NOTES for Th1 1:1-10

Thus faith, brotherly love, and perseverance are growing in the community at Thessalonica. Wonderful! Surely Paul will praise the faithful? But no. Yes, he acknowledges that all is well in the community. Yet the believers themselves deserve relatively little credit for this. Above all, Paul considers it necessary to thank God; indeed, he emphasizes that this is only just. Thus, when we forget to thank Him and attribute all the credit to ourselves, or even to someone else—to a human being rather than to God—we act unjustly.

Sometimes the definitions used by Paul can seem a little bit strange. Well, with the active faith it is still more or less understandable the fact that faith without works is only vain words, the same Paul said repeatedly, and he is not the only one. But here is "the persistent work of the love" (not "the work with love", but "the work of love"), as well as "the stability of hope in our Lord Jesus-Christ" (what in the translation of the King James Version sounds as "patience of hope") can indeed raise questions and doubts. Indeed, in our world, love is usually connected to the feelings and emotions, when we say that we love something, mostly we mean that it pleases us. Unfortunately, we "love" so often in the same way our neighbors, as long as they please us.

The authors of the biblical books by love understand generally a relationship, in which we wish to the neighbor good, independently if he is nice to us, or not. But all the same, the relationships are one thing, and the persistent work is another one. With the works of love everything is clear, but here is how relationship itself can become a work? Perhaps, in the situation of the non transformed world it really sounds a little bit strange. Although here it is all the same necessary to maintain relationships, otherwise they are gradually destroyed. But for the Kingdom the maintenance of the relationships is particularly important, it is here really a separate work, and very serious.

Because the structure of the Kingdom is formed in particular by the relationships, their depth and their strength define not only this fullness, which will reveal itself to the one who builds these relationships, of them also depends the measure of the fullness of the revelation of the Kingdom to the world, the depth of the spiritual influence of the Kingdom on the non transformed world. It becomes then more understandable even " the stability of hope": because hope in an ordinary situation means in fact the trust in someone, who gave certain promises, and the confidence that the one who gave them will not deceive, whether it is God or man. But in the Kingdom only the trust is insufficient, here confidence supposes not only an internal knowledge, but the intention.

This same intention, which is also the foundation of any relationship. And the intention is always an effort, even if directed, as in the case when it is about the stability, on the conservation of what the external strengths try to destroy. And Paul, as seen, describes all the relationships between Christians already not as relationships between the inhabitants of the non transformed world, but as relationships between the inhabitants of the Kingdom. Because for him, it was completely obvious that Christianity is life in the Kingdom that the Savior brought to the world.