Dear church,

The apostle Paul wrote in this chapter about leaders in the church, and I think we often miss the point of this passage. We look for qualifications and how leadership works. And this passage does give us some things to talk about.

But the point of this passage is about “how one ought to behave in the household of God” (3:15).

This is about ethics, particularly for church leaders. We might think of church leaders as “household managers.” These would be like people in the ancient Mediterranean world who were charged with watching over the household of the master of the home, or the paterfamilias.[1]

To be the household manager would have brought quite a bit of responsibility. Not just anyone should have that job. To mis-manage the household would have been a bad thing indeed.

A question we need to ask is what the leaders of the household of God are trying to manage the household toward? It is not to make a profit, like in a business. No, household leaders are trying to grow people toward maturity in Christ.

It’s kind of like being a parent – shepherding kids along and hoping they finally “grow up.”

And so we notice the qualifications to become one of these household managers – an overseer, especially, but deacons, too – have a lot to do with how they live within their own biological families. If they can’t manage things there, where they also are working to grow people toward maturity and to protect the family, then they certainly can’t manage things in the church.

This is food for thought. We need more good leaders in our church.

Chris

[1] Christopher R. Hutson, First and Second Timothy and Titus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 88.

Dear church,

What did it mean to live “a peaceful and quiet life,” according to Paul? Whatever it is, it sure sounds good – especially in an era when not much is peaceful or quiet.

We have protests occurring in cities across the country. There is general angst among many people because of COVID-19. And, of course, we’ve long been pressured by all of the media and social media that is available to us today. And we still must work our jobs and raise our families and take care of our loved ones.

“Peaceful and quiet” sounds pretty appealing.

Paul encouraged everyone to pray for others – “all people” – including kings and those in authority. Paul lived in an age where government was kind of sketchy. Anarchy never was far away. Law and order was very much desired. Peace and quiet required a competent government. It was worthy praying for.

Of course, we know that to pray for our government leaders requires we put aside our own personal preferences. We may not like the man or woman in power, but we will pray for that person.

The same goes for the whole idea of praying for “all people.” Paul doesn’t narrow it down, and “all people” includes people we don’t like in our neighborhoods or jobs or families. Again, we set aside our own personal preferences in order to pray for others.

I think this is part of what goes into living “a peaceful and quiet life.” We live that kind of life when we turn our attention to prayer – to the things of God. And God loves all people.

Moreover, the things of God are this: that all people are saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

Some things simply rise to the top. The salvation of lost people, whether I like them or not, is a central desire of God.

So I think this “peaceful and quiet life” begins with setting aside some of my own personal desires and focusing on the things of God – things like the gospel. The chief commandment, we must remember, is to love God with everything that we have, with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. This comes first. It is the foundation of everything we do, including loving our neighbors.

A “peaceful and quiet life” probably includes finding ways to focus our attention on God. It probably includes finding old and new ways to love him. And this, of course, means letting go of our personal pride and desire and just sitting with him.

So we pray, of course. We never stop praying. We pray for our enemies and for the politicians we don’t like. And we don’t let the ways of the world infiltrate our lives or our churches. And we don’t permit petty disputes to take up our time or to distract us from our mission to love God and love our neighbors.

And sometimes, I think, we ought to just sit in silence for a while. Maybe “quiet” literally means “quiet.” I’ve found amazing things can happen in my own soul when I dedicate myself to silence for a few minutes or hours. We silence our own voice and the voices that want to come into our lives, and we listen for Him.

Chris

Dear church,

Paul’s honesty about himself comes into view in chapter 1. He was the “foremost” of sinners. And God saved Paul to show the “perfect patience” of Jesus Christ.

Even the most wretched of people can be saved because Jesus Christ’s patience is perfect.

It makes us go back to the list of sins laid out in verses 9-10. We see the lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, the unholy and profane, those who strike their fathers and mothers, murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and “whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.”

Can you see yourself in that list? Surely, there’s at least one sin to which you can admit. Do any of these vices ring true in your life?

As Christians, we are striving for a closer walk with Christ. We are reaching out for a life of greater peace and wisdom. Can we do that if we can’t see the perfect patience of Jesus Christ – the God who could show mercy to sinners like us?

We live in a culture that likes to build people up. There’s an entire generation now that sometimes is called the “trophy” generation. This is where every kid on the baseball team gets a trophy – not because of exceptional play or because the team won a championship but because we don’t want to make any one kid feel bad or left out. Everyone is a winner!

There’s some surface-level good about this. There’s also something dangerous about this. The danger comes in the lack of honesty that is built into such a system. Not every kid deserves a trophy. Some kids are terrible baseball players. And some kids have terrible attitudes. And some teams never win a single game.

Being a Christian means we honestly admit to God the reality of who we are. We are sinners.

Paul wanted us to know that if Jesus Christ offered mercy to him – the foremost of sinners – then Jesus Christ is offering mercy to us as well.

Really, the humbling of ourselves is the very first step in our Christian walk. If we don’t take that step, we can’t take any others. First, we need to see the undeserved gift of salvation that’s been given to us.

It is at that point the story becomes good news – because then the story is all about Jesus and not about us.

Chris

Dear church,

There is something good about work. Some people may disagree. Work can be dull and tiresome. But I am of a mind that God created us to work.

God created Adam and immediately gave him a job in the garden of Eden. There was work to be done.

Work can be fulfilling and creative. It stimulates our minds and bodies. When we are done working – God willing – we will have something to show for it.

On the flip side, to stop working when we still are able to work – to work at something – can lead to problems. Idleness is never a good thing. Rest is good, but idleness is not.

The circumstances in Thessalonica aren’t exactly clear. We’re not quite sure who the idle ones were or why they were idle. They could have been expecting the return of Jesus and so had quit on the world. Or they may have been greedy pastors or teachers or spiritual gurus who were taking advantage of the church. There are other options, too.

But Paul urged the members of the church – the brothers and sisters – to “work quietly and to earn their own living.”

To work quietly means what it says. We work without a show. We work simply to reap the benefit of our working, to put food on our own tables and to support our families. We don’t demand things from others. Instead, we are happy to help them out, and we are accepting of their help for us.

Work is good. It is a blessing to us, and it enables us to bless others. A Christian doesn’t fall into idleness. We strive to produce something with our hands – to support ourselves at the very least.

What are you working on today?

Chris

Dear church,

The image that captured my imagination in this chapter was that of this mysterious “man of lawlessness” being obliterated by the breath of Jesus’ mouth. Yes, this is not the sweet and kind Jesus of our children’s Sunday School classes!

I’ve had people in my life whom I (almost) have wanted to obliterate with the breath of my mouth. I just didn’t like them. Some were enemies. Some were critics. The world today calls them “haters.” But, alas, we’re to love them anyway. And folks like this are not what is picture in 2 Thessalonians 2:8.

No, what happens here is that Jesus returns and finds the man of lawlessness pretending to be God. Jesus annihilates him. With his breath. This is a picture of perfect holiness coming into contact with perfect sin. The result is instantaneous, complete, and final. The end never is in doubt.

Psalm 33:6 says, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” The very word and breath of God is powerful. They have creative powers.

But they have something else, too:

Isaiah 11:4 says, “But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.”

Isaiah 30:33 says, “For a burning place has long been prepared; indeed, for the (Assyrian) king it is made ready, its pyre made deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of sulfur, kindles it.”

The breath of God creates – and destroys.

This, of course, made me think about the Word of God, issued forth in the person of Jesus. He is the divine Word of God.

It makes us look at our Bibles in a whole different light. It makes us pay more attention to the words of God given to us.

This Bible-reading plan is no little thing to engage in. A chapter a day. It’s not much. But there is eternal power in these words. The words of the Bible are the most important words you will read all day.

Here’s another scriptural reference to God’s breath: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Chris

Dear church,

We know we’re not worthy. At least we should, as Christians, know this. We are saved by grace alone. By ourselves, we are not worthy of the kingdom of God. It’s not something we’ve earned. We don’t really belong there.

Sin is the problem. And until that sin is dealt with, heaven is not a place for us.

In Christ, our sin has been dealt with.

And Paul was praying for the believers in Thessalonica, that God would make them “worthy of his calling.” The believers there were being faithful even in the midst of persecution. They were suffering, Paul noted. But they were suffering well. Their love for one another was growing and, otherwise, they simply were remaining steadfast in the faith.

Surely, steadfast faith in the midst of suffering is what makes a person worthy. But even in this, it is only God who makes a person worthy, Paul wrote.

God makes a person worthy, it seems, by filling up their steadfast faith with his glory – the Lord Jesus glorified in the Thessalonians, and they in him (1:12). We believe, and Jesus fills up our lives.

It’s pretty simple, really – at least in concept. We just believe. We trust. No matter what. God does the rest. May we do this today!

Chris

Dear church,

The apostle Paul closed out his letter with images of war and peace.

The Thessalonians were to put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation. Some kind of battle was brewing. It reminded me of the last chapter of Ephesians – the armor of God. There, we learned about the enemy: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

We want to live in a world of peace and security, but we’re reminded in Scripture that a cosmic battle is taking place, and we are participants.

And then in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, he wrote life within the church: “Be at peace among yourselves.” Certainly, we know this. We love one another. We help one another. We encourage one another. We are patient with one another. We live in peace as a church.

This is the perspective we are to have as believers. We are prepared for battle, for the onslaught of temptation and evil that the world slings at humanity, and especially at the faithful in Christ. And we are caring toward our brothers and sisters in Christ. War on the outside and peace within.

I’ve been studying ancient Mediterranean families lately, and there was a marked difference between how a person in Paul’s day might treat a family member compared to how one treated someone outside the family. You would treat a family with respect and honor, and you naturally would be suspicious toward “outsiders.” The world was marked by competition. You competed with those outside your family, but you loved and protected those within it.

This inside-outside difference isn’t altogether absent from what Paul is writing here. We are prepared to do battle with the heavenly forces of evil while loving our church family.

Of course, lost in this might be our relations with those who also live in this world (and outside the church) but who do not yet know Jesus. Some of them might become enemies to the church, certainly, but most of them are probably ambivalent.

And so we share the gospel in word and deed.

Chris

Dear church,

There is some indication Paul wrote this first letter to the Thessalonian church in response to a crisis: Some of its members had died. It may have been something rather sudden, perhaps an accident or an outbreak of persecution. The trouble could have been that these Thessalonian believers thought incorrectly that every Christian would remain alive until the return of Christ.

And so the apostle Paul was writing to the church to encourage its members in the faith.

Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more. (1 Thessalonians 4:9-10).

The answer, in moving forward, was to love each other as brothers and sisters in the family of God – which they knew full well how to do. They were to pay attention to the family of God, to the body of Christ.

The tradition given to us from Jesus is to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together as a church. And in doing this, we are not to be arrogant and rude. We are not to run ahead of each other for the first place in line.

Instead, we are to take the bread and the cup in a way that enables us to see and understand the “body” – that is, the body of Christ, or the church. In another place, Paul wrote, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Corinthians 11:29).

And so we discern the church, we see each other as brothers and sisters, as we take the bread and the cup.

But the “body” is more than what we see around us on a Sunday morning. Yes, for the Thessalonian believers, the body included those members who had passed away. They, too, remained part of the body of Christ – guaranteed to be raised first (1 Thessalonians 4:15-16). And the body of Christ also included believers who extended out beyond the church walls in Thessalonica. There were brothers in other towns in Macedonia, and brotherly love was due to them as well.

And so as we discern the body of Christ as a church, we gather all of these into our thoughts – our brothers and sisters who have gone before and our brothers and sisters who are distant from us. We take time to remember them, wherever we are, and to thank God for their role in building the body of Christ.

In this way, we re-member the church. We bring to together its distant parts, and we do this in remembrance of him.

Chris

Dear church,

I wonder whether sometimes we take it for granted that we can gather. Certainly, we’ve gotten a taste of not gathering as we have endured the COVID-19 pandemic. We know a little more now about what it’s like to not be able to see each other.

We’ve heard reports in the general public about the negative effects of social distancing. Depression and suicide are up, they say. This makes sense to us because people were not designed to be alone, nor were they designed to adapt easily in situations when they are forced to be apart.

But our COVID-19 troubles as a church likely pale in comparison to the “social distancing” that existed between Paul and the Thessalonian church – and so many churches he knew and loved. Paul was physically distant from the church, and he missed it. Persecution and suffering seemed to be happening in Thessalonica, and Paul was desperate to find out how things were going there. He said he could “bear it no longer.”

And Christians, in those days, were still relatively rare. It was not like Paul simply could walk down the street to find another collection of believers. To find those with a similar faith and a similar hope was a precious thing indeed. It must have been like coming home any time a Christian found a group like that.

And Paul was hungry for it.

We probably take it for granted. Even in these COVID days, we’ve found ways to get together. And without COVID, there’s no stopping us from getting together. There’s no difficulty in distance. We have the time. We have a place. And we face no persecution – not really, not yet.

And so we read about Paul’s longing for the Thessalonian church, and we might wonder why he was that way. We may not fully connect with him.

The lesson for us may be to be thankful every time we do gather. We ought to soak up every minute of Christian fellowship we can find.

Chris

Dear church,

The love of the apostle Paul for the church in Thessalonica is clear.

“But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you – I, Paul, again and again – but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.”

Paul’s writing drips with affection for his “brothers and sisters.” He was torn away from the church, and he longed to return. What a joyous reunion it would be!

One of the long-standing practices of the church, which dates back to ancient times, is the practice of praying together. It is one thing to pray alone. But it is entirely another thing to pray together.

When we pray together as a church and when we share the results of those prayers with each other, something powerful begins to happen. Sometimes we don’t realize the shared history we have as a church. Sometimes we forget the way in which God has moved in the past within our congregation. And sometimes we fail to see the way in which God is moving among us today.

But in praying together and sharing the results of those prayers with each other, we bring that history and those movements of God to light. We begin better to see who we are as a church. Our communal identity becomes clear. In fact, we become aware again that we are, indeed, a community.

And if we do this long enough, we might be able to put into words something concrete about our communal identity. We might be able to say meaningful things about who we are right now and where God is leading us.

The apostle Paul, so adept at prayer and at sharing the results of his prayers, was able to find those words for his beloved Thessalonians – “glory and joy.” The church was the glory and joy of the apostles. More fully, it was the glory and joy of the gospel.

Paul could see, and he wanted the church to see, the events of its communal past – with all its moments of desolation and consolation. Paul also wanted the church to get a glimpse of its future. This, too, was communal. “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.”

Perhaps as we continue to pray together, and to freely share the results of those prayers with each other, we’ll also find ourselves more tightly bound together as a community, as the family of God. And perhaps we’ll be able to find the words for how God also is moving among us right now and what God has in store for us in the future.

Chris