I Thessalonians 4:9-12
Charles Finney was a great evangelist and then professor at Oberlin. In the mid-1800s, he traveled around the nation preaching to the lost and awakening churches. In one of his works on the nature of revival, he said that you could tell the revival in a particular area was beginning to wane when the Christians stopped calling each other “Brother” and “Sister.”
Of course he wasn’t saying those words were somehow necessary for a group of Christians to be awakened; he was saying the attitude which inspired the words was essential.
This was the attitude which Paul wanted the Thessalonians to continue demonstrating and allowing to grow in their life together. Paul called it “brotherly love” (philadelphia). It is the love between siblings. The New Century Version renders it as “love for your Christian family.”
Paul begins with a word of confirmation: the Thessalonian Christians had been demonstrating that love. In fact, they seemed to have a profound understanding of the love Christians ought to have for one another.
What does it mean that they had been "taught by God to love one another?" Were they so open to the Spirit's leadership in the development of this fruit of the Spirit they scarcely needed human instruction? Does this mean they had so reflected upon the Scripture they discovered the principle on their own? Had they thought about what they had been told of Jesus and were trying hard to pattern their behavior after his? We may never know exactly what Paul meant, apart from the fact that God was doing something exciting in the life of this church.
Leon Morris sees this as a result of God’s work.
“They showed that steadfast love to others which can only come about in a man when he has been transformed by the power of the divine agape, and has come to see men in a measure as God sees them. But there is something else than this. When this miracle occurs in a man, he finds himself in company with others of like mind, and he will naturally be drawn to them. His soul will be knit to theirs. Thus, in addition to agape, that self-denying love toward all men, he should practice philadelphia, the love of the brethren.
Paul pointed to their generosity toward the other Christians in Macedonia as an evidence of that love. How was this love demonstrated? Perhaps through generosity with material help, perhaps through hospitality, perhaps in some other practical way.
In any case, the Thessalonian church had not become a closed body of believers. They cared for those beyond their small group.
Still, none of them had achieved perfection in the area of love. Therefore, Paul challenged them to "go on making even greater progress." They could "excel still more."
What Paul says reminds us that love is hard work; it doesn’t always just grow up in the Christian community. We need to be thoughtful in demonstrating our love toward those in the church and toward those outside the church. And, of course, to guard our loving attitude against erosion.
Paul gives three directives to the Thessalonian Christians that, if followed, would help the Thessalonians further demonstrate “love for the Christian family.” Although these instructions reflect the unique situation in Thessalonica, they suggest principles which are relevant to Christians today and everywhere.
1. They were “…to live a quiet life.”
What did Paul mean? Three meanings are suggested. Each has its defenders.
--Because of the turmoil and persecution which had arisen around the Christians, Paul was telling the believers to keep a low profile. They weren’t to draw attention to themselves. This would allow the church to continue to grow and prosper with as little interference as possible.
There may be times when it is appropriate and wise for Christians to stay below the radar, trying a quiet, subtle influence in the work place, the neighborhood, and the family. Not everyone can openly witness to their faith; in our own country some Christians work in places where an overt witness is impossible and, perhaps, inappropriate. It is the stuff of which lawsuits are made. Still, these seemingly silenced brothers and sisters can have an impact through their lives.
--Some of the Christians may have been trying to seek positions of authority for themselves in the community; thereby drawing too much attention to themselves. According to this view, Paul literally instructs the believers to “make it their ambition to have no ambition.” Today, in a free society Paul might encourage Christians to seek public office. I think this is the least likely meaning.
--The oldest interpretation and, I suspect, most likely meaning draws on the fact many Thessalonian Christians believed the Second Coming was very near. This and the persecution they faced may have created unrest in the hearts of the believers. Knox suggests "keep calm" as the translation. Perhaps events and circumstances had sent some of the Thessalonian Christians into a frenzy of agitation. Some have suggested these agitated Christians were going house-to-house spreading their panic.
The word does suggest rest and cessation of activity and may be a call to abandon the nervous activity which sometimes marks those uncertain about the future. One writer delightfully commented on the command: “Christians should not get their liver in a quiver.”
In his book You’ll Get Through This, Max Lucado warns of the danger of responding to a stressful time by doing something stupid. It’s easy to do and hard to repair the damage such actions cause. Keeping calm is the best antidote. And often the best witness.
2. They were to mind their own affairs.
Some translations render this a "mind your own business." Perhaps the idea is that their energy should be focused on their own business rather than on what others might or might not be doing.
Sometimes we can become so caught up in what others are doing that we neglect what we should be doing. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul issues a warning against those who had become “busybodies,” spending their time “gossiping.”
If they spent their time doing this, they couldn’t spend much time sharing the gospel or building their own spiritual lives.
3. They were to "work with their hands."
Some among the Thessalonians were suffering from a kind of “eschatological excitement” or “Parousia hysteria.” All they could talk about or think about was the Second Coming. Some may have quit their jobs to wait for Christ’s Return. As a consequence, they had become unbalanced in their perspective and their overall witness. They may have even been so obsessed they neglected their work and were forced to depend upon the charity and help of their fellow Christians.
This is not necessarily a call to manual labor, as if Christians couldn’t do other kinds of work, but it does seem to mean that they were to try to support themselves. Paul had had to remind them of this on earlier occasions.
There are certainly circumstances in which the principle behind these instructions would apply to Christians today. Some believers can become so focused on an issue that, for them, it becomes “the” talking point when they meet with other believers and sometimes agreeing with them becomes the test of another’s spirituality or intelligence.
But, we need to keep in mind the reason behind Paul’s instructions. In his rationale, he speaks to both the special situation in Thessalonica and to Christians’s of every age.
As a result, people who are not Christians will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others to meet your financial needs. (v 12)
Two principles are implicit in this verse.
Love should prompt us to consider the impact of our behavior on the Christian community.
Because some of the Thessalonian believers had stopped working the burden on those who had continued with the day-to-day grind of work had increased. Keep in mind these slackers could have worked but didn’t. Just as significant, their obsession blinded them to the fact charity that could have gone to the truly needy was diverted to them so they could enjoy discussing the Second coming with their buds at the local Starbucks (paying for their lattes with cash given to them by kindly Christian friends).
Paul challenged such confused and, frankly, self-centered believers to think about how what they were doing was affecting their fellow-believers. Not only were they limiting the ability of their fellow believers to help the truly needy, in some cases they may have been taking food from the tables of their generous brothers and sisters in Christ.
We have the same responsibility—to think about how what we do will impact the church as a whole.
Love should prompt us to consider the influence of our behavior within the non-Christian community.
Sometimes we hear well-meaning but ill-informed individuals say something like this, “We Christians aren’t supposed to be concerned about what the world thinks about us.”
I think I understand what they’re trying to say and it’s true we shouldn’t ever forget we answer to a higher authority than the culture and its whims. But it’s interesting how often positive public opinion toward those living faithfully is mentioned in the Scripture.
Luke describes Jesus’ youth: “Jesus was ever advancing in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”
The public’s opinion of the Christians merited mention in the Book of Acts: Shortly after the birth of the church, the believers who lived in a loving, Christ-centered fellowship won the respect of the larger community; in fact, they were “looked on with favor by all the people.”
The opponents of the early church were kept from taking action against the Christians because the good will the church had generated by its miraculous acts to help the desperate.
Yet, some of the Thessalonians were living in ways that made positive public opinion unlikely. F. F. Bruce explains:
They had to understand that some forms of conduct were incompatible with brotherly love. One of these was the sexual invasion of another’s person and household against which they were warned in the previous paragraph. Another was the tendency to put less into the common stock that they took out, to neglect their ordinary day-by-day tasks in such a way as to become a financial burden on others….
Those who were behaving in this way were not only being burdensome to their fellow Christians; they were incurring a bad reputation among non-Christians, not only for themselves but for the Christian faith. ‘If this is Christianity,’ non-Christians might say as they saw those idlers, ‘we do not think much of it.’
We are to please God rather than man. There’s no doubt about that. Still, Paul seems to be saying we ought to be mindful of our reputation as God’s people.
All this begs the question, do Christians always have to be the odd-bods in any group?
In fairness, some Christians would be odd whether they were Christians or not. But sometimes we seem to go out of the way to be strange. In Austin you can see bumper stickers that say, “Keep Austin Weird.” They might have stolen that slogan from some churches.
You may remember when we first came to Ohio we had a maroon Chrysler. The day we brought it to Dawn from the dealer, I received a phone call from one of the ladies in the church. She said her husband had always liked Chryslers and, so, thought I had made a good decision. She paused and then added,“Nowadays, I guess, it’s okay for a pastor to drive a red car.”
Sometimes being Christians will put us at odds with the prevailing culture. We just need to make sure the hill where we’re making a stand is worth fighting for.
There are more serious charges than being odd.
Hypocrisy is always hurtful to the reputation of the church.
West Texas A&M is located in Canyon, a small town southeast of Amarillo. In the 1960s, Canyon’s First Baptist Church announced it would accept any and all seeking membership, regardless of their race. Several people left First Baptist and formed another church, one where the old patterns of segregation would be maintained. More than fifty years later, that church is remembered for being established by racists.
Some people refuse to have anything to do with the church, saying, “The church is full of hypocrites.”
We have our glib answers to that charge but the truth is, if the church isn’t full of hypocrites, they do sometimes seem to form an embarrassing minority.
Maybe the best response is confession and education.
--We need to confess that too many of us are not what we ought to be.
--We need to invite the outsider to really get to know us. We need to help the outsider understand there is a difference between the hypocrite, the poseur who claims the name “Christian” but has no intention to live like Christ, and the struggler who wrestles with temptation and sometimes fails.
At the same time, the church’s reputation as a loving community is sometimes hurt when it attempts to share the good news of God’s grace, ungraciously.
Is it always necessary to take an “in-your-face” stance toward those who disagree with us? Must we be aggressively abrasive in order to be faithful to Christ?
Paul’s approach to the idol worshippers in Athens should be a model to more of us. After seeing the hundreds of shrines dedicated to all kinds of “gods,” Paul’s head must have been filled with the Old Testament’s denunciation of idolatry. Maybe he even remembered Isaiah’s essay ridiculing the man who cut down a tree to use some of it to build a fire for cooking and some of it to build an idol to worship. Whatever he may have thought, the New King James Version reports his first words to them as, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious….” (Acts 17:22)
That bit of respect opened the door.
Sometimes and this can be tough we need to see things from our opponents’ perspective.
The growth of the so-called “mega-churches” has prompted some communities to ask for ordinances limited the seating a church may have or the size of its parking lot.
I believe people ought to be allowed to worship where they please, but I can understand the feelings and fears of those considering the prospect of several hundred additional cars driving through their neighborhoods on a Sunday morning.
Conclusion:
A couple weeks ago the rebuilt World Trade Center tower opened. Most of us can remember first hearing the news reports of the 9/11 attacks that destroyed the iconic buildings.
Christian groups rushed to the scene to help with searching and providing food, drink, and comfort to searchers.
Yet, within twenty-four hours of the attack some Christian leaders, sitting in their comfortable offices, were saying, “God did this to punish….”
They said those things without weighing the impact of their words on believers whose husbands, wives, children, and other family members were killed that day. They did not consider how their judgmental pronouncements might influence those non-believers who for the first time might be seeking the answers only a loving God can provide.
Never before in history has the “ordinary” Christian had more opportunity to share his or her words with the world. I am amazed people in places like the Ukraine, Singapore, and Russia look at my blog each week. The numbers aren’t large but it’s still more people than would have read them a few years ago. Those of you who regularly use the social-media should also be impressed at how many people know what’s going on in your life and what your opinions are on just about any topic you may comment on.
All of us should remember Spirit-inspired love for our brothers and sisters in Christ and for those on the outside ought to cause us to weigh our words and our actions.
_________________________.
