Our church has been going through 1 Thessalonians as a sermon series for the Fall, and my bible study class decided to undergo the same journey (though we are 1 week behind). To be honest, I’m glad we are doing so, because frankly, the constraints of a sermon means that much is left unsaid on the passage, or given only a cursory treatment at best (especially if the preaching is not expository). In studying 1 Thessalonians for myself, I am struck by how we fall short of Paul’s approach to discipleship: for Paul, it is not just about the message we proclaim with our lips but also the practice of our lives that matter.
Paul writes: “You know how we lived [ἐγενήθημεν] among you for your benefit … and you yourselves became [ἐγενήθητε] imitators of us and of the Lord … As a result, you became [γενέσθαι] an example [“model”, NIV] to all the believers …” (1:5b-7; CSB). Notice how Paul can confidently assert that the Thessalonians knew his and his co-workers’ manner of life (“You know”) when he was with them. Indeed, he repeatedly emphasizes that his Thessalonian converts can testify to his manner of life when he was with them:
“You know how we lived among you” (1:5b; CSB)
“For you yourselves know … as you know” (2:1,2)
“You are witnesses, and so is God, of how devoutly, righteously, and blamelessly we conducted ourselves with you believers.” (2:10)
Wherein lay Paul’s confidence? According to the apostle, it’s “because our good news didn’t come to you just in speech but also with power and the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” (1:5a; CEB), or, taking the καὶ explicatively:
- because our good news didn’t come to you just in speech
but also with power; that is, - in the Holy Spirit
and persuasively
That is to say, not only did the Spirit empower Paul to expound the gospel, but the Spirit also enabled Paul to embody the gospel, which convicted/persuaded the Thessalonians to embrace the gospel, i.e., they “stopped worshiping idols and began serving the living and true God” (1:9; NCV). What about us? Are we living out the gospel in our lives? It’s not about being religious or a nice person, but embodily expressing a cruiformic pattern of life in allegiance/faithfulness [πίστις, 1:8] to Jesus as Lord and King (over against Caesar).
Later in his epistle, Paul assures the Thessalonians that he is “approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel” (2:4a; CSB); to be entrusted with the gospel means being faithful to its message, its meaning and its mode of expressing it (more on this in our next post when we look at 2:3–6). Paul did not compromise his integrity or his fidelity to the εὐαγγέλιον for the sake of numbers or making the message more palatable to his audience. So, with his integrity intact, Paul truly embodies the gospel, and hence, on behalf of his apostolic co-workers, he can “offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate” (2 Thess. 3:9; NIV).
Let us choose, however, from among the living, not men who pour forth their words with the greatest glibness, …not these, I say, but men who teach us by their lives, men who tell us what we ought to do and then prove it by practice …—Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius; Letter 52: “On Choosing our Teachers”
In particular, as a challenge to those of you are who are called to shepherd the flock that Jesus died for and entrusted to your care: are you a faithful model to the sheep?
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