Some of the key themes in today’s text have to do with the prominence of faith in the Christian life, the place of love in evangelism, and the relationship between love and holiness. I encourage you to listen for these themes and reflect on them during the week. The passage can be divided into two main sections: Timothy’s Report from Thessalonica (v. 6) and Paul’s Response to the Report (vv. 7-13). His response includes encouragement, thanksgiving, and prayer.
In verse 6, Paul says that Timothy had only just arrived with good news about the Thessalonians’ faith and love. The verb the NIV translates “brought good news” is a common one in the New Testament, but this is the only time it is used to describe the condition of a church family. Everywhere else, it describes the proclamation of the gospel of God, the sacrificial death and resurrection of his Son and the good news of his kingdom. Our word “evangelize” is an anglicized version of this word.
But here it is used of the Thessalonians’ faith and love, and of their attitude toward Paul.[1] Some scholars go out of their way to say this usage is an aberration. Timothy’s news so delighted Paul that he let slip the word he otherwise reserved for announcing God’s rescue plan for the world.
But I think Paul used this word intentionally. In his mind, there is a connection between the Thessalonians’ faith and love and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their transformed lives, full of faith and overflowing with love, proclaimed the good news more persuasively than a sermon ever could.
There is nothing more effective in reaching people for Christ than a church family that is filled with faith and overflowing with love. Having faith-filled, loving people in the church is more important than having a gifted evangelist in the pulpit. A church family that is full of faith and love is an irrefutable witness to the truth of Christ and it possesses magnetic appeal.
We can tell someone the good news of Jesus – he died for our sins, rose again, and opened the kingdom of God for us – but if the good news is told by bad news (or even ho-hum) people, the truth of the gospel will be called into called into question.
Timothy’s report about the Thessalonians related three good news items. The first was that their faith was solid. Paul had been afraid that the Thessalonians’ faith might have failed. That was clearly in the forefront of his mind. It is not much of a stretch to say he was worried sick about it. When he heard that their faith had survived and even flourished, it was like a heavy weight had been lifted off him. He says in verse 8: “Now,” in contrast to before Timothy had returned, “we really live.”
It was not just the Thessalonian’s faith that was gospel news; it was also their love. This is one of ten times that Paul uses the verb or noun for love in this letter. As we saw earlier, when faith and love are present in a church, they act like a giant, lighted billboard announcing that God has been (and is still) there.
Love is the attitude toward another person that motivates us to seek his or her good. As such, love is more than a feeling. It is never mere sentimentality. Love is ready to act, even if that means sacrifice, to promote another person’s welfare.
Love is more than a feeling, but that doesn’t mean it lacks feeling. Love leads to enjoyment, friendship, intimacy, and affection. We see that repeatedly in this letter, for Paul isn’t afraid to let his feelings show. In chapter 2 he writes, “… out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you” (2:17). He calls the Thessalonians his “glory and joy” (2:20). In chapter 3 he writes, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again” (3:9-10). Verbalizing affection is difficult for some of us who were not raised in a home where that happened. If we didn’t have someone to model this for us, we would do well to take Paul for our mentor.
Timothy’s report first mentioned the Thessalonian’s faith, then their love, and finally their feelings about Paul and the missionary team. Reading this chapter, one gets the sense that Paul had been worried that his enemies’ smear campaign against him might have been effective. Maybe the Thessalonians believed the lies people were telling about him: that he was a womanizer whose goal was to separate the Thessalonians from their money.
But in Timothy’s report he learned (v. 6) that the Thessalonians always had good memories of Paul and the team, and that they were as anxious to see him as he was to see them. They not only looked back at his visit with joy, they looked forward to his next visit with eager anticipation.
Paul was elated by Timothy’s good report and his joy found expression in three ways: He was, despite his dangerous circumstances, deeply encouraged. The good news about the Thessalonians fortified Paul. It gave him a huge boost.
Secondly, his joy expressed itself in thanksgiving. Paul uses the noun “thanksgiving” 13 times in his letters, and the verb is used by Paul (or concerning Paul) 27 more times. Thanksgiving is the normal, healthy expression of the life in Christ.
This is so much the case that gratitude serves as a key indicator of spiritual health. What a white blood cell count is to physical health, gratitude is to spiritual health. When it is low, spiritual health cannot be high. When it is absent, the glory for accomplishments inevitably rests with gifted people, not with their gracious God.
The grateful person sees God at work in his life. The ungrateful person does not. This, of course, makes the grateful person more grateful and the ungrateful person even less grateful. Newton’s first law of motion – In the absence of an outside force, a spirit in motion remains in motion indefinitely along the same line – has a spiritual counterpart: a grateful person will continue to be grateful and will grow more grateful; an ungrateful person will grow less grateful – apart from an outside force.
Thankfully, we are not apart from such a force. Knowing that filled Paul with gratitude (verse 9): “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have?” Paul responded to Timothy’s report first with encouragement and then with thanksgiving. But he didn’t stop there. He turned his feelings, as he had turned his fears, into prayers. That is something we need to learn to do. This is verse 10. “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.”
Though Timothy’s report had been remarkably encouraging, it had not been entirely positive. There were gaps in the Thessalonians’ experience of God’s grace. For example, they had not yet worked out the implications of Jesus’ lordship for their own sexuality. (Paul will address that in the next chapter.) Instead of Jesus’s return being a source of hope and joy to them, it caused them confusion and fear. There were still things lacking in their faith.
To have something lacking in our faith is not an unusual or a terrible thing. None of us are finished yet (James 1:4). We all have holes in our faith. Dallas Willard says, “Perhaps the hardest things for sincere Christians to come to grips with is the level of real unbelief in their own life…”[2] People can really believe and yet have gaps in their faith, gaps that “undermine [their] efforts” to live as God intends. These gaps are not always apparent – especially to the people who have them – though they are often visible to others.
The word translated “supply” (v. 10) is elsewhere rendered as “equip,” “restore,” and “prepare”. It is used in the gospels of the commercial fisherman who were restoring their nets, cleaning them, and mending the holes that had opened during their time on the water. Can you imagine having a hole in a fishing net? I can. I once netted a 54” fish with a brand new net when a hole opened in the bottom of it and the fish slipped right through the hole. (Fortunately, it landed in the bottom of the boat.)
The nets that were being repaired in the Gospel story were pulled behind the boat to capture fish. The net would swell behind them, elongated by the force of the water, swallowing fish as the boat moved. If there were holes in the net, the prized fish would pass right through it.
If there are holes in our faith, caused by the strain of everyday life, the friction of doubt and misunderstanding, the repeated exposure to sharp-edged circumstances and people, God’s blessing can pass through our lives and escape us. Our faith regularly needs to be restored or repaired.
It is for that reason, in part at least, that God gives the church gifted people. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service…” The verb “equip” is the same one translated as “supply” in our text – “supply what is lacking in your faith” – and translated as “preparing their nets” in the Gospel.
This leads to a question that each of us must answer for ourselves: Does my faith have holes in it? I think the answer is almost certainly, “Yes, it does.” But then we must discover where those holes are and what is causing them. Perhaps weeks or months of distress, with no end in sight, had opened a hole in your faith. You may need the assistance of a brother or sister in the church – one of those gifted people – to close that hole.
Perhaps you have suffered doubts about God caused by things you’ve read or seen on YouTube or instilled by parents who claimed to believe the good news but were themselves bad news. These doubts may have opened a hole in your faith that is hindering you from the meaningful life God has planned for you.
Sometimes, the sharp edges of circumstances (job loss, relationship trouble, or health concerns) or the sharp edges of people (criticism and rejection) can wear a hole in our faith. Again, we may need the assistance of other Christ-followers to close that hole.
Did you notice that Paul does not say, “I most earnestly pray to see you again so that we can ease your poverty” or “console you,” or “provide you better biblical training.” Like a parent who loves his children, he ached for them to have a faith that was strong, firm, and steadfast.
Do we love our fellow Christians in this way? Do we rejoice over their faith? Do we plead with God to strengthen their faith because we believe that it (rather than comfort, ease or prosperity) is the key to their fulfillment?
Paul mentions that he prays for the Thessalonians night and day. But he isn’t satisfied with telling them that. He prays for them on the spot and includes his prayer in the letter. It is a good thing to tell people that you are praying for them. It is an even better thing to pray for them right then and there.
The gist of his prayer is recorded in verses 12 and 13: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”
He prays for the Thessalonians to increase and overflow in love for each other and for all. This is not just a saccharine “What the world needs now is love, sweet love” sentiment. There is a reason behind Paul’s prayer. Love is the medicine that strengthens hearts. It is the prophylactic that protects from blame and sin. Love is not an add-on to the Christian life. It is the essence of the Christian life. Without love, life is not Christian.
It is impossible to separate love and holiness, though many have tried. If you remove holiness from love, love grows sickly and weak and eventually ceases to be loving. Remove love from holiness – some people don’t know that the two have anything to do with each other – and what’s left is a cold, repellant legalism.
Jonathon Edwards, arguably America’s most influential theologian, wrote that “The holiness of God consist[s] in his love, especially in the perfect and intimate union and love there is between the Father and Son.”[3] It is equally true that the holiness of God’s people consists in their love, especially their love for God but also their love for each other.
Notice that Paul does not only pray about the Thessalonians’ love for each other. He also prays about their love for everyone else. Everyone else? Yes. Biological family members, in-laws, co-workers, the impoverished, the hostile, the acquaintance, the stranger – everyone!
Back in the 1970s, a movement began in California that went by the name “power evangelism.” The idea was that effective evangelism requires a display of God’s power through signs and wonders. That idea was based in part on the early church’s prayer in Acts 4:30 that God would stretch out his hand to heal and perform miraculous signs. In the next verse we read that the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
I don’t want to speak against the power evangelism movement. I think it accomplished many good things and I appreciate its leaders’ regard for Scripture. But I think they missed, or at least did not emphasize enough, the remarkable evangelistic power of Christian love. Without power, love attracts self-centered seekers, not God-glorifying disciples. Love is the power in power evangelism – God’s love for people and our love for God, for each other, and for everyone.
D. L. Moody, one of the church’s greatest evangelists, said: “If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him; and if I could only make people really believe that God loves them, what a rush we would see for the kingdom of God!”
Notice that Paul not only prays that the Thessalonians will love each other but that their love will increase and overflow. It is impossible to overstate the importance of love. It is not only crucial to evangelism; it is crucial to spiritual health and growth. When people don’t grow spiritually, when they get stuck, experience persistent doubt, and even go backward, they often suffer from a love deficiency.
The period at the end of verse 13, which the NIV inserts in the middle of a sentence, might cause us to miss the point that Paul is making. A more literal rendering of the original language could go like this: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you, leading to a strengthening of your hearts…”
Love, giving it, absorbing it, and receiving it, is necessary for Christian health and strength. If there was some infallible way to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy Christians, we would find that heealthy Christians had received love while unhealthy ones, for whatever reason, had not.
This chapter, like every chapter in the letter, ends with a reference to the return of the One who is the embodiment of love. When love himself, love divine, all loves excelling, comes for his own, his love will be answered by their love, and the result will be nothing short of a new creation.
There is much to apply here. I encourage you to use the Go Deep sheets to think through the text and find ways to apply it to your life. I will mention only one thing. We would do well to follow Paul’s example of expressing love and affection for each other.
There were two guys, Dave Brown and Don Ankney, who visited church family with me almost every week, one on Tuesday and one on Friday. I was dropping Dave off after an afternoon of visiting, and we were praying in the car for the people we had just visited. After we prayed and before he got out of the car, he told me he loved me.
I had never had a man tell me that before and it took me by surprise. I have had friends whom I have loved deeply, but I never told them so, just as my dad never told me. It became a regular thing for Dave to express his love. And then Don started doing it too. At first, I would stammer a little and murmur something back.
Expressing love and affection to our Christian family is important. If you can’t say, “I love you,” try, “I really appreciate you,” or “I’m glad that you’re here,” or “Our time together is important to me.” Words cannot take the place of actions, but they are nevertheless important. Let’s follow Paul’s example and be freer in expressing them.
[1] Morris.
[2] Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 88. ©2002
[3] Quoted by Jonathan Leeman, https://www.9marks.org/article/how-do-love-and-holiness-relate/
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