The letters of the apostle Paul feature a significant and surprising doctrine of boasting. According to Paul, there is nothing wrong with a little bragging, so long as you boast about the right thing. What we boast about reveals a great deal about the character of our religion. Churches in the West today increasingly take pride in the beauty of their buildings, the quality of their music, the dynamic personalities of their preachers, and above all their numerical size. More biblically minded churches take satisfaction in doctrinal fidelity, commitment to world missions, and sound biblical leadership. Yet when Paul writes his second letter to the fledgling church in Thessalonica, he boasts in something more surprising. Having expressed his thanks for his readers’ growing faith and increasing love, he writes: “We ourselves boast about…your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring” (v. 4). If we follow Paul’s example, we will also make our boast in a faith that grows, loves, and perseveres under persecution.

During the years A.D. 49-51, the world was powerfully shaken by Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, through the second missionary journey of the apostle Paul. One of Paul’s stops was in the large and prosperous Macedonian city of Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9). Preaching the gospel there, Paul assembled believers into a local church, which immediately suffered persecution. The apostle himself was forced to flee the city, journeying through Athens to Corinth. There, Paul received cherished news of the Thessalonians and wrote to express his thanks for their faith and give them continued teaching, especially on the doctrines of sanctification and the return of Christ. When Paul received a reply, he penned a second letter, probably within a few months of the first. Second Thessalonians thus completes the message of the first letter, centering on the church’s continued persecution, additional teaching on Christ’s return, and a forceful directive concerning members who refused to work.

Paul begins this letter in typical fashion, first identifying himself and his recipients, and then greeting them with an appeal to the grace and peace of God the Father and of Christ. He writes to “the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1). The way in which Paul closely identifies Jesus Christ with God the Father shows his belief in the deity of Jesus.

There is a subtle difference in how Paul describes God in this letter compared to 1 Thessalonians. In the previous letter, he wrote of “God the Father,” whereas here he twice describes Him as God our Father” (vv. 1-2). In the first instance, Paul emphasized God as the Father of Jesus Christ; now he emphasizes our adoption as God’s children, so that God is not only Jesus’ Father but ours as well. It is as beloved, adopted children that the believers are “in God our Father,” through our faith in “the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 1).

From this same union believers receive the two great blessings that Paul almost always mentions in the opening of his letters: grace and peace. The apostle continues: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 2). This statement sums up the gospel that Paul preached. Grace is God’s free gift of favor to those worthy of condemnation because of their sin. Grace flows from the Father in the form of His sovereign will to save His people into fellowship with Himself. Grace is offered by God the Son on the basis of His redeeming work on the cross. The result of God’s grace in our lives is peace: the comprehensive blessing of peace with God through forgiveness of sin, God’s peace at work in our hearts through the indwelling Holy Spirit, and peace with one another through the love that Christ gives to us.

Just as in his first letter, Paul follows his initial greeting with thanks to God for the faith of his readers. The difference in the second letter is that Paul highlights their growing faith (v. 3). A true faith in Jesus Christ is designed to grow exceedingly. Therefore, having been initially relieved to learn of the Thessalonians’ faith, Paul is now delighted to learn that their faith is growing as it should.

The calling to grow in faith raises the question how this is to be done. Faith must be primarily fed on a steady diet of the Word of God. Are you given to meditation of God’s Word, have you studied the promises, and do you do these sacred things daily? If you answer “No,” then the lack of growth in your faith is not surprising. Psalm 1 promises that the one who meditates daily on God’s Word is blessed with growing faith (Ps. 1:2-3). If your faith would be like a tree that grows tall and strong, you must have your roots in the water of life.

Second, faith grows through prayer in response to God’s Word. Try God’s promises and ask Him to show their fulfillment in your own life. As an example, the Bible says that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). So ask God to exhibit His power in your weakness. Paul writes that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,” will guard the hearts and…minds” of those who pray in Christ (Phil. 4:7). Ask God to grant that peace to your heart and mind. Jesus told us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). So, ask God daily to provide for the things that you need. Not only will you find God faithful to His promises, but your faith in Him will grow correspondingly.

Third, faith in Christ grows through association with godly fellowship. When those of little faith describe their spiritual troubles, they find that others have had the same difficulties and overcome them by trusting in Jesus. The veteran believer will tell you what dangers he has passed, and of the sovereign love that kept him; of the temptations that threatened to ensnare him, and of the wisdom that guided his feet; and he will tell you of his weakness and God’s omnipotence; of his own emptiness, and God’s fullness; of his own changeableness, and God’s immutability. In fact, this kind of faith-building conversation is one of the primary callings of the church. Hebrews 3:13 directs believers to “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

A further way for faith to grow is by being exercised in loving ministry to other people. Paul specifies this calling when he rejoices that “the love of every one of you for one another is increasing” (v. 3). Faith and love are so joined in Paul’s letters that we can hardly claim the first without the evidence of the second. The urgency of this kind of love was specified by Jesus on the night of His arrest: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).

The positive tone which Paul writes once more to the Thessalonians is seen in his praise to God for their growing faith and increasing love. But his highest boast is seen in yet another fruit of a true and living faith in Christ. We have highlighted a number of ways that Christian faith grows. Faith in Christ grows on a diet of God’s Word, through prayer, through godly company, and through exercise in works of love for all kinds of people. Moreover, Paul concludes, our faith in Christ will grow as we persevere in the midst of trials: “Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring” (v. 4).

Paul goes into unexpected regions of boasting when he brags about the persecutions that these young believers had endured. Steadfastness in affliction is not something that the world brags about, but Paul says that “in the churches of God” it is one of the most praiseworthy subjects. Whereas worldly thinking will lead us to glorify churches and Christians that enjoy the greatest outward success and never seem to suffer any difficulties, the spiritual thinking of true churches will glory in a faith that abounds under persecution for Christ. One fruit of this way of thinking will be a positive overall attitude toward world missions. Instead of merely thinking of churches in developing countries and persecuted regions as needing our help, we will more wisely look to them for inspiration, spiritual encouragement, and valued insights regarding the life of true and costly faith in Christ.

One of the chief benefits of persecution is that it reveals the difference between true and false faith. In His parable of the soils, Jesus described the kind of faith that is like a seed that falls amid rocky ground and springs up quickly from the earth. Yet because such a person “has no root in himself,” he professes faith for a while, but “when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away” (Matt. 13:20-21). Since our response to opposition shows the real state of our faith, new believers who have been rejected by their friends, been ridiculed by their families, or, like Paul’s Thessalonian readers, suffered violence and even death for Jesus gain the benefit of assurance that theirs is a true and saving faith.

Do you need encouragement in your life of faith? Perhaps you look at yourself and see little or nothing that the world would boast about. Be encouraged then, if your faith is growing, if God is enabling you to spread Christ’s love, and if you are patiently enduring difficulty for Jesus’ sake. You, then, are like the believers to whom Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians. Paul wrote to show that we are obliged to praise God with thanksgiving whenever our faith is growing, our love is increasing, and we are remaining steadfast to Christ under affliction.

2 Thessalonians 1:1-4 Study Questions:

When Paul writes this second letter to the young church in Thessalonica, he emphasizes not only that he is thanking God for them, but that it is utterly right and proper to do so. What does Paul see in the church at Thessalonica that is filling his heart with gratitude to God in verses 1-4?

It was inevitable that the world would find the church a threat and a challenge and would oppose them all it could, because the church was indeed the beginning of God’s kingdom, which would displace all human kingdoms. What does it look like to have patience and loyalty in the face of these kinds of troubles and suffering?

Paul concludes his letter with a prayer for the holiness of his readers. Earlier, the apostle wrote that “this is the will of God, your sanctification” (v. 4:3). Sanctification refers to the process by which God’s people are made like Him in His holy nature. Paul declares that God is Himself the source of our sanctification: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you” (v. 5:23). Peace is an attribute of God that Paul frequently notes in his benedictions. In speaking of our sanctification, we can see why he would refer to the peace of God, especially if we understand peace in its fullest sense of ultimate blessing and integrity.

Not only is God the One who sanctifies, but Paul further emphasizes how total and entire this sanctification is intended to be: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely” (v. 23). Paul expresses this principle of entire sanctification in three ways. First, we are to be sanctified completely, combining the Greek word for whole with the word for to the end (Greek holotelas). We might regard this as the designed extent of our sanctification: it is to be finished and complete.

Continuing in making this point, Paul adds a second prayer item: “And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 23). This statement is considered important to the question whether man is composed of two parts (body and soul – called dichotomy) or of three parts (body, soul, and spirit – called trichotomy). Trichotomists claim this passage as proof of their doctrine. Yet Paul didn’t intend to define the parts of the human nature, any more than Jesus did when He said to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). In general, the Bible uses the terms soul and spirit interchangeably and presents man’s nature in two parts: soul/spirit and body.

Third, Paul writes that our sanctification is such that we are “kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 23). The meaning of blameless is “faultless” (Heb. 8:7) or “without blemish” (Phil. 2:15). Here we see the end product of our sanctification, our blamelessness, which takes place when Christ returns. Since Paul includes our bodies, along with our inner selves, he is referring to the resurrection of the dead. According to the Bible, when Christ returns, “the dead in Christ will rise” (1 Thess. 4:16). In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul notes that “we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” He adds that “the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52). Here we see the completion of our sanctification, when in the resurrection our glorified souls will be reunited with our then-glorified bodies. It is after this that the final judgment takes place, in which all of Christ’s people will stand “blameless” and justified.

Paul’s doctrine of sanctification is a radical one, so we can understand why many Christians find it hard to believe that God intends complete holiness for us. It is probably in anticipating this kind of response that Paul continues to say that we are sanctified not only completely, but also sovereignly by God: “He who calls you faithful; he will surely do it (v. 24). The apostle reminds us that our salvation begins with the call of God: “He who calls you.” Paul adds that God is not only a sovereign caller to salvation but also a sovereign actor in sanctification: “He who calls you…will surely do it” (v. 24). In this way, Paul identifies God Himself as the chief mover in the salvation of Christians.

God’s sovereignty certainly doesn’t rule out individual effort in our sanctification, which is why Paul proceeds to note the importance of our ministry to one another in pursuit of holiness. We are sanctified completely and sovereignly, Paul writes, and we are also sanctified mutually. We see the mutuality of our sanctification in three exhortations, starting with a summons to prayer: “Brothers, pray for us” (v. 25). Paul’s logic is obvious: if God is the One who sanctifies His people, then just as Paul has prayed for the Thessalonians, he would have them pray for him and for one another.

In addition to praying for one another, Paul urges the believers to loving fellowship in the church. He writes: “Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss” (v. 26). It was the practice of early Christians to greet one another with a kiss – most likely on the cheek or the forehead – that expressed their loving brotherhood in Jesus Christ. Over time the practice took on a liturgical form, where it continues in the liturgy of the Eastern church, although most Western churches no longer practice holy kissing. This exhortation points out the importance of what takes place not only during but also before and after the worship service. Whether it is a quiet, listening ear, a word of encouragement from experience or from the Bible, a welcoming smile to a visitor, or a helping hand to one in need, we are participating in God’s sanctifying work that will ultimately be perfected in glory.

Third, Paul exhorts the Thessalonians that the ministry of God’s Word must be honored in the life of the church: “I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers” (v. 27). The forcefulness with which the apostle speaks tells us about both the nature of his ministry and the priority he places on God’s Word. It was the practice in Jewish synagogues for the Scriptures to be read, and here Paul gives that same place to the reading of his own letter. Likewise, Peter described Paul’s writings as “Scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16). More than simply validating his ministry, Paul’s command signals how vital the reading of Scripture is to the sanctification of believers. “Sanctify them in the truth” (John 17:17).

Paul concludes this remarkable first letter the Thessalonians with a benediction focused on the grace of God in Christ. Following the apostolic example, many churches today conclude their worship services with a pastoral benediction taken from the Scriptures, the purpose of which is to offer a declaratory prayer for the blessings that God has promised to provide to those who trust in Jesus.

Paul began 1 Thessalonians with an appeal to “grace…and peace” (v. 1:1), so it is fitting that he concludes first with a reference to the God of peace and finally with a benediction on the grace of God in Christ: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (v. 5:28). This statement is no mere wish from Paul, but a declaration of what is certainly the case for those who have believed in Jesus. The final word that they need to hear from their pastor is the truth that the grace of Christ is with them. We need the same assurance of God’s grace today – an assurance that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

God’s grace is His own favor – freely given to those who have deserved His wrath – because of the saving work of Jesus Christ for His people. At various points in this letter, Paul has pressed his readers to be serious about their growth in salvation, especially about their sanctification into increased holiness. Here at the end, he reminds them once again that this expectation is grounded in the grace that God provides through His Son.

If Paul’s final words are any indication – and they must be – then God’s purpose in our struggle for holiness is not just so that we might give up sinful things for Him and offer good works in their stead, though this is part of what it means to love God. By concluding with grace, Paul suggests that God leaves us to struggle with holiness so that we might come to learn the reality and extent of His grace for us. He called us in grace to a patient, long-suffering, power-exhibiting process of sanctification. In this way, he gives each of us a personal experience of His grace.

Finally, Paul reminds us that God’s grace is in “our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 28). God wants us to understand His grace by appropriating the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Savior and Lord. The process of becoming holy causes us to look frequently to the cross, where Jesus died for our sins. By facing our sins in practical ways, we realize how great was the love of Christ that willingly bore our penalty on the cross. We are to rely wholeheartedly on Christ’s intercession for us in heaven (Rom. 8:34) and His power at work in our lives through the Holy Spirit whom He sends (Eph. 1:19-20). As a result, our holiness is to take on the lovely graciousness of the holiness of Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:23-28 Study Questions:

What might Paul be trying to communicate by using family terminology three times in verses 23-29?

In what ways would the reminder of God’s faithfulness in verses 23-28 be an encouragement to the Thessalonians?

As his letter closes, Paul returns in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 to the theme of faith, hope and love that he began with in 1:3. How do these draw together the other main themes in the letter such as suffering, grief, joy, family and holiness?

What are the main things you take with you from this letter?