PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles to the Thessalonians
Denney, James · 87,456 words · 112 reading sections
The Church Of The Thessalonians.
Transcriber's Note: An advertisement for the Expositor's Bible series has been moved to the end of the text. The start of each chapter extends over several pages in the original. These have been simplified. Small capitals have been rendered in ordinary capitals. Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Apparent punc…
783 wordsSECTION 2The Church Of The Thessalonians.
His evangelistic ministry is very briefly described by St. Luke. For three Sabbath days he addressed himself to his fellow-countrymen. He took the Scriptures into his hand, that is, of course, the Old Testament Scriptures,--and opening the mysterious casket, as the picturesque words in Acts describe his method, he brou…
924 wordsSECTION 3The Church Of The Thessalonians.
The greetings are addressed "to the church of (the) Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." No such address had ever been written or read before, for the community to which it was directed was a new thing in the world. The word translated "church" was certainly familiar enough to all who knew Greek:…
703 wordsSECTION 4The Church Of The Thessalonians.
Yet what is at issue here is really a question of fact; and among those who have been in contact with the facts, among those, above all, who have had experience of the critical fact--who once were not Christians and now are--there will not be two opinions about it. The difference between the Christian and the non-Chris…
745 wordsSECTION 5The Church Of The Thessalonians.
Nothing could better illustrate the reality of that new character which Christianity confers than the fact that men can be addressed as Christians. Nothing, either, could better illustrate the confusion of mind that exists in this matter, or the insincerity of much profession, than the fact that so many members of chur…
840 wordsSECTION 6The Thanksgiving.
[1] The date cannot be precisely assigned, but it is not later than 54 A.D., and cannot be so early as 52. Most scholars say 54. It was written in Corinth. "We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers; remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labour of love and patience o…
710 wordsSECTION 7The Thanksgiving.
Though none of them can really exist, in its Christian quality, without the others, any of them may preponderate at a given time. It is not quite fanciful to point out that each in its turn seems to have bulked most largely in the experience of the Apostle himself. His earliest epistles--the two to the Thessalonians--a…
713 wordsSECTION 8The Thanksgiving.
Let us look at the Apostle's words more closely: he speaks of a work of faith; to take it exactly, of something which faith has done. Faith is a conviction with regard to things unseen, that makes them present and real. Faith in God as revealed in Christ, and in His death for sin, makes reconciliation real; it gives th…
800 wordsSECTION 9The Thanksgiving.
The church at Thessalonica was not old; its first members could only count their Christian age by months. Yet love is so native to the Christian life, that they found at once a career for it; demands were made upon their sympathy and their strength which were met at once, though never suspected before. "What are we to …
874 wordsSECTION 10The Signs Of Election.
The ground of the thanksgiving is finally comprehended in one short and striking phrase: "Knowing, brethren beloved of God, your election." The doctrine of election has often been taught as if the one thing that could never be known about anybody was whether he was or was not elect. The assumed impossibility does not s…
671 wordsSECTION 11The Signs Of Election.
The heartiness with which he speaks here justifies the inference that he had had experiences of an opposite and disappointing kind. Twice in Asia (Acts xvi. 6 f.) he had been forbidden by the Spirit to preach at all; he could not argue that the people so passed by were specially favoured of God. Often, especially in hi…
812 wordsSECTION 12The Signs Of Election.
If "power" and the "Holy Ghost" are in some degree to be judged only by their effects, there can be no question that "much assurance," on the other hand, is an inner experience, belonging strictly to the self-consciousness of the preacher. It means a full and strong conviction of the truth of the gospel. We can only un…
742 wordsSECTION 13The Signs Of Election.
But the Apostle does not rest in this generality. The imitation in question consisted in this--that the Thessalonians received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost. It is, of course, in the last part of the sentence that the point of comparison is found. In a sense it is true that the Lord Himself re…
697 wordsSECTION 14The Signs Of Election.
The Thessalonians were so conspicuously Christian, so unmistakably exhibited the new Divine type of character, that they became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. Their conversion called the attention of all men to the gospel, like a clear and far-resounding trumpet blast. Thessalonica was a place of…
471 wordsSECTION 15_Conversion._
"For they themselves report concerning us what manner of entering in we had unto you; and how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivereth us from the wrath to come."--1 THESS. i. 9, 10 (R.V.). These v…
843 wordsSECTION 16_Conversion._
There is something as deep and strong as it is simple in the words, to serve the living and true God. Philosophers have defined God as the _ens realissimum_, the most real of beings, the absolute reality; and it is this, with the added idea of personality, that is conveyed by the description "living and true." But does…
819 wordsSECTION 17_Conversion._
This waiting includes everything. "Ye come behind in no gift," Paul says to the Corinthians, "waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ." That attitude of expectation is the bloom, as it were, of the Christian character. Without it, there is something lacking; the Christian who does not look upward and onward…
760 wordsSECTION 18_Conversion._
Of course we must not misconceive the character of this wrath. We must not import into our thoughts of it all that we can borrow from our experience of man's anger--hastiness, unreason, intemperate rage. The wrath of God is no arbitrary, passionate outburst; it is not, as wrath so often is with us, a fury of selfish re…
773 wordsSECTION 19_Conversion._
This description in outline of conversion from paganism to the gospel should revive the elementary Christian virtues in our hearts. Have we seen how high a thing it is to serve a living and true God? Or is it not so, that even among Christians, a _godly_ man--one who lives in the presence of God, and is conscious of hi…
408 wordsSECTION 20_Apologia Pro Vita Sua._
"For yourselves, brethren, know our entering in unto you, that it hath not been found vain: but having suffered before, and been shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we waxed bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God in much conflict. For our exhortation _is_ not of error, nor of uncleanness, no…
766 wordsSECTION 21_Apologia Pro Vita Sua._
The first point in his favour is found in the circumstances under which he had preached the gospel in Thessalonica. Had he been an insincere man, with bye ends of his own to serve, he would never have faced the career of an apostle. He had been scourged and put in the stocks at Philippi; and when he left that city for …
736 wordsSECTION 22_Apologia Pro Vita Sua._
The other impure motive contemplated is ambition. Some modern students of Paul's character--devil's advocates, no doubt--hint at this as his most obvious fault. It was necessary for him, we are told, to be first; to be the leader of a party; to have a following of his own. But he disclaims ambition as explicitly as ava…
794 wordsSECTION 23_Apologia Pro Vita Sua._
As the Apostle recalls these recent memories, he dwells for a moment on another aspect of his love. It had not only the tender fondness of a mother's, but the educative wisdom of a father's. One by one he dealt with the disciples--which is not the way to gain glory--exhorting, encouraging, bearing solemn testimony to t…
888 wordsSECTION 24_Impeachment Of The Jews._
[6] So Alford renders δυνάμενοι ἐν βάρει εἶναι. [7] νήπιος always includes the idea of being undeveloped, unripe, and has often a shade of censure in Paul. "And for this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that, when ye received from us the word of the message, _even the word_ of God, ye accepted _it_ not _as_…
871 wordsSECTION 25_Impeachment Of The Jews._
The word of God, in other words the gospel, proved its Divine character in the Thessalonians _after_ it was received. "It also worketh," says Paul, "in you that believe." The last words are not superfluous. The word preached, we read of an earlier generation, did not profit, not being mixed with faith in them that hear…
1,163 wordsSECTION 26_Impeachment Of The Jews._
What is the relation of God to such a situation as is here described? The Jews, Paul says, did all this "to fill up their sins at all times." He does not mean that that was their intention; neither does he speak ironically; but speaking as he often does from that Divine standpoint at which all results are intended and …
774 wordsSECTION 27_Impeachment Of The Jews._
It is not easy to speak impartially about our own country and its character; yet such a character there undoubtedly is, just as there is such a unity as the British nation. Many observers tell us that the character has degenerated into a mere instinct for trade; and that it has begotten a vast unscrupulousness in deali…
781 wordsSECTION 28_Absence And Longing._
[8] Weiss renders εἰς τέλος "im höchsten Masse." [9] Observe the aorist ἔφθασεν. "But we, brethren, being bereaved of you for a short season, in presence, not in heart, endeavoured the more exceedingly to see your face with great desire: because we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hi…
860 wordsSECTION 29_Absence And Longing._
There is something wonderfully vivid in the idea which Paul gives of his love for the Thessalonians. His mind is full of them; he imagines all the circumstances of trial and danger in which they may be placed; if he could only be with them at need! He seems to follow them as a woman follows with her thoughts the son wh…
707 wordsSECTION 30_Absence And Longing._
It is a delicate operation, in many cases, to interpret outward events, and say what is the source and what the purpose of this or that. Moral indifference may blind us; but those who are in the thick of the moral conflict have a swift and sure instinct for what is against them or on their side; they can tell at once w…
810 wordsSECTION 31_Absence And Longing._
Such words might well be charged with extravagance if we omitted to look at the connection in which they stand. "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying? Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at His coming?" _Before our Lord Jesus at His coming_: this is the presence, this the occasion, with which Paul confront…
665 wordsSECTION 32_Absence And Longing._
The intensity of Paul's love for the Thessalonians made his longing to see them intolerable; and after being twice baffled in his attempts to revisit them he sent Timothy in his stead. Rather than be without news of them he was content to be left in Athens alone. He mentions this as if it had been a great sacrifice, an…
752 wordsSECTION 33_Love And Prayers._
[10] Τίς γὰρ … ἢ οὐχὶ καὶ ὑμεῖς; "But when Timothy came even now unto us from you, and brought us glad tidings of your faith and love, and that ye have good remembrance of us always, longing to see us, even as we also _to see_ you; for this cause, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our distress and afflic…
664 wordsSECTION 34_Love And Prayers._
There were two causes for Paul's joy,--one larger and more public; the other, proper to himself. The first was the faith and love of the Thessalonians, or, as he calls it further on, their standing fast in the Lord; the other was their affectionate and faithful remembrance of him, their desire, earnestly reciprocated o…
1,044 wordsSECTION 35_Love And Prayers._
When Timothy returned from Thessalonica, he found Paul sorely in need of good news. He was beset by distress and affliction; not inward or spiritual troubles, but persecutions and sufferings, which befell him from the enemies of the gospel. So extreme was his distress that he even speaks of it by implication as death. …
685 wordsSECTION 36_Love And Prayers._
But we should not pass by this notice of the deficiencies of faith without asking ourselves whether our own faith is alive and progressive. It may be quite true and sound in itself; but what if it never gets any further on? It is in its nature an engrafting into Christ, a setting of the soul into a vital connection wit…
697 wordsSECTION 37_Love And Prayers._
Here it is distinctly Christ who is addressed in prayer; and what the Apostle asks is that He may make the Thessalonians increase and abound in love. Love, he seems to say, is the one grace in which all others are comprehended; we can never have too much of it; we can never have enough. The strong words of the prayer r…
806 wordsSECTION 38_Personal Purity._
[11] Ἄρτι is naturally taken with ἐλθόντος: as by Ellicott. [12] Yet see Jude 14, quoting from Enoch. "Finally then, brethren, we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as ye received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, even as ye do walk,--that ye abound more and more. For ye know what charge w…
743 wordsSECTION 39_Personal Purity._
One of the subjects of which we should gladly know more is the use of the Gospels in the early Church; and this passage gives us one of the earliest glimpses of it. The peculiar mention of the Lord Jesus in the second verse shows that the Apostle used the words and example of the Master as the basis of his moral teachi…
886 wordsSECTION 40_Personal Purity._
In the passage before us the Apostle contrasts our sanctification with the cardinal vice of heathenism, impurity. Above all other sins, this was characteristic of the Gentiles _who knew not God_. There is something striking in that description of the pagan world in this connection: ignorance of God was at once the caus…
725 wordsSECTION 41_Personal Purity._
"I wave the quantum o' the sin, The hazard o' concealing; But Och! it hardens a' within, And petrifies the feeling." This inward deadening is one of the most terrible consequences of immorality; it is so unexpected, so unlike the anticipations of youthful passion, so stealthy in its approach, so inevitable, so irre…
722 wordsSECTION 42_Personal Purity._
In the last verse of the paragraph the Apostle urges both his appeals once more: he recalls the severity and the goodness of God. "Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God". "Rejecteth" is a contemptuous word; in the margin of the Authorised Version it is rendered, as in some other places in Scripture, …
572 wordsSECTION 43_Charity And Independence._
"But concerning love of the brethren ye have no need that one write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another; for indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, that ye abound more and more; and that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own …
899 wordsSECTION 44_Charity And Independence._
The brotherly love of the early Church was not only visible to the world; it was its great recommendation in the world's eyes. It had brought a new thing into being, a thing for which the world was pining, namely, vital society. The poor people in the cities of Asia and Europe saw with wonder, joy, and hope, men and wo…
995 wordsSECTION 45_Charity And Independence._
Brotherly love in the early Church, within the limits of a small congregation, often took the special form of charity. Those who were able helped the poor. A special care was taken, as we see from the Book of Acts, of widows, and no doubt of orphans. In a later epistle Paul mentions with praise a family which devoted i…
1,137 wordsSECTION 46_Charity And Independence._
There are two reasons assigned by the Apostle for this life of quiet industry, both of which are noticeable. First, "That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without." Honestly is too colourless a word in modern English; the corresponding adjective in different places is translated honourable and comely.[14] What…
662 wordsSECTION 47_The Dead In Christ._
"But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, th…
744 wordsSECTION 48_The Dead In Christ._
This is exactly the situation with which the Apostle deals. The Christians in Thessalonica feared that their brethren who had died would be shut out of the Messiah's kingdom; they mourned for them as those mourn who have no hope. The Apostle corrects their error, and comforts them. His words do not mean that the Christ…
813 wordsSECTION 49_The Dead In Christ._
He says that "we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep." The natural impression one takes from these words is that Paul expected himself to be alive when Christ came; but whether that impression is justifiable or not,[16] it is no part of the tru…
676 wordsSECTION 50_The Dead In Christ._
After the general statement, on Christ's authority, that the living shall have no precedency of the departed, Paul goes on to explain the circumstances of the Advent by which it is justified. "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven." In that emphatic _Himself_ we have the argument of ver. 14 practically repeated: t…
858 wordsSECTION 51_The Dead In Christ._
Is it not a striking proof of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we have, on the express authority of His word, a special revelation, the exclusive aim of which is to comfort? Jesus knew the terrible sorrow of bereavement; He had stood by the bedside of Jairus' daughter, by the young man's bier at Nain, by Lazaru…
480 wordsSECTION 52_The Day Of The Lord._
"But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that aught be written unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. When they are saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and the…
1,129 wordsSECTION 53_The Day Of The Lord._
A doom so awful, a life so evil, cannot be the destiny or the duty of any Christian man. "Ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief." Darkness, in that saying of the Apostle, has a double weight of meaning. The Christian is not in ignorance of what is impending, and forewarned is f…
1,087 wordsSECTION 54_The Day Of The Lord._
It may not be out of place to insist on the fact that "sober" in this passage means sober as opposed to drunk. No one would wish to be overtaken drunk by any great occasion; yet the day of the Lord is associated in at least three passages of Scripture with a warning against this gross sin. "Take heed to yourselves," th…
732 wordsSECTION 55_The Day Of The Lord._
The next verse--the tenth--has the peculiar interest of containing the only hint to be found in this early Epistle of Paul's teaching as to the mode of salvation. We obtain it through Jesus Christ, who died for us. It is not who died instead of us, nor even on our behalf (ὑπέρ), but, according to the true reading, who …
699 wordsSECTION 56_Rulers And Ruled._
[19] Rev. xvi. 15. "But we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work's sake. Be at peace among yourselves. And we exhort you, brethren, admonish the disorderly, encourage the fainthearted, su…
876 wordsSECTION 57_Rulers And Ruled._
There are two special forms of labour to which the Apostle gives prominence: he mentions as among those that labour "them that are over you in the Lord, and admonish you." The first of the words here employed, the one translated "them that are over" you, is the only hint the Epistle contains of Church government. Where…
1,013 wordsSECTION 58_Rulers And Ruled._
How little there is of an official spirit in what the Apostle has been saying, we see clearly from what follows. In one way it is specially the duty of the elders or pastors in the Church to exercise rule and discipline; but it is not so exclusively their duty as to exempt the members of the Church at large from respon…
944 wordsSECTION 59_Rulers And Ruled._
It is an apt climax when the Apostle adds, "Be longsuffering toward all." He who tries to keep these commandments--"Admonish the disorderly, encourage the fainthearted, support the weak"--will have need of patience. If we are absolutely indifferent to each other, it does not matter; we can do without it. But if we seek…
636 wordsSECTION 60_The Standing Orders Of The Gospel._
"Rejoice alway; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus to you-ward."--1 THESS. v. 16-18 (R.V.). The three precepts of these three verses may be called the standing orders of the Christian Church. However various the circumstances in which Christians may find them…
658 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.