Scripture Daily

Context No. 747 of 4322 · 1 Thessalonians

Context · Reflection

1 Thessalonians 3:1-5: in context

1Therefore when we couldn’t stand it any longer, we thought it good to be left behind at Athens alone, 2and sent Timothy, our brother and God’s servant in the Good News of Christ, to establish you and to comfort you concerning your faith, 3that no one would be moved by these afflictions. For you know that we are appointed to this task. 4For most certainly, when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we are to suffer affliction, even as it happened, and you know. 5For this cause I also, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, sent that I might know your faith, for fear that by any means the tempter had tempted you, and our labor would have been in vain.

Paul had to leave Thessalonica in a hurry, driven out by persecution not long after founding the church there, and this passage lets you feel how much it cost him to go. Separated from them and unable to return, he says twice in a few lines that he could not bear it any longer. So from Athens he sent Timothy, his closest helper, and stayed behind alone, in order to strengthen and encourage the young believers in their faith, so that no one would be shaken by the afflictions they were suffering.

And then he says the thing he had already taught them, so it would not catch them off guard. You know, he writes, that we are destined for this; when we were with you we told you beforehand that we were going to suffer, and so it turned out. The hardship was not a sign that their faith had failed or that God had abandoned the project. It was appointed, part of the road, and Paul had warned them in advance precisely so that when it came it would not unmoor them. His fear was not that they were suffering, but that the suffering, unexpected, might let the tempter shake them loose, and all his labor be for nothing.

Paul warned them that affliction was coming so it would not shake their faith when it arrived. Does hardship rattle my faith partly because I quietly assumed that believing was supposed to keep it away?

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