (R.V.).
The salutation in St. Paul's epistles is regularly followed by the
thanksgiving. Once only, in the Epistle to the Galatians, is it
omitted; the amazement and indignation with which the Apostle has
heard that his converts are forsaking his gospel for another which is
not a gospel at all, carries him out of himself for a moment. But in
his earliest letter it stands in its proper place; before he thinks of
congratulating, teaching, exhorting, admonishing, he gives God thanks
for the tokens of His grace in the Thessalonians. He would not be
writing to these people at all if they were not Christians; they would
never have been Christians but for the free goodness of God; and
before he says one word directly to them, he acknowledges that
goodness with a grateful heart.
In this case the thanksgiving is particularly fervent. It has no
drawback. There is no profane person at Thessalonica, like him who
defiled the church at Corinth at a later period; we give thanks, says
the Apostle, for you all. It is, as far as the nature of the case
permits, uninterrupted. As often as Paul prays, he makes mention of
them and gives thanks; he remembers without ceasing their new-born
graces. We ought not to extenuate the force of such words, as if they
were mere exaggerations, the idle extravagances of a man who
habitually said more than he meant. Paul's life was concentrated and
intense, to a degree of which we have probably little conception. He
lived for Christ, and for the churches of Christ; it was literal
truth, not extravagance, when he said, "This one thing I do": the life
of these churches, their interests, their necessities, their dangers,
God's goodness to them, his own duty to serve them, all these
constituted together the one dear concernment of his life; they were
ever with him in God's sight, and therefore in his intercessions and
thanksgivings to God. Other men's minds might surge with various
interests; new ambitions or affections might displace old ones;
fickleness or disappointments might change their whole career; but it
was not so with him. His thoughts and affections never changed their
object, for the same conditions appealed constantly to the same
susceptibility; if he grieved over the unbelief of the Jews, he had
unceasing (ἀδιάλειπτον) pain in his heart; if he gave thanks for the
Thessalonians, he remembered without ceasing (ἀδιαλείπτως) the
graces with which they had been adorned by God.
Nor were these continual thanksgivings vague or formal; the Apostle
recalls, in each particular case, the special manifestations of
Christian character which inspire his gratitude. Sometimes, as in 1st
Corinthians, they are less spiritual--gifts, rather than graces;
utterance and knowledge, without charity; sometimes, as here, they are
eminently spiritual--faith, love, and hope. The conjunction of these
three in the earliest of Paul's letters is worthy of remark. They
occur again in the well-known passage in 1 Cor. xiii., where, though
they share in the distinction of being eternal, and not, like
knowledge and eloquence, transitory in their nature, love is exalted
to an eminence above the other two. They occur a third time in one of
the later epistles--that to the Colossians--and in the same order as
here. That, says Lightfoot on the passage, is the natural order.
"Faith rests on the past; love works in the present; hope looks to the
future." Whether this distribution of the graces is accurate or not,
it suggests the truth that they cover and fill up the whole Christian
life. They are the sum and substance of it, whether it looks back, or
looks round, or looks forward. The germ of all perfection is implanted
in the soul which is the dwelling-place of "these three."
Though none of them can really exist, in its Christian quality,
without the others, any of them may preponderate at a given time. It
is not quite fanciful to point out that each in its turn seems to
have bulked most largely in the experience of the Apostle himself. His
earliest epistles--the two to the Thessalonians--are pre-eminently
epistles of hope. They look to the future; the doctrinal interest
uppermost in them is that of the second coming of the Lord, and the
final rest of the Church. The epistles of the next period--Romans,
Corinthians, and Galatians--are as distinctly epistles of faith. They
deal largely with faith as the power which unites the soul to God in
Christ, and brings into it the virtue of the atoning death and
resurrection of Jesus. Later still, there are the epistles of which
Colossians and Ephesians are the type. The great thought in these is
that of the unity wrought by love; Christ is the head of the Church;
the Church is the body of Christ; the building up of the body in love,
by the mutual help of the members, and their common dependence on the
Head, preoccupies the apostolic writer. All this may have been more or
less accidental, due to circumstances which had nothing to do with the
spiritual life of Paul; but it has the look of being natural too. Hope
prevails first--the new world of things unseen and eternal outweighs
the old; it is the stage at which religion is least free from the
influence of sense and imagination. Then comes the reign of faith; the
inward gains upon the outward; the mystical union of the soul to
Christ, in which His spiritual life is appropriated, is more or less
sufficient to itself; it is the stage, if it be a stage at all, at
which religion becomes independent of imagination and sense. Finally,
love reigns. The solidarity of all Christian interests is strongly
felt; the life flows out again, in all manner of Christian service, on
those by whom it is surrounded; the Christian moves and has his being
in the body of which he is a member. All this, I repeat, can be only
comparatively true; but the character and sequence of the Apostle's
writings speak for its truth so far.
But it is not simply faith, love, and hope that are in question here:
"we remember," says the Apostle, "your _work_ of faith and
_labour_ of love and _patience_ of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."
We call faith, love, and hope the Christian graces; and we are apt to
forget that the associations of heathen mythology, thus introduced,
are disturbing rather than enlightening. The three Graces of the
Greeks are ideally beautiful figures; but their beauty is æsthetic,
not spiritual. They are lovely as a group of statuary is lovely; but
though "by (their) gift come unto men all pleasant things and sweet,
and the wisdom of a man and his beauty, and the splendour of his
fame," their nature is utterly unlike that of the three powers of the
Christian character; no one would dream of ascribing to them work, and
labour and patience. Yet the mere fact that "Graces" has been used as
a common name for both has diffused the idea that the Christian
graces also are to be viewed mainly as the adornments of character,
its unsought, unstudied beauties, set on it by God to subdue and charm
the world. That is quite wrong; the _Greek_ Graces are essentially
beauties; they confer on men all that wins admiration--personal
comeliness, victory in the games, a happy mood; but the _Christian_
graces are essentially powers; they are new virtues and forces which
God has implanted in the soul that it may be able to do His work in
the world. The heathen Graces are lovely to look at, and that is all;
but the Christian graces are not subjects for æsthetic contemplation;
they are here to work, to toil, to endure. If they have a beauty of
their own--and surely they have--it is a beauty not in form or colour,
not appealing to the eye or the imagination, but only to the spirit
which has seen and loved Christ, and loves His likeness in whatever
guise.
Let us look at the Apostle's words more closely: he speaks of a work
of faith; to take it exactly, of something which faith has done. Faith
is a conviction with regard to things unseen, that makes them present
and real. Faith in God as revealed in Christ, and in His death for
sin, makes reconciliation real; it gives the believer peace with God.
But it is not shut up in the realm of things inward and unseen. If it
were, a man might say what he pleased about it, and there would be no
check upon his words. Wherever it exists, it works; he who is interested
can see what it has done. Apparently the Apostle has some particular
work of faith in his mind in this passage; some thing which the
Thessalonians had actually done, because they believed but what it is
we cannot tell. Certainly not faith itself; certainly not love, as
some think, referring to Gal. v. 6; if a conjecture may be hazarded,
possibly some act of courage or fidelity under persecution, similar to
those adduced in Heb. xi. That famous chapter contains a catalogue of
the works which faith wrought; and serves as a commentary, therefore,
on this expression. Surely we ought to notice that the great Apostle,
whose name has been the strength and shield of all who preach
justification by faith alone, the very first time he mentions this
grace in his epistles, mentions it as a power which leaves its witness
in work.
It is so, also, with love: "we remember," he writes, "your labour of
love." The difference between ἔργον (work) and κόπος (labour) is
that between effect and effort. The Apostle recalls something which
the faith of the Thessalonians did; he recalls also the wearisome toil
in which their love spent itself. Love is not so capable of abuse in
religion, or, at least, it has not been so rankly abused, as faith.
Men are much more apt to demand the proof of it. It has an inward side
as much as faith, but it is not an emotion which exhausts itself in
its own transports. Merely as emotion, indeed, it is apt to be
undervalued. In the Church of to-day emotion needs rather to be
stimulated than repressed. The passion of the New Testament startles
us when we chance to feel it. For one man among us who is using up the
powers of his soul in barren ecstasies, there are thousands who have
never been moved by Christ's love to a single tear or a single heart
throb. They must learn to love before they can labour. They must be
kindled by that fire which burned in Christ's heart, and which He came
to cast upon the earth, before they can do anything in His service.
But if the love of Christ has really met that answer in love for which
it waits, the time for service has come. Love in the Christian will
attest itself as it attested itself in Christ. It will prescribe and
point out the path of labour. The word employed in this passage is one
often used by the Apostle to describe his own laborious life. Love set
him, and will set every one in whose heart it truly burns, upon
incessant, unwearied efforts for others' good. Paul was ready to spend
and be spent at its bidding, however small the result might be. He
toiled with his hands, he toiled with his brain, he toiled with his
ardent, eager, passionate heart, he toiled in his continual
intercessions with God, and all these toils made up his _labour_ of
love. "A labour of love," in current language, is a piece of work
done so willingly that no payment is expected for it. But a labour of
love is not what the Apostle is speaking of; it is _laboriousness_, as
love's characteristic. Let Christian men and women ask themselves
whether their love can be so characterised. We have all been tired in
our time, one may presume; we have toiled in business, or in some
ambitious course, or in the perfecting of some accomplishment, or even
in the mastery of some game or the pursuit of some amusement, till we
were utterly wearied: how many of us have so toiled in love? How many
of us have been wearied and worn with some labour to which we set
ourselves for God's sake? This is what the Apostle has in view in this
passage; and, strange as it may appear, it is one of the things for
which he gives God thanks. But is he not right? Is it not a thing to
evoke gratitude and joy, that God counts us worthy to be
fellow-labourers with Him in the manifold works which love imposes?
The church at Thessalonica was not old; its first members could only
count their Christian age by months. Yet love is so native to the
Christian life, that they found at once a career for it; demands were
made upon their sympathy and their strength which were met at once,
though never suspected before. "What are we to do," we sometimes ask,
"if we would work the works of God?" If we have love enough in our
hearts, it will answer all its own questions. It is the fulfilling of
the law just because it shows us plainly where service is needed, and
puts us upon rendering it at any cost of pain or toil. It is not too
much to say that the very word chosen by the Apostle to characterise
love--this word κόπος--is peculiarly appropriate, because it brings
out, not the issue, but only the cost, of work. With the result
desired, or without it; with faint hope, or with hope most sure, love
labours, toils, spends and is spent over its task: this is the very
seal of its genuine Christian character.
The third grace remains: "your patience of hope in our Lord Jesus
Christ." The second coming of Christ was an element in apostolic
teaching which, whether exceptionally prominent or not, had made an
exceptional impression at Thessalonica. It will more naturally be
studied at another place; here it is sufficient to say that it was the
great object of Christian hope. Christians not only believed Christ
would come again; they not only expected Him to come; they were eager
for His coming. "How long, O Lord?" they cried in their distress.
"Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly," was their prayer.
It is matter of notoriety that hope in this sense does not hold its
ancient place in the heart of the Church. It holds a much lower place.
Christian men hope for this or that; they hope that threatening
symptoms in the Church or in society may pass away, and better things
appear; they hope that when the worst comes to the worst, it will not
be so bad as the pessimists anticipate. Such impotent and ineffective
hope is of no kindred to the hope of the gospel. So far from being a
power of God in the soul, a victorious grace, it is a sure token that
God is absent. Instead of inspiring, it discourages; it leads to
numberless self-deceptions; men _hope_ their lives are right with God,
when they ought to search them and see; they _hope_ things will turn
out well, when they ought to be taking security of them. All this,
where our relations to God are concerned, is a degradation of the very
word. The Christian hope is laid up in heaven. The object of it is the
Lord Jesus Christ. It is not precarious, but certain; it is not
ineffective, but a great and energetic power. Anything else is not
hope at all.
The operation of the true hope is manifold. It is a sanctifying grace,
as appears from 1 John iii. 3: "Every one that hath this hope set on
Him, purifieth himself, even as He is pure." But here the Apostle
characterises it by its patience. The two virtues are so inseparable
that Paul sometimes uses them as equivalent; twice in the Epistles to
Timothy and Titus, he says faith, love, and patience, instead of
faith, love, and hope. But what is patience? The word is one of the
great words of the New Testament. The corresponding verb is usually
rendered endurance, as in Christ's saying, "He that endureth to the
end, the same shall be saved." Patience is more than resignation or
meek submission; it is hope in the shade, but hope nevertheless; the
brave steadfastness which bears up under all burdens because the Lord
is at hand. The Thessalonians had much affliction in their early days
as Christians; they were tried, too, as we all are, by inward
discouragements--that persistence and vitality of sin that break the
spirit and beget despair; but they saw close at hand the glory of the
Lord; and in the patience of hope they held out, and fought the good
fight to the last. It is truly significant that in the Pastoral
Epistles patience has taken the place of hope in the trinity of
graces. It is as if Paul had discovered, by prolonged experience, that
it was in the form of patience that hope was to be mainly effective in
the Christian life. The Thessalonians, some of them, were abusing the
great hope; it was working mischief in their lives, because it was
misapplied; in this single word Paul hints at the truth which abundant
experience had taught him, that all the energy of hope must be
transformed into brave patience if we would stand in our place at the
last. Remembering their work of faith, and labour of love, and
patience of hope, in the presence of our God and Father, the Apostle
gives thanks to God always for them all. Happy is the man whose joys
are such that he can gratefully dwell on them in that presence: happy
are those also who give others cause to thank God on their behalf.
The ground of the thanksgiving is finally comprehended in one short
and striking phrase: "Knowing, brethren beloved of God, your
election." The doctrine of election has often been taught as if the
one thing that could never be known about anybody was whether he was
or was not elect. The assumed impossibility does not square with New
Testament ways of speaking. Paul knew the elect, he says here; at
least he knew the Thessalonians were elect. In the same way he writes
to the Ephesians: "God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the
world; ... in love He foreordained us to adoption as sons." Chose whom
before the foundation of the world? Foreordained whom? Himself, and
those whom he addressed. If the Church has learned the doctrine of
election from anybody, it has been from Paul; but to him it had a
basis in experience, and apparently he felt differently about it from
many theologians. He knew when the people he spoke to were elect; how,
he tells in what follows.