_ABSENCE AND LONGING._
"But we, brethren, being bereaved of you for a short season, in
presence, not in heart, endeavoured the more exceedingly to see your
face with great desire: because we would fain have come unto you, I
Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us. For what is our hope, or
joy, or crown of glorying? Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at
His coming? For ye are our glory and our joy. Wherefore when we could
not longer forbear, we thought it good to be left behind at Athens
alone; and sent Timothy, our brother and God's minister in the gospel
of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your
faith; that no man be moved by these afflictions; for yourselves know
that hereunto we are appointed. For verily, when we were with you, we
told you beforehand that we are to suffer affliction; even as it came
to pass, and ye know. For this cause I also, when I could no longer
forbear, sent that I might know your faith, lest by any means the
tempter had tempted you, and our labour should be in vain."--1 THESS.
ii. 17-iii. 5 (R.V.).
The Apostle has said all that he means to say of the opposition of the
Jews to the gospel, and in the verses before us turns to his own
relations to the Thessalonians. He had been compelled to leave their
city against his will; they themselves had escorted him by night to
Berœa. He cannot find words strong enough to describe the pain of
separation. It was a bereavement, although he hoped it would only last
for a short time. His heart was with them as truly as if he were still
bodily present in Thessalonica. His strongest desire was to look upon
their faces once more.
Here we ought to notice again the power of the gospel to create new
relations and the corresponding affections. A few months before Paul
had not known a single soul in Thessalonica; if he had been only a
travelling tent-maker, he might have stayed there as long as he did,
and then moved on with as little emotion as troubles a modern gipsy
when he shifts his camp; but coming as a Christian evangelist, he
finds or rather makes brothers, and feels his enforced parting from
them like a bereavement. Months after, his heart is sore for those
whom he has left behind. This is one of the ways in which the gospel
enriches life; hearts that would otherwise be empty and isolated are
brought by it into living contact with a great circle whose nature and
needs are like their own; and capacities, that would otherwise have
been unsuspected, have free course for development. No one knows what
is in him; and, in particular, no one knows of what love, of what
expansion of heart he is capable, till Christ has made real to him
those relations to others by which his duties are determined, and all
his powers of thought and feeling called forth. Only the Christian man
can ever tell what it is to love with all his heart and soul and
strength and mind.
Such an experience as shines through the words of the Apostle in this
passage furnishes the key to one of the best known but least
understood words of our Saviour. "Verily I say unto you," said Jesus
to the twelve, "there is no man that hath left house, or wife, or
brethren, or parents, or children, for the Kingdom of God's sake, who
shall not receive manifold more in this time, and in the world to come
eternal life." These words might almost stand for a description of
Paul. He had given up everything for Christ's sake. He had no home,
no wife, no child; as far as we can see, no brother or friend among
all his old acquaintances. Yet we may be sure that not one of those
who were most richly blessed with all these natural relations and
natural affections knew better than he what love is. No father ever
loved his children more tenderly, fervently, austerely and
unchangeably than Paul loved those whom he had begotten in the gospel.
No father was ever rewarded with affection more genuine, obedience
more loyal, than many of his converts rendered to him. Even in the
trials of love, which search it, and strain it, and bring out its
virtues to perfection--in misunderstandings, ingratitude, wilfulness,
suspicion--he had an experience with blessings of its own in which he
surpassed them all. If love is the true wealth and blessedness of our
life, surely none was richer or more blessed than this man, who had
given up for Christ's sake all those relations and connections through
which love naturally comes. Christ had fulfilled to him the promise
just quoted; He had given him a hundredfold in this life, houses and
brothers and sisters and mothers and children. It would have been
nothing but loss to cling to the natural affections and decline the
lonely apostolic career.
There is something wonderfully vivid in the idea which Paul gives of
his love for the Thessalonians. His mind is full of them; he imagines
all the circumstances of trial and danger in which they may be placed;
if he could only be with them at need! He seems to follow them as a
woman follows with her thoughts the son who has gone alone to a
distant town; she remembers him when he goes out in the morning,
pities him if there are any circumstances of hardship in his work,
pictures him busy in shop or office or street, looks at the clock when
he ought to be home for the day; wonders where he is, and with what
companions, in the evening; and counts the days till she will see him
again. The Christian love of the Apostle, which had no basis at all in
nature, was as real as this; and it is a pattern for all those who try
to serve others in the gospel. The power of the truth, as far as its
ministers are concerned, depends on its being spoken in love; unless
the heart of the preacher or teacher is really pledged to those to
whom he speaks, he cannot expect but to labour in vain.
Paul is anxious that the Thessalonians should understand the strength
of his feeling. It was no passing fancy. On two separate occasions he
had determined to revisit them, and had felt, apparently, some
peculiar malignity in the circumstances which foiled him. "Satan," he
says, "hindered us."
This is one of the expressions which strike us as remote from our
present modes of thought. Yet it is not false or unnatural. It
belongs to that profound biblical view of life, according to which all
the opposing forces in our experience have at bottom a personal
character. We speak of the conflict of good and evil, as if good and
evil were powers with an existence of their own, but the moment we
think of it we see that the only good force in the world is the force
of a good will, and the only bad force the force of a bad will; in
other words, we see that the conflict of good and evil is essentially
a conflict of persons. Good persons are in conflict with bad persons;
and so far as the antagonism comes to a head, Christ, the New
Testament teaches, is in conflict with Satan. These persons are the
centres of force on one side and on the other; and the Apostle
discerns, in incidents of his life which have now been lost to us, the
presence and working now of this, and now of that. An instructive
illustration is really furnished by a passage in Acts which seems at
the first glance of a very different purport. It is in the 16th chap.,
vv. 6-10, in which the historian describes the route of the Apostle
from the East to Europe. "They were _forbidden of the Holy Ghost_ to
speak the word in Asia" ... "they assayed to go into Bithynia; and
_the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not_" ... Paul saw a vision, after
which they "sought to go forth into Macedonia, _concluding that God
had called them_ to preach the gospel unto them." Here, we might
almost say, the three Divine Persons are referred to as the source of
intimations directing and controlling the course of the gospel; yet it
is evident, from the last mentioned, that such intimations might come
in the shape of any event providentially ordered, and that the
interpretation of them depended on those to whom they came. The
obstacles which checked Paul's impulse to preach in Asia and in
Bithynia he recognised to be of Divine appointment; those which
prevented him from returning to Thessalonica were of Satanic origin.
We do not know what they were; perhaps a plot against his life, which
made the journey dangerous; perhaps some sin or scandal that detained
him in Corinth. At all events it was the doing of the enemy, who in
this world, of which Paul does not hesitate to call him the god, has
means enough at his disposal to foil, though he cannot overcome, the
saints.
It is a delicate operation, in many cases, to interpret outward
events, and say what is the source and what the purpose of this or
that. Moral indifference may blind us; but those who are in the thick
of the moral conflict have a swift and sure instinct for what is
against them or on their side; they can tell at once what is Satanic
and what is Divine. As a rule, the two forces will show in their
strength at the same time; "a great door and effectual is opened unto
me, and there are many adversaries:" each is a foil to the other.
What we ought to remark in this connection is the fundamental
character of all moral action. It is not a figure of speech to say
that the world is the scene of incessant spiritual conflict; it is the
literal truth. And spiritual conflict is not simply an interaction of
forces; it is the deliberate antagonism of persons to each other. When
we do what is right, we take Christ's side in a real struggle; when we
do what is wrong, we side with Satan. It is a question of personal
relations; to whose will do I add my own? to whose will do I oppose my
own? And the struggle approaches its close for each of us as our will
is more thoroughly assimilated to that of one or other of the two
leaders. Do not let us dwell in generalities which disguise from us
the seriousness of the issue. There is a place in one of his epistles
in which Paul uses just such abstract terms as we do in speaking of
this matter. "What fellowship," he asks, "have righteousness and
iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness?" But he clinches
the truth by bringing out the personal relations involved, when he
goes on, "And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion
hath a believer with an unbeliever?" These are the real quantities
concerned--all persons: Christ and Belial, believers and unbelievers;
all that happens is at bottom Christian or Satanic; all that we do is
on the side of Christ or on the side of the great enemy of our Lord.
The recollection of the Satanic hindrances to his visit does not
detain the Apostle more than a moment; his heart overflows them to
those whom he describes as his hope and joy and crown of glorying in
the day of the Lord Jesus. The form of words[10] implies that these
titles are not the property of the Thessalonians only; yet at the same
time, that if they belong to anybody, they belong to them.
It is almost a pity to analyse words which are spoken out of the
abundance of the heart; yet we pass over the surface, and lose the
sense of their truth, unless we do so. What then does Paul mean when
he calls the Thessalonians his hope? Every one looks at least a
certain distance into the future, and projects something into it to
give it reality and interest to himself. That is his hope. It may be
the returns he expects from investments of money; it may be the
expansion of some scheme he has set on foot for the common good; it
may be his children, on whose love and reverence, or on whose
advancement in life, he counts for the happiness of his declining
years. Paul, we know, had none of these hopes; when he looked down
into the future he saw no fortune growing secretly, no peaceful
retirement in which the love of sons and daughters would surround him
and call him blessed. Yet his future was not dreary or desolate; it
was bright with a great light; he had a hope that made life abundantly
worth living, and that hope was the Thessalonians. He saw them in his
mind's eye grow daily out of the lingering taint of heathenism into
the purity and love of Christ. He saw them, as the discipline of God's
providence had its perfect work in them, escape from the immaturity of
babes in Christ, and grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our
Lord and Saviour to the measure of the stature of perfect men. He saw
them presented faultless in the presence of the Lord's glory in the
great day. That was something to live for. To witness that spiritual
transformation which he had inaugurated carried on to completion gave
the future a greatness and a worth which made the Apostle's heart leap
for joy. He is glad when he thinks of his children walking in the
truth. They are "a chaplet of victory of which he may justly make his
boast"; he is prouder of them than a king of his crown, or a champion
in the games of his wreath.
Such words might well be charged with extravagance if we omitted to
look at the connection in which they stand. "What is our hope, or joy,
or crown of glorying? Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at His
coming?" _Before our Lord Jesus at His coming_: this is the presence,
this the occasion, with which Paul confronts, in imagination, his hope
and joy and triumph. They are such as give him confidence and
exultation even as he thinks of the great event which will try all
common hopes and put them to shame.
None of us, it may be presumed, is without hope when he looks into the
future; but how far does our future extend? For what situation is
provision made by the hope that we actually cherish? The one certain
event of the future is that we shall stand before our Lord Jesus, at
His coming; can we acknowledge there with joy and boasting the hope on
which our heart is at present set? Can we carry into that presence the
expectation which at this moment gives us courage to look down the
years to come? Not every one can. There are multitudes of human hopes
which terminate on material things, and expire with Christ's coming;
it is not these that can give us joy at last. The only hope whose
light is not dimmed by the brightness of Christ's appearing is the
disinterested spiritual hope of one who has made himself the servant
of others for Jesus' sake, and has lived to see and aid their growth
in the Lord. The fire which tries every man's work of what sort it is,
brings out the imperishable worth of this. The Old Testament as well
as the New tells us that souls saved and sanctified are the one hope
and glory of men in the great day. "They that be wise shall shine as
the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to
righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." It is a favourite
thought of the Apostle himself: "appear as lights in the world,
holding forth the word of life, _that I may have whereof to glory in
the day of Christ_." Even the Lord Himself, as he looks at the men
whom He has gathered out of the world, can say, _I am glorified_ in
them. It is His glory, as the Father's servant, that He has sought and
found and sanctified His Church.
We ought not to pass by such fervent utterances as if they must mean
less than they say. We ought not, because our own hold on the circle
of Christian facts is weak, to glide over the qualification, "before
our Lord Jesus at His coming," as if it were without any solid
meaning. The Bible is verbally inspired at least in the sense that
nothing in it is otiose; every word is meant. And we miss the main
lesson of this passage, if we do not ask ourselves whether we have any
hope which is valid on the grand occasion in question. Your future may
be secured as far as this world is concerned. Your investments may be
as safe as the National debt; the loyalty and virtue of your children
all that heart could wish; you are not afraid of poverty, loneliness,
age. But what of our Lord Jesus, and His coming? Will your hope be
worth anything before Him, at that day? You do not know how near it
is. For some it may be very near. There are people in every
congregation who know they cannot live ten years. No one knows that he
will live so long. And all are summoned to take that great event into
their view of the future, and to make ready for it. Is it not a fine
thing to think that, if we do so, we can look forward to the coming of
our Lord Jesus with hope and joy and triumph?
The intensity of Paul's love for the Thessalonians made his longing to
see them intolerable; and after being twice baffled in his attempts to
revisit them he sent Timothy in his stead. Rather than be without news
of them he was content to be left in Athens alone. He mentions this as
if it had been a great sacrifice, and probably it was so for him. He
seems to have been in many ways dependent on the sympathy and
assistance of others; and, of all places he ever visited, Athens was
the most trying to his ardent temperament. It was covered with idols
and exceedingly religious; yet it seemed to him more hopelessly away
from God than any city in the world. Never had he been left alone in a
place so unsympathetic; never had he felt so great a gulf fixed
between others' minds and his own; and Timothy had no sooner gone than
he made his way to Corinth, where his messenger found him on his
return.
The object of this mission is sufficiently plain from what has been
already said. The Apostle knew the troubles that had beset the
Thessalonians; and it was Timothy's function to establish them and to
comfort them concerning their faith, that no man should be moved by
these afflictions. The word translated "moved" occurs only this once
in the New Testament, and the meaning is not quite certain. It may be
quite as general as our version represents it; but it may also have a
more definite sense, viz., that of allowing oneself to be befooled, or
flattered out of one's faith, in the midst of tribulations. Besides
the vehement enemies who pursued Paul with open violence, there may
have been others who spoke of him to the Thessalonians as a mere
enthusiast, the victim in his own person of delusions about a
resurrection and a life to come, which he sought to impose upon
others; and who, when affliction came on the Church, tried by appeals
of this sort to wheedle the Thessalonians out of their faith. Such a
situation would answer very exactly to the peculiar word here used.
But however this may be, the general situation was plain. The Church
was suffering; suffering is a trial which not every one can bear; and
Paul was anxious to have some one with them who had learned the
elementary Christian lesson, that it is inevitable. The disciples had
not, indeed, been taken by surprise. The Apostle had told them before
that to this lot Christians were appointed; we are destined, he says,
to suffer affliction. Nevertheless, it is one thing to know this by
being told, and another to know it, as the Thessalonians now did, by
experience. The two things are as different as reading a book about a
trade, and serving an apprenticeship to it.
The suffering of the good because they are good is mysterious, in part
because it has the two aspects here made so manifest. On the one hand,
it comes by Divine appointment; it is the law under which the Son of
God Himself and all His followers live. But on the other hand, it is
capable of a double issue. It may perfect those who endure it as
ordained by God; it may bring out the solidity of their character, and
redound to the glory of their Saviour; or it may give an opening to
the tempter to seduce them from a path so full of pain. The one thing
of which Paul is certain is, that the salvation of Christ is cheaply
purchased at any price of affliction. Christ's life here and hereafter
is the supreme good; the one thing needful, for which all else may be
counted loss.
This possible double issue of suffering--in higher goodness, or in the
abandonment of the narrow way--explains the difference of tone with
which Scripture speaks of it in different places. With the happy issue
in view, it bids us count it all joy when we fall into divers
temptations; blessed, it exclaims, is the man who endures; for when he
is found proof, he shall receive the crown of life. But with human
weakness in view, and the terrible consequences of failure, it bids us
pray, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
The true Christian will seek, in all the afflictions of life, to
combine the courage and hope of the one view with the humility and
fear of the other.
[10] Τίς γὰρ … ἢ οὐχὶ καὶ ὑμεῖς;