Bible Study on 1 Thessalonians - Part 2 1 Thessalonians1:1-10

We began this portion of our study with prayer and then looked at 1 Thessalonians 1:1. The Apostle Paul is the author of this letter, but Silvanus (Silas) and Timothy are also mentioned, as they had helped with the founding of the church in Thessalonica to which Paul writes.

You can find more information about Silvanus in Acts 15:22-23, 30-32, 40-41. He was a Jew who became a Christian and then became an important leader in the early Christian church, telling others of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, and then helping Paul and Peter and others. From what we read in 1 Peter 5:12, Silvanus had written down what Peter dictated to him in 1 Peter. See also 2 Thessalonians 3:17, where Paul says he wrote the “greeting” with “his own hand.” This may indicate that Silvanus or someone else may have written down what Paul dictated to him in that letter, too, except for Paul’s signature of its genuineness. The Lord God was behind and guiding the writing of every part of the Scriptures, though, so that we have exactly what God wanted us to hear - in 1 Thessalonians, too.

You can also read more of Timothy and his background in Acts 16:1-5. Timothy had a Jewish mother but a Greek father. He had come to faith through the ministry of Paul (1 Corinthians 4:17, 1 Timothy 1:2) and he then served as a pastor with Paul.

Paul wrote to the church, the gathering of believers, in Thessalonica, who were there in the name of God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 1:1, 5,6). This is how the one true Triune God is often presented in the New Testament. There is no neat description of God - just God at work through His Word to bring people to faith in Jesus and to strengthen them in that faith and life.

Do think about the meaning and significance of every word used in these Scriptures. God is our heavenly “Father,” the Father and Creator of all things. We may not always have an earthly father with us, but we have a heavenly Father. God the Son is also “Lord” - the special name for God in the Old Testament. God the Son came into this world to become the promised Messiah (the Christ, the Anointed One of God), Jesus, (the Savior), true man and the son of Mary (1 Thess. 1:1). The Spirit is also God, “Holy” and coming with “power” and “joy” (1 Thess. 1:5,6).

Paul then wishes for the church at Thessalonica what God does bring to them (and to us, still today) - “Grace.” Grace is the gift, the undeserved and unearned love and favor that come to people through Jesus and what He has done for them and the whole world by His saving work. No one can earn and no one deserves God’s grace. Receiving that grace also brings “Peace” - peace with God, in spite of our sins, and greater peace with one another, as well.

Paul then gives thanks to God for every single person in the church at Thessalonica. Paul does not thank the church, because he knows the churches are the creation of God; but he thanks God for all, because Christ died for all, and everyone is important to Him. Paul also prays for the church regularly, again and again. He cannot pray for everyone all the time, because he is not God; but God does know us by name and Jesus is praying for us from heaven (1 Thess. 1:2, Romans 8:34). How often do you pray for your church and your fellow believers?

Paul goes on to remember before God in prayer the “faith” and “love” and “hope” of the believers in Thessalonica. These are all gifts and fruit of God’s Holy Spirit, as people are connected to our Lord Jesus Christ. It all begins as people are brought to faith in Christ and are turned away “from idols” and turned to "the living and true God." That faith in Jesus is living and active in believers and produces “works” and “labors of love” in them, where they “serve” the Lord and one another. They also have “hope” about themselves and their future and “wait” in hope because of what Jesus did, dying for them and rising from the dead and promising to return from heaven for them. All this helps them to be “steadfast” in faith even in times of trial and trouble. See how that faith and love and hope are described in the believers in 1 Thess. 1:3 and repeated again, using different words, in verses 9-10.

All this is evidence that these believers in Thessalonica are “brothers” in the faith, related to each other as the family of God, “loved by God,” and “chosen,” selected and elected by God Himself to be His believing people (1 Thess. 1:4). (The word “brothers” is used 28 times in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, usually describing this family of all believers in Christ.)

All this happens because the Word of the Gospel is not just ordinary speech, but the very Word of God, in which the Holy Spirit works with power and conviction. God not only calls people to faith through the Word, but also enables and empowers them to come to faith, by His grace, through that same Word of Good News in Jesus and the Word connected with water in baptism (1 Thess. 1:5, Ephesians 5:25-27). See the difference between mere talk and words, which Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 4:20, and his preaching “Jesus and Him crucified” in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, by “the Spirit and power” of God. It is not smooth talk or lofty human wisdom by a powerful speaker, but the power of God’s own Word and promises at work.

As a result of God’s work and power, even though they “received that Word in a time of “much affliction” (the trouble they received from Jews who rejected Jesus and His teachings, as we heard in the Introduction last week) the believers in Thessalonica received the Word “with the joy of the Holy Spirit” and began to “imitate” the faith of Paul and Silvanus and Timothy and what the Lord wished for them. Over time, word about their faith spread to others and “went forth everywhere” as another witness to and “example” of the power of God in Christ. It even went to the Roman province of Achaia, in the southern part of Greece, where Athens and Corinth were located, and from where Paul was now writing this letter of encouragement to them (1 Thess. 1:6-9).

What Paul describes was truly a witness to God’s grace and peace in Christ and the power of His Word and the “steadfastness of hope” for the believers at Thessalonica and for us still today, even in difficult times. Read, in closing, these promises of God also for us who are believers in Christ, in Romans 8:18-26 and 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 and Romans 5:1-5. Next week, we will also begin to hear more of the ultimate  deliverance that Jesus brings to the believers at Thessalonica and to us, in His return from heaven (1 Thess. 1:10 and verses in the chapters that follow in this letter of Paul).