NOTES for Th1 3:9-10

⁹For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God;

¹⁰Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith?

For Paul, his apostolic ministry truly was not simply the chief work of his life, but life itself. In this, however, there was nothing surprising, if we remember what the life of a Christian in general and the life of an apostle in particular are.

The life of every Christian becomes witness from the very moment he becomes a Christian. Strictly speaking, it cannot be otherwise: a Christian is a person of the Kingdom, and it is impossible to live in the Kingdom and hide it. But the ministry of an apostle consists in the fact that he is not only a person of the Kingdom, but also a person of the Church. Of course, this can be said of every Christian, but the chief and only task of an apostle is precisely the building up of the Church as the body of Christ. And such a task is inseparable from constant communication with the people who came into the Church through you. This, as we can see, is what Paul does throughout his life. He does not stay anywhere for long, because the task of an apostle is not the task of the one who presides over a church assembly or of a church administrator; the task of an apostle is spiritual support for individual people and church communities that need such support.

At the same time, the ministry of an apostle is also a visible manifestation of the unity of the Church, not only at the level of a particular church community, but also at the level of the Church as a whole. As is known, in the earliest Christian period, as also in the early Christian period, the Church was a community movement and managed quite well without a rigid centralized structure. In the earliest Christian period, the Church had a council of elders, or presbyters, which handled church-wide matters. But the connection between separate church communities at the grassroots level was carried out precisely by the apostles. Strictly speaking, the Church, for example at the first council in the history of the Church, was represented by apostles and presbyters: the former as people who knew the church situation, as people say, firsthand, and the latter as the most authoritative representatives of church communities. It is no accident that Paul speaks of his desire someday to come to his fellow believers and bring their faith to fullness: for an apostle this was the most natural task. This is how the early Christian Church lived, relying not on structures created by human beings, but on ministers sent by God, who helped it remain the body of Christ.

Other notes

For Th1 3:1-13

¹Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone;

²And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellowlabourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith:

³That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto.

⁴For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.

⁵For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.

⁶But now when Timotheus came from you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith and charity, and that ye have good remembrance of us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to see you:

⁷Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith:

⁸For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord.

⁹For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God;

¹⁰Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith?

¹¹Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you.

¹²And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:

¹³To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

The letters of the apostle Paul strike us first of all by their humanity. Parents still write to their children in this way... Read more

The letters of the apostle Paul strike us first of all by their humanity. Parents still write to their children in this way: passionately and tenderly, anxious about what they do not know and trying to help from afar. When possible, they send someone who can comfort and support them. Left without news, they worry whether everything is all right, whether their children have settled in, and whether they have done anything foolish. The whole of today's chapter is a treasure that allows us to understand those who passed on to us the news of Jesus' death and Resurrection. It is like being able to hear their heartbeat and take their pulse. This is not a literary genre or a cultural monument; these are often words too emotional for an outsider's eyes, the words of someone who is anxious about us and concerned whether we stand firm in our faith.

For Th1 3:1-13

¹Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone;

²And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellowlabourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith:

³That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto.

⁴For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.

⁵For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.

⁷Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith:

⁸For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord.

⁹For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God;

¹⁰Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith?

¹¹Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you.

¹²And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:

¹³To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

Addressing his Thessalonian brothers, Paul writes to them that he rejoices in the steadfastness with which they endure... Read more

Addressing his Thessalonian brothers, Paul writes to them that he rejoices in the steadfastness with which they endure the persecutions and harassment that have fallen to their lot (vv. 5-8). Of course, only a masochist can rejoice in sufferings as such. And the apostle, of course, is not glad that he himself or his brothers suffer. For him, sufferings for the faith are simply a sign that Christians remain Christians, not betraying their calling. Of course, Christians suffer not because they themselves seek conflicts or trouble. The issue lies elsewhere, namely in that incompatibility of the Kingdom with the untransformed world about which the Savior Himself warned His disciples, and Paul warned those to whom he preached Christ and the Kingdom (vv. 1-4). This incompatibility becomes the source of the conflict that the apostle repeatedly mentioned in his letter to the Thessalonian church.

As for joy, persecuted Christians rejoice, of course, not in being right as such, although from the standpoint of both the Torah and God's truth they are certainly right before their persecutors. But the feeling of being right in itself rarely gives rise to joy in the persecuted; it can give firmness, confidence in the correctness of one's own position, even strength to endure sufferings, but the feeling of being right usually does not add joy as such. The most it allows one to experience is satisfaction that one's duty has been fulfilled and that the one fulfilling it has become neither a traitor nor an apostate.

For joy, something more is needed. Christians have it: it is that same Kingdom which the Savior brought into the world and which everyone who has shared in the new life senses as the undoubted and true reality of his own existence even when, at first glance, there is and can be no place for it in the life of a persecuted sufferer. That is why Paul (and after him many other witnesses) regarded joy during persecutions and harassment as an undoubted sign of full Christian life. Steadfastness and calmness of spirit during persecutions have at all times been characteristic of far more than Christians alone. But the joy of the Kingdom in such a situation could belong only to those who have shared in it - Christians living in the Kingdom.

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