Greetings to the church (1:1 – 2)
Paul’s eleven signs of the elect (1:3 – 8)
Work of faith (1:3)
Willing to serve the Lord (1:3)
Patience of hope (1:3)
Walking in the sight of God (1:3)
The gospel coming in power (1:5)
The gospel comes in the Holy Ghost (1:5)
In much assurance (1:5)
Accepting the rules of the Christian life (1:5 – 6)
Accepting trouble for Christ’s sake (1:6)
Joy in the heart (1:6)
Ensamples to the church (1:7)
Transformation in process (1:9 – 10)
The missionaries’ spectacular entry (1:9 – 10)
Their new objective (1:10)
The realisation of the sinfulness of sin (1:10)
Three tests of soundness (2:1 – 8)
The matter, motive, and method (2:3-8)
Thankfulness for the miracle of conversion (2:9 – 13)
The foundation of the mission (2:9)
The foundation of holiness (2:10)
Fatherly care (2:11)
Called to a new standard (2:12)
Thanks for God’s effectual work (2:13)
Readiness to suffer for Christ (2:14 – 16)
Joy in fruit bearing (2:17 – 20)
The hindrances of Satan (2:18)
A portrait of Paul (3:1 – 13)
His concern for the converts (3:1 – 8)
Paul’s prayer life (3:9 – 13)
Walking to please God (4:1 – 12)
Constant progress (4:1)
The walk itself (4:1 – 2)
Abstaining (4:3 – 8)
Brotherly love (4:9 – 10)
Constant testimony of life (4:11 – 12)
Christ’s imminent return (4:13 – 18)
No hope (4:13)
The resurrection and the rapture (4:14 – 18)
Spiritual wakefulness (5:1 – 8)
Christ’s return is sudden and unexpected (5:1 – 3)
Children of the day (5:4 – 8)
The Christian armour (5:8)
God’s comfort (5:9 – 11)
Paul’s Compendium of Conduct (5:12 – 28)
Be teachable (5:12 – 13)
Be peacemakers (5:13)
Warn the unruly (5:14)
Comfort the feeble minded (5:14)
Support the weak (5:14)
Be patient towards all (5:14)
Do not return evil (5:15)
Follow good always (5:15)
Rejoice evermore (5:16)
Pray without ceasing (5:17)
In everything give thanks (5:18)
Quench not the Spirit (5:19)
Despise not prophesyings (5:20)
Prove all things (5:21)
Hold fast to all good (5:21)
Abstain from all appearance of evil (5:22)
The assurance of spiritual safety (5:23 – 24)
Final exhortations – prayer, affection, learning (5:25 – 28)
- To minister to a newly planted church
- To assure them of their spiritual state based on marks of grace
- To remind them of the apostolic example
- To give thanks to God for his work among them
- To prepare them for the spiritual battle
- To rejoice with them at the report received back from Timothy
- To remind them of his teaching on sanctification
- To speak of the Christian’s certain future hope
- To instruct them about Christ return
- To teach them how to live until Christ returns
- To give them a compendium of Christian conduct
Bible Commentary on the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians
by Dr Peter Masters, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (adapted from sermons)
Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians is a letter with much biographical information in it. Less than a year before, he had gone in to the city of the Thessalonians with Silas and with Timothy and begun to preach, and a most dramatic result followed as people came to the Lord. The city had free status in the Roman world and was very proud of itself. Yet, despite that, among the pagans, idolaters, fixed in superstition and idolatry, many Gentiles were converted and came to Christ. And so it is a large gathering, a large church of young believers, very young believers, but they are standing firm. Paul was there for at least three weeks and probably rather longer. The Acts 17 record seems to suggest that it was only three weeks, but it is open to us to understand that the three weeks were the period during which Paul witnessed among the Jews and in the synagogues, and after that there was perhaps a longer time. We learn for instance from Paul’s letter to the Philippians that they had sent once and again, at least twice, offerings to him while he was among the Thessalonians. So it suggests that he was there for a rather longer than just the three weeks. Early visits to the synagogue in the city of the Thessalonians had reaped a small harvest among Jews, before there was antagonism and opposition, and it became very vehement, very fierce. In the meantime, the apostle and Silas and Timothy went on preaching to Gentiles in that city of some 200,000 people, a very proud city, a very rich city: the capital, the Roman capital of Macedonia. But ultimately, the record of Acts tells us there was great uprising and troubles, and Paul and his companions were spirited out of the city by the brethren and went on to Berea.
Paul now writes around AD 51, and he is now, at the time he writes this letter, in Corinth. 1 Thessalonians is a letter with much tender encouragement. He was tremendously uplifted by the way the Thessalonians received the gospel, the tremendous change in their lives and the progress that they had made. And so he writes this great letter of exhortation.
Remember that the Judaizers, the heretics, were prowling. They were following the mission of Paul among the Gentiles wherever he went with his fellow preachers, and they would soon turn up, and they would seek to draw aside the churches largely composed of Gentiles into error. And so they had to be taught and made firm and warned and drawn close to the Saviour.
But this letter, as with 2 Thessalonians is particularly famous for all that it has to teach on the last days. The final days of the age and the return of Christ. It also gives a wonderful insight – both the Thessalonian letters do this – into Paul’s methods. And Paul’s methods are normative for us. He commands us to be imitators, mimics literally, of him, to follow his methods. Paul is set by God to provide not only the gospel and the teaching and the doctrines, but the methods to be followed by the churches of Christ, and he discloses a lot of his method in 1 & 2 Thessalonians.