2 Thessalonians 1:4 Commentary and Bible Study

Not only does he praise God but in verse four we read something rather unusual. The apostle Paul allows himself some pride. Oh, pride! Yes, some pride is permissible, but not in himself, not in their accomplishments; it is pride in what God has done. And so he not only praises God, he talks about this among the other churches. Those Thessalonians, he says, he is proud of what God has done in them. There is a place for right pride. ‘So that we ourselves,’ the workers and the apostles, ‘glory in you,’ take pride in you before others, ‘in the churches of God.’ We talk about you but we are talking about what God has done, what he has brought about, and particularly for this – ‘for your patience and faith.’ ‘Your heroic endurance’, some have translated that, and the patience word is a very strong one – your heroic endurance under persecution. And again faith is mentioned ‘in all your persecutions and tribulations.’Persecutions were the acts of persecution and violence, and tribulations were the consequences of persecution and violence. Some people were thrown out of their homes by their families. Countless people were thrown out of their jobs because they would no longer attend the idol temples and that was compulsory. Every trade had an idol temple, several, and if you did not go along with the cult you were out of your work. So they endured great hardship and privation. Persecutions are the direct blows, and the tribulations are the consequences, the outcomes. So Paul uses both terms, and they kept their faith.And there is a beautiful term here – ‘in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure.’ And the two Greek words mean something like – that you hold up under, you fold yourself up under. So it is considerable effort on the part of the believer to hold themselves up and to pray and to lean upon the Lord and to sweep aside their sorrows and hardships and to prove him and witness for him no matter what. ‘Ye endure’ rather suggests they simply took it passively but the Greek is a bit different from that. They held up under it and withstood it: with the help of God of course, but there was much for them to do. ‘So that we ourselves’ are proud of you and boast of you in the churches of God.