Paul, Silas, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you. We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 1:1-3)

When Paul and Silas got out of jail in Philippi, they arranged a final meeting with the church and then headed west on the Egnation Road. They were only incarcerated for one night before the charges against them fell apart, but they were beaten while they were in custody. As they traveled west, they bypassed two significant cities, Amphipolis and Apollonia, for their destination was Thessalonica. They arrived there after about five days on the road, which gave them time for the bruises and cuts they sustained in the beating to begin to heal.

Their reception in Thessalonica was encouraging. They spent at least three weeks there – possibly longer – and saw great success. Some of the Jews they met at the synagogue became Christ-followers, along with a great many God-worshiping Gentiles, including more than a few people from Thessalonica’s upper crust.

But their success led to trouble, as success often does. People from the synagogue who felt threatened by this new Christian movement became hostile, instigated a riot, and used their influence to get arrest warrants issued for Paul and Silas. At the urging of the church, Paul and Silas fled in the middle of the night, leaving a church of brand new believers to make it on their own.

Paul was terribly worried about the people he left behind, who were so new to the faith and now undergoing persecution. So, he sent Timothy, whose name had not been included in the warrants, back to Thessalonica to check on them. When Timothy returned, weeks or even months later, he brought good news: The new church was doing well, though it was suffering serious persecution. He also told Paul there were some significant gaps in the Thessalonians understanding of discipleship to Jesus.

Immensely relieved, Paul sat down to write this letter. He wanted to encourage the Thessalonians to remain faithful despite their suffering and to provide instruction in the areas where they lacked understanding. The letter follows the typical format of a first century Mediterranean letter, starting with the name of the sender, then with the name of the addressee, and then a brief greeting. We have that in verse 1.

In most of Paul’s letters, the address is usually stated more formally: “Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,” or something similar. Here, it is just “Paul”. He had developed a very close bond with the people in Thessalonica.

The opening lines of an ancient letter often included a statement of thanksgiving, and Paul’s letters were no exception (though in Galatians he skips the thanksgiving and gets right to business). Here, the thanksgiving comes in verses 2 and 3 and gives us rich insight into what the Apostle Paul expected of genuine Christians as well as insight into the nature of prayer.

Paul wrote: “We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers.” Notice that Paul always thanked God for all the Thessalonians. Was there no one in the First Thessalonian Church that Paul wasn’t thankful for, no one he wished he could trade to the Baptists? There were difficult people; Paul mentions them both in this letter and the next. Yet he was thankful to God for these people too.

Paul says that he mentions the Thessalonians in his prayers. Does that mean that he just lists names as he prays? “Lord, bless Jason, Cletus, Sophia, Sebastian, Damon, Eirene,” and so on? I don’t think so. The word translated “mention” is the ordinary Greek term for a memory or a remembrance. A literal translation of this verse could be, “We always thank God for all of you, making a memory of you in our prayers.”

When we talk about making memories, we’re thinking about a vacation or some special event that we and our kids and grandkids will look back on with fondness. But when Paul talks about making a memory, he is talking about making a memory come to the surface of his mind. He recalls Jason to his mind, remembers him – his nature, his friendship, his strengths, and weaknesses – and he ask God to accomplish his will for Jason. With Jason before his mind, he waits to see if God’s Spirit will prompt him to pray in some specific way.

I encourage you to try praying like this. Bring the person you are praying for to mind, not just their name but their nature: what they look like, how they act, what they desire. And then, with that picture of them in mind, wait on the Lord to guide you in your prayers for them. This is one way to practice praying in the Holy Spirit.

In verse 3, Paul gets specific about what he remembers when he prays for the Thessalonians. “We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” The memory of these things kept Paul praying when he might otherwise have grown discouraged and given up.

First, he remembered the work produced by the Thessalonians faith. (A literal translation is, “Your work of faith.”) There is something important here that we don’t want to miss. Faith works. In some religious traditions, the words “faith” and “work” never appear together except in opposition to each other. Faith is presented as the good guy and work as the bad guy.

Many of us have been taught to think of “work” as a theologically dirty word. Work is what people do who don’t know Christ and are trying to bribe their way into heaven. But notice that Paul does not see faith and work as opponents but as friends. Faith produces work, as surely as fire produces heat, Congress produces deficits, and the Detroit Tigers produce disappointment.

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, put it this way: “Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again—until you can scarcely distinguish which is one and which is the other.[1]

Paul would have agreed. If faith doesn’t work, bury it; it’s dead. Living faith works, but faith can be alive or dead, as St. James says. Dead faith is worthless, but so also are “dead works” – a phrase the author of Hebrews came up with. Good deeds and religious rituals that are produced by something other than faith – for example, by a desire to impress God or look good to others – are simply useless.

The Global Wellness Institute released a report that found Americans spent $264.6 billion dollars on physical activity in 2018, which is far more than any other nation. The United States leads the world in spending across every category: fitness classes ($37 billion), sports and recreation ($58 billion), apparel and footwear ($117 billion), equipment and supplies ($37.5 billion), and related technology ($8.1 billion).

And yet, for all of this spending, we rank 143rd globally for actual participation in physical activity. According to the Wall Street Journal, spending on athletic apparel marked a 50% increase over the last few years, ten times the increase in the number of people exercising. In other words, we want to look like we work out, but we don’t. That kind of hypocrisy is bad enough, but the hypocrisy that wants to look like it believes – that wears the apparel of church attendance, Christian radio, and religious jewelry – and yet never exercises faith, is worse.

Faith works. If it doesn’t, it’s either sick or it’s dead. The comedian Louis C. K. is an example. He once said, “I have a lot of beliefs.… And I live by none of them. That’s just the way I am. They’re just my beliefs. I just like believing them—I like that part… They make me feel good about who I am. But if they get in the way of a thing I want, I” – and I paraphrase here, “just do what I want to do.”[2]

When Paul was in Thessalonica and saw people doing things that they would not have done had they not believed in Jesus, he was sure that they had a living faith. The “work of faith” was a clear sign to him that God had given these men and women the eternal kind of life that comes from Christ.

But it wasn’t just their work of faith, it was also their “labor prompted by love.” A literal translation, which made its way into the title of Shakespeare’s comedy, is, “labor of love.” We use that phrase differently than Paul did. We mean by a “labor of love” some project we have undertaken without hope of reward: “I’m not doing this for a paycheck; it’s a labor of love.”

That is not what Paul meant. The NIV captures his thought with its translation, “labor prompted by love.” If faith works, love labors. Labor is the stronger word. It has the idea of doing difficult, exhausting toil. Faith can move mountains, but when they won’t move, love climbs over them or tunnels through them for the sake of the beloved. Love is the preeminent sign that a person belongs to Christ.

A businessman from Katy, Texas, was packing for his flight when he noticed that his suit had something on it and needed to be dry cleaned before he left. He remembered the “One-Hour Dry Cleaner” on the other side of town, so he rushed over there. As he was filling out the laundry tag, he said to the clerk, “I need this in an hour.”

She said, “I can’t get this back to you until Thursday.”

“I thought you did dry cleaning in an hour?”

She seemed confused at first, and then it dawned on her where he got such an idea. “Oh, that’s just the name of the store.”

I would call that false advertising. And we can be guilty of a similar kind of false advertising when we identify ourselves as Christians – we bear the name of Christ – but don’t love like he did. Jesus said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). When people come to a church of loveless Christians, they will feel about it the way that man felt about the dry cleaner: it’s a sham.[3]

That is the negative side of it, but Paul saw the positive side in Thessalonica. The Thessalonian believers were laboring out of their love for him, for each other, and for Christ. They were new Christians, yet they were sacrificing for each other, helping each other even when it hurt, and expressing affection for each other.

When Paul saw their love, he knew that God had given them the eternal kind of life that was incarnated in Jesus Christ. Their love was a sign that God had been there.

According to Guiness World Records, the world’s largest indoor illuminated advertising sign is in Texas (where else?) and measures over 2,040 square feet. You can imagine what it was like to be there when those Texans fired that thing up. Paul had a similar experience when he saw love lighting up all across the Church of Thessalonica. He could read that sign. It said, “Jesus is here.”

But we need to understand that labor is not a substitute for love any more than work is a substitute for faith. Labor is the result of love and love’s labors, contrary to Shakespeare’s title, are never lost, for love always has a transforming effect on the one who loves.

Through faith in Jesus, we enter the path of love, but it is through hope that we stay on the path. Without hope, love stumbles and falls. It gets weary and gives up. Hope is not an option; it is essential. I realized a long time ago that people do not kill themselves because their life is so hard. They kill themselves because they lose hope that it will ever get better. As long as hope lives, so will they.

When marriages end, it is often because one – and sometimes both – of the spouses has lost hope that things will get better. Hopelessness kills marriages. It kills people. We need hope, yet like faith and love, hope is not something we can manufacture. Real hope, in contrast to wishful thinking, comes from outside us. It comes from God. When Paul heard from Timothy about the Thessalonians’ endurance in the faith even under severe persecution, he knew that God was at work among them, filling them with hope.

That hope, Paul says, is “in our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is not in the next presidential election. It is not in our doctor, our pastor, or our investments. It is in Christ, and it comes to us through a connection to him.

What exactly are we hoping for? We are hoping to become Christlike (1 John 3:2), that is, happy, holy, loving and beloved. We are hoping to experience God’s salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8) and be rescued from our bondage to sin and death. We hope for eternal life (Titus 3:7), in a resurrected body that is a joy to us and to others (Acts 23:6), amid the company of people we love and value (Ephesians 1:18) in resplendent glory (Romans 5:2). We hope to be right (Galatians 5:5), to finally fit, and to do so in a world where evil no longer exists (Romans 8:20-21). There is no place in heaven or on earth to find this hope, except in Jesus Christ.

The NIV ends verse 3 with the words “hope in our Lord Jesus Christ,” but the Greek text has a clause after that which the NIV inserted earlier in the verse. So, the NIV starts the verse with, “We remember before our God and Father,” but the Greek has “before our God and Father” at the end of the verse. Since words can come anywhere in a Greek sentence, the NIV might be right to connect it to Paul and his remembering, but the NASB connects it to the life of faith, love, and hope – a life that is lived before God, in his sight and with his help.

When Timothy returned with news about the Thessalonians’ faith, love, and hope, Paul saw signs that God was at work in them and that they would be okay. Better than okay, they would be great. If Paul sent Timothy to Coldwater, to the church that meets on Lockwood Road, would he see the same signs that God is at work?

I think he would. He would see people whose faith in Jesus moved them to undertake service in and out of the church, teaching children, visiting shut-ins, mowing lawns, showing hospitality, telling neighbors and friends about Christ. He would see people whose love for each other moves them to give rides, make meals, clean houses, write cards, donate money, and much more. He would see people who refuse to give up because Jesus has given them hope – they keep trusting and keep loving even when it is hard. He would see signs – signs, everywhere a sign.

If Timothy were to come to your house or mine, would he see the signs? Do you have a faith that works, a love that labors, and a hope that steadies you and spurs you on?

Faith, love, and hope are wonderful, but I won’t mislead you: having them will change you. If you don’t want to change, you won’t want faith, which will set you working, or love, which certainly means labor, or hope that keeps you working when you feel like quitting. It is a costly life.

But doing without faith, love, and hope is no life at all. It is just a prolonged death. If you find that you are short of faith, empty of love, or devoid of hope, those things are found in God. The closer you come to him, the more your faith, love, and hope will grow.

I invite you to move closer to God, starting right now. You can begin by praying and telling God that is what you want to do and asking for his help. He will hear that prayer and will answer.

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[1] William Booth in “The Founders’ Messages to Soldiers.” Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 10.

[2] Source: Quoted from David Zahl, “So Nice of Louis C.K. to Think of That (But Never Do It),” Mockbird.com blog (12-14-11)

[3] Ed Rowell, pastor and writer, Franklin, Tennessee