Scripture Daily

Context No. 301 of 4322 · 1 Thessalonians

Context · Reflection

1 Thessalonians 3:6-13: in context

6But Timothy has just now come to us from you, and brought us glad news of your faith and love, and that you have good memories of us always, longing to see us, even as we also long to see you. 7For this cause, brothers, we were comforted over you in all our distress and affliction through your faith. 8For now we live, if you stand fast in the Lord. 9For what thanksgiving can we give again to God for you, for all the joy with which we rejoice for your sakes before our God, 10night and day praying exceedingly that we may see your face and may perfect that which is lacking in your faith? 11Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way to you. 12May the Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another and toward all men, even as we also do toward you, 13to the end he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Paul had been forced to leave the young church at Thessalonica in a hurry, and he had been sick with worry about whether they would survive without him. He could not go back himself, so he sent Timothy to find out how they were holding up. This passage is his reaction when Timothy returns, and it is almost startling in how much emotion it lets show.

Timothy brings, in Paul's words, good news of their faith and love, and that they remember Paul warmly and long to see him. And Paul's relief pours out in a line most people would be embarrassed to write: now we really live, he says, if you are standing firm in the Lord. His own sense of being alive is bound up in whether these people are staying faithful. He says he cannot thank God enough for the joy they give him, and that he prays night and day to see their faces again and to supply whatever is still lacking in their faith. This is not a leader keeping a safe emotional distance. His life is tangled up with theirs, and their steadfastness is, to him, a kind of good news he can hardly contain.

What is striking is that the good report does not make him complacent. It makes him pray harder, that God would cause them to abound in love even more, and establish their hearts blameless. Good news about the people he loves produces thanksgiving and yet more longing for their good, not a relieved shrug. Is anyone's faith so bound up with my own life that I could honestly say, I really live if you are standing firm, or have I kept my investment in others carefully, safely low?

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