Overview:
The first letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest Christian writing which has survived to the present day. It was written by Paul while he was in Corinth, and is addressed to the Christians in Thessalonica. The letter is dated by the majority of New Testament scholars to sometime in the early 50s, although there is a minority view that places its composition as early as 41 to 43 AD. Scholars are generally agreed that the letter is a genuine composition of Paul himself, and was not written by someone else in his name. (Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, p.457; The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 1973 edition. p. 1433.) A version of Paul’s visit to Thessalonica is recounted in Acts 17:1-15.
1:1 Unlike his other letters, Paul simply introduces himself here as “Paul,” and not as an apostle or servant of Jesus Christ. Compare, for example, the opening sentences of Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Galatians.
The Greek word translated here as “church” (ekkleisia) has as its literal meaning “assembly” or “congregation.” So the introduction to the letter might easily be translated as “to the assembly of the Thessalonians.”
The “Silvanus” referred to here is the Latin equivalent of “Silas,” whom we met in Acts. (See, for example, Acts 17:4.)
1:4 Paul tells the Thessalonians that God “has chosen you.” Chosen for what? The most likely answer is that he is referring to predestination, i.e., the idea that those who are saved are preselected by God, and are not saved through any effort of their own. Support for this interpretation can be found in 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14, where the Thessalonians are told, “God chose you from the beginning to be saved through sanctification by the spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” See also Romans 9:11, and the parable of the potter in Romans 9:19-24. Thus, according to these passages from Paul, salvation comes neither from faith nor works, but from being selected by God as one of the lucky ones.
1:5-6 Paul appears to praise the Thessalonians for their courage and steadfastness in the gospel, despite “much affliction.” But there is a hint of self-congratulation as well. Paul brags in v.5 about “what kind of men we proved to be among you,” and here in v.6 he seems to put himself on the same level as Jesus himself, remarking that the Thessalonian Christians became “imitators of us and of the Lord.”
1:9 To say that the Thessalonians “turned to God from idols” indicates that Paul is addressing a Gentile (i.e., previously heathen) audience, because orthodox Jews could not be charged with having worshipped idols. However, Acts 17:4 tells us that some of Paul’s converts in Thessalonica were Jews won over by Paul’s preaching in the synagogue. Were these Jewish converts no longer part of the Thessalonian church addressed by Paul in the letter? Or is the story in Acts incorrect in saying that Paul’s first converts in Thessalonica were from among the Jews?
1:10 Paul rejoices that the Thessalonians have begun to serve the living and true God, and “to wait for his son from heaven.” The waiting would serve no purpose if all were to die before the son from heaven showed up. This passage must mean, therefore, that Paul expected the return of Jesus to occur soon, certainly soon enough for some of the Thessalonians to experience the event that they had been waiting for. This expectation would be consistent with Jesus’s own words, that “this generation will not pass away” before Jesus returns. (Matthew 24:34, also Mark 9:1) In fact, however, all the Thessalonians died waiting. Over 2000 years later, Christians are still waiting for Jesus to return. See also the comment to 4:15 below.
2:2 Some of the shameful treatment at Philippi is described in Acts 16:19-24. Although Paul brags here about his courage in declaring the gospel at Thessalonica “in the face of great opposition,” the version in Acts paints a different picture. When disturbances broke out and a follower (Jason) who had received Paul and Silas was arrested, what was the courageous response of Paul? Did he stand up to the crowds and stand firm in his preaching of the gospel? No. Instead Paul’s followers “immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Beroea.” (Acts 17:10) So apparently sneaking away by night is equivalent to having “courage in our God.”
2:3-10 Paul goes on another self-congratulatory tirade here, making sure that the Thessalonians understand how blameless and selfless his behavior was toward them. In v.9 he claims that he worked in order not to be a burden to any of them, but the aforementioned Jason of Acts 17 may have been slightly burdened when, because of his association with the missionaries, his house was attacked by the mob, and Jason himself was dragged before the authorities. Paul declares that his behavior was “holy and righteous and blameless.” One who thus proclaims himself to be righteous is said to be “self-righteous.” The term is not generally used as a compliment.
2:15 Paul says here that the Jews of Judea “drove us out.” The implication is that he left Judea involuntarily, and would be there still if not for “the Jews.” But in Acts, we are told that Jesus himself commissioned Paul to go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles, which he could hardly have done had he remained in Jerusalem. And in fact, Paul had the option of returning to Jerusalem when Festus, the governor of Judea, offered to send him back to Judea to be tried on the charges facing him. (Acts 25:9) But Paul opted instead to be sent to Rome to appeal to Nero.
2:18 Satan is blamed for Paul’s failure to pay the Thessalonians a visit, even though he desired greatly to see them. If Paul was doing God’s work in spreading the message of Jesus Christ and if Satan could so easily thwart the effort that Paul could not even visit one of his own congregations, then what does that say about the relative power of God and Satan? Paul would have been better off to use a different excuse and claim instead that it was not God’s will that he should visit the Thessalonians just yet. At least that excuse would have been theologically more consistent with his message.
3:1 Because Paul was unable to visit Thessalonica himself, he sent Timothy in his stead, while Paul remained behind in Athens. (Apparently Satan was putting up no obstacles to Timothy.) But the itinerary in Acts does not have Timothy accompanying Paul to Athens. Instead, after fleeing Thessalonica, Silas and Timothy remain behind in Beroea (Acts 17:14), while Paul is conducted on to Athens. After preaching in Athens for a while, Paul departs for Corinth (Acts 18:1), where Silas and Timothy finally catch up to him, after they arrive from Macedonia (Acts 18:5). So in the Acts version, Timothy skips Athens, while in the letter to the Thessalonians, Paul indicates that he sent Timothy out from Athens to Thessalonica.
3:5 Paul is anxious that the Christians in Thessalonica may have fallen away from the gospel message and rendered his missionary work fruitless. Thus, Timothy’s mission is to assess the strength of their faith, and report back to Paul.
3:6 In this verse, Timothy brings good news of the Thessalonians’ faith and love, but not of the hope which is mentioned in the introduction in verse 1:3. Does Paul mean to imply that the Thessalonians are lacking in hope? If so, this may be a hint of the theological issues to be discussed in chapters 4 and 5. Perhaps Timothy’s report was not so rosy as Paul makes it seem in his letter.
3:10 After rejoicing at the “good news of your faith” (v.6) and being “comforted about you through your faith” (v.7), Paul does an about-face and hopes that he might yet see the Thessalonians in order to “supply what is lacking in your faith.”
3:13 Paul reminds his readers of “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints,” a topic he will discuss in greater detail in chapters 4 and 5.
4:4-6 Despite Timothy’s glowing report on the great faith and love of the Thessalonians, Paul apparently feels that they need to be reminded not to fall in with the heathen practices of sexual passion and lust. “The Thessalonian Christians had come out of a background in which sexual freedom and promiscuous indulgence were regarded as natural and to be expected, if not indeed as normal.” (The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 11, p.294.)
4:11-12 Paul’s advice to “live quietly” and “to mind your own affairs” could not be more at odds with Jesus’s own teaching. Recall that Jesus declared he had come not to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34), and not peace, but division (Luke 12:51). Christianity has become, in Paul’s hands, not a force for changing the world, but a self-centered social club whose members keep a low profile while hunkering down to await the second coming of Jesus. Paul’s advice here is similar to that which he gives in Romans 13:1, namely to “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities.” The purpose of this quiet mode of living is to “command the respect of outsiders” which was hardly one of Jesus’s top priorities.
4:13 Here Paul directly addresses the lack of hope which was foreshadowed by omission in 3:6. The issue that has been troubling the Thessalonians is this: Will those Christians who have died while waiting for Jesus to return be able to participate in the glory of his second coming? Paul assures them that they will. This is apparently a new issue that has come up since Paul’s stay in Thessalonica, and was not part of his original teaching there. It is entirely based on the difficulty posed by the delay in Jesus’s return, which was starting to seem very tardy to some believers.
4:15 Paul assures his audience that “We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.” “Fallen asleep” is a common euphimism for “died.” There is the clear implication in Paul’s language (first person “we”) that he expects some of his readers, as well as himself, to be alive when Jesus returns. This expectation of an early return was expressed on numerous occasions by Jesus himself in the gospels. The failure of Jesus to return during the lifetime of the first generation of Christians is a severe blow to the credibility of the Christian religion. For additional discussion on the timing of the second coming, see the comment to Matthew 24:34.
4:16-17 These verses describe the “rapture” that some fundamentalist Christian groups expect and look forward to. Those Christians who have already died will rise first, then “We who are alive” (Paul obviously includes himself in this group.) “shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” Paul’s words to the Thessalonians on this subject would have been pointless if indeed all his readers were going to die waiting for Jesus. He clearly expected that some of them would still be alive when Jesus returned.
5:1-4 The Christians at Thessalonica must have questioned Timothy as to when the return of Jesus would finally occur. Paul does not tell them that the time is unknown, but simply that they have “no need to have anything written” on the subject. Possibly this is because Paul already discussed the question when he was first in Thessalonica, and he has nothing new to add. In any event, he warns his readers that the day will come suddenly, but he does not say that it will come unexpectedly. According to v.4, the Thessalonians “are not in darkness . . . for that day to surprise you like a thief.” Apparently they have received some information, possibly from Paul himself, that allows them to know with some confidence when the day will come. Of course, the return of Jesus never did come, and all of the Thessalonians died while waiting for him. We must emphasize again: If they were all going to die waiting, there would be no point in Paul going into the distinction between those who remained alive and those who had “fallen asleep.” He might just as well have said, “You’re all going to die waiting for Jesus, but don’t worry, you’ll all be raised.” The fact that he made a distinction between those who had died and those who would be alive, demonstrates that Paul expected Jesus’s return to come soon, at least during the lifetime of some of the Thessalonian Christians to whom his letter was addressed.
5:9 Those who are to receive salvation have been “destined” to do so by God. Thus, salvation is not a matter of individual choice, but of predestination by God. This is not an isolated instance of this idea. See, for example, the comment to 1:4. There are also numerous other passages throughout the New Testament that portray God as determining who gets saved and who doesn’t. For example, John 6:44; 6:65; Romans 9:18. See also 2 Corinthians 4:4, and the discussion of that verse in The Atheist’s Introduction to the New Testament, by Mike Davis, pp.95-96.
5:12-13 Paul returns to his theme of obedience to authority. This time it is the authority of the church leaders that the members are exhorted to respect.
5:15 The advice that “none of you repays evil for evil” echoes Jesus’s words to “resist not evil” but to turn the other cheek. (Matthew 5:39) However, Paul words in Galatians 5:12 are not so mild, where he wishes that “those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves!” This is in the context of a discussion about circumcision, and some translations use the more graphic “castrate” in place of “mutilate.”
5:21 Paul’s advice to “test everything” seems to be a recommendation to question prophets in order to determine whether they are genuine. It is similar to the advice in 1 John 4:1 to “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God.; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
5:27 Paul closes by requesting that his letter be read to “all the brethren.” Many of the early Christians were not literate, and the expectation would be that someone in the church would read the letter out loud to the congregation.
1:1 The second letter to the Thessalonians, which purports to have been written by Paul, may in fact have been written by him. However, there is a large body of scholarship that suggests otherwise. Overall, scholars are evenly split on the issue. There is no argument which definitively proves that Paul could not have written the second letter. But a string of implausibilities casts doubt upon Paul’s authorship. The second letter is so like the first in terms of structure and organization, that it seems unlikely for Paul to have written such a similar letter to the same recipients so shortly after writing the first one. However, in terms of content, the second letter breaks with the view of 1 Thessalonians by pushing the return of Jesus into an indefinite future, in contrast to the first letter where Paul warns his readers that Jesus may return unannounced at any moment. A brief summary of the views of each side can be found in The Oxford Bible Commentary, p.1213.
The translation “church” in the greeting represents an over-translation of the Greek ekklesia. “Assembly,” “congregation,” or “community” would be more appropriate translations if the letter was actually written in Paul’s time. If written later by a different author, then there may indeed have been a “church” with more of a formal hierarchy and organizational structure.
1:4 This verse contradicts the advice of Paul himself in 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17, where we are told “let him who boasts boast of the LORD” (RSV), and in 1 Corinthians 3:21 – “Let no one boast of men.” (RSV)
1:5 The early Christian authors regularly exalted suffering among their congregations and praised their followers for their endurance in the face of affliction. This attitude toward suffering arises from the surprising death of Jesus at the hands of the Romans. The messiah was supposed to be a conquering hero.No one among the Jews of Palestine expected the promised messiah to be captured and executed. The ordinary view in antiquity was that if a group of people were suffering and persecuted, it indicated that their god was too weak or uninvolved to help them. Perversely, early Christians turned this divine indifference into evidence of their special favor in the eyes of God.
1:6 No evidence is cited to justify the belief that God will “repay with affliction” those who are persecuting the Christians. Indeed, the lament of Job indicates the opposite is more common: “Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? . . . Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them.” (Job 21:7,9 RSV)
1:8 Note that the gospel is thought of as something to be “obeyed,” rather than believed. The only other instance where the gospel is to be obeyed is in 1 Peter 4:17. By contrast, Jesus began his ministry by calling upon his listeners to “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
Also note that here it is not justice, but vengeance, that will be meted out in the last judgment, and it will be “the Lord Jesus” himself who inflicts it. Luke 21:22 also speaks of “days of vengeance” in the end times, but does not say it will be carried out by Jesus. Jesus himself is never quoted in the gospels as saying anything about vengeance, but he does speak often about forgiveness. (For example, Matthew 6:14-15; 18:21-22; Mark 11:25-26, etc.)
2:2 The author seeks to correct those among the congregation who thought that the “day of the Lord” had already arrived. But they cannot be blamed for thinking so, because they had been taught that Jesus would return very soon to bring about the end of the present wicked age. Jesus himself taught that the end would come before the generation living at that time had passed away. (Matthew 24:34; Mark 9:1) Paul himself stoked such beliefs in his first letter to the Thessalonians, and clearly thought that he would be among those still alive when Jesus came. (1 Thessalonians 4:17)
2:3 This verse represents a clear break with the expectations of Paul in 1 Thessalonians. The author here lists the signs that must occur first before the day of the Lord arrives. These signs include the rebellion and the mysterious “man of lawlessness.” Until these things happen, the expectation of Jesus’s arrival is premature. But in 1 Thessalonians, Paul warns that there will be no signs, and that the day of the Lord will arrive “like a thief in the night.” And there will not be rebellion and turmoil, but the end could even come when people say there is “peace and safety.” (1 Thessalonians 5:2-3)
2:8 The ability to slay the lawless one with “the breath of his mouth” is a divine power not otherwise attested anywhere in the New Testament, although Isaiah 11:4 speaks of the LORD (Yahweh) who shall “smite the earth with the word of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he destroy the ungodly one.” (Septuagint, tr. Brenton) Manuscripts of 2 Thessalonians are divided on whether it is “the Lord Jesus” who will thus slay the lawless one, or simply “the Lord.” RSV and NIV take it as “the Lord Jesus,” while KJV and NASB render it as “the Lord.” “The Lord” may still refer to Jesus rather than to God, as “Lord” commonly refers to Jesus throughout the New Testament.
If anyone deserves the title “lawless,” it would be Paul himself, because he taught that Christians are no longer under the Mosaic law that Jews had followed for centuries. (Galatians 3:13; 5:18)
2:11 To say that God sends a “strong delusion” upon the wicked in order to make them believe a lie, is the same as saying that God himself is a liar. After all, this is what liars do - they delude their listeners in order to make them believe what is not true. Yet we read in Numbers 23:19 that “God is not a man, that he should lie.” And in Titus 1:2 we are told that God “cannot lie,” in clear contradiction to the assertion here in 2 Thessalonians.
2:13 This is one of many passages in the New Testament indicating that those who are to be saved were chosen from the beginning. Thus, a person’s eternal lot depends not on his or her own actions, but on a divine decision made long before they were ever born. See also Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 1:5.
3:3 How can it be said that the Lord will strengthen them and protect them from the evil one, when we have already been told that the readers are suffering (1:5)? Paul repeatedly speaks of the suffering and tribulations of the Christian community (Romans 8:17-18;2 Corinthians 1:5; Philippians 1:29), and such widespread suffering is inconsistent with the notion that God or Jesus will protect them from suffering.
3:6 In other letters, Paul curses those who preach a different gospel from his own (Galatians 1:8-9), and he orders his readers to avoid fellow Christians who are drunkards and idolaters and robbers (1 Corinthians 5:9-11). Here, the author also advises the Thessalonians to shun those who live in a “disorderly” fashion which departs from the teaching that has been handed down to them. In all these cases, the advice contradicts the position of Jesus, who taught that “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.” (Matthew 18:15, NASB)
3:10 “If anyone wishes not to work, then let him not eat.” This is a rather harsh approach to feeding the hungry. Those to whom Jesus referred when he said “I was hungry and you gave me no food” were condemned to go away into eternal punishment. (Matthew 25:42-46) But there is no indication that Jesus expected the poor and the hungry to work for their sustenance. Jesus’s attitude toward working for one’s food contrasted sharply with the rule expressed here in 2 Thessalonians. (e.g., Matthew 6:26) And John 6:27 directly contradicts it with “Do not labor for the food which perishes.” (RSV)
3:12 Contrary to what is claimed here, Jesus did not teach that everyone should work to earn their own living, as shown in the comment to 3:10.
3:14 Again contradicting the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18:15. See the comment to 3:6.
3:16 If the “Lord of peace” is supposed to refer to Jesus, the author was obviously not familiar with the Lord’s teaching. Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword, and to set a person against his own family members. (Matthew 10:34-35) Note also that Exodus 15:3 proclaims: “The LORD [Yahweh] is a man of war.”