1 Thessalonians

No. 196 1 Thessalonians 2:8-12
First Thessalonians is probably the earliest of Paul's surviving letters, written to a young church he had to leave in a hurry after trouble in the city. This passage is him describing how he behaved while he...
No. 212 1 Thessalonians 5:23-28
These six verses close what is most likely the oldest Christian writing we have. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians around the year fifty, only months after founding their church and being forced to leave the...
No. 301 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13
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...
No. 576 1 Thessalonians 2:13-20
Paul thanks God for something specific about the Thessalonians, and it is worth slowing down on, because it names a choice each of us makes about Scripture. We thank God constantly, he writes, that when you...
No. 747 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5
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...
No. 1801 1 Thessalonians 2:1-7
Paul recalls his ministry among the Thessalonians. Though he had been shamefully treated at Philippi, he came to them and spoke the gospel boldly amid much opposition. His message, he insists, was not from...
No. 2099 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
Paul instructs the Thessalonians how to live in a way that pleases God, and he speaks plainly about purity. This is the will of God, he says, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality, that...
No. 2123 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22
As Paul closes his letter, he gives a rapid series of exhortations for the Christian life: honor your leaders, live at peace, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, do not repay evil for evil. And at the...
No. 2923 1 Thessalonians 4:9-18
Paul commends the Thessalonians' love for one another and urges them to abound in it still more, to lead quiet lives, mind their own affairs, and work with their hands. Then he turns to comfort them about...
No. 3582 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Paul opens his letter with warm thanksgiving, remembering three things about the Thessalonians: their work of faith, their labor of love, and their steadfastness of hope in the Lord Jesus. That triad, faith,...
No. 3657 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Paul writes about the day of the Lord, which will come suddenly, like a thief in the night, catching an unprepared world by surprise while it is saying, peace and safety. But he assures believers: you are not...