1 Thessalonians 3:12 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Thessalonians 3:12

Comments

Paul uses two terms: to increase and abound, to increase and flow over, you might translate it. To increase and to increase excessively in love. Love for one another and toward all men. And how do they express their love to all men? Principally, of course, they continue as a gospel church, proclaiming, witnessing, and reaching out. It comes up again in the verse, at the very end: ‘Before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints’ – the redeemed who have gone to Heaven before us. It does not mean the angels; it means the redeemed. But the word that is used is ‘saints’, and the root meaning of the word saints is those who are apart, those who are distinctive, those who are consecrated to God, those who are separate, apart, distinctive from the world. When he comes, Christ comes with all his apart-ones, distinctive ones, separated ones, the redeemed.

Application

How is our faith? Is it applied every day in prayer for holiness, for the overcoming of besetting sins, for the self-control in all things, for kindness to grow and to be shown one toward another. Holiness, the root meaning of holiness is separateness, apartness, distinctiveness. You cannot be holy and be worldly. You cannot be holy and be indistinguishable from a worldling. You cannot be holy and rooted in all the entertainments and the ideology in this vain world. You cannot be holy and a worldling at the same time. The root of holiness is distinctiveness, separateness, apartness for God.

The apostle throughout is concerned about the application of faith and the apartness of the people of God. We are called to live separated lives. And we live in a time when strangely the church of Jesus Christ has never been more tempted to worldliness – days of affluence, days of availability, days when the world is not confined to the bawdy bar at the end of the road or the playhouse theatre at the end of the road, days when worldliness is now pumped into every home and is on every mobile and on every television and all around us and everywhere. We have never been more threatened by worldliness. It is everywhere. Have we a call in such a day and age to be the saints, the apart-ones? So it is a challenge for us all. Are we separated for the Lord, keep ourselves pure, keep ourselves away from worldliness?

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1 Thessalonians 3:12 Commentary and Bible Study