hotcoffee
New Member
1 Thessalonians 2:13 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. 14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews 15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone 16 in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.
b.1 Thessalonians 2:16 Or them fully
In Thessalonica, the population was largely Greek Gentiles. In verse 13 the words "not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God".
I'm the oldest of 5 children. My mother would say "go tell the others 'it's time to come in'". I learned at a very early age that I had to add "Mom says" to the statement of it had no value. They knew the pecking order. If I went out and said "It's time to come in.", they would take their time. If I put "Mom says" in front of it, they would hop to.
At work, the lady I worked with, said she wished she had a tape recorder. That way when one of the bosses told her to do something a particular way, the other employees would dissect what she was telling them and decide for themselves if what she was saying was from the bosses or just her suggestion. She also knew that unless she told them "exactly" what the bosses said word for word, the meaning could be misunderstood. That would cause the instruction to be changed which would put the problem right on her desk.
The fact that Thessalonica was a Greek city added to the problem. The Greeks are philosophers. They love to argue all sides of the topic. When Paul relayed the Gospel to the people gathered, they didn't argue the minute parts of the Gospel, they believed. It helped that Paul was an orator who presented the Gospel, making reference to the words of the prophets to show it to be the fulfillment of those prophecies. Personally, I think it helped that Paul held the coats of the persecutors who murdered Stephen for speaking the Gospel. (Acts 7:56-58; 8:1)
God told the humans that Jesus is His son at the Baptism in the river. (Matthew 3:17,Matthew 17:5, and Mark 1:11). Still there were those who just wouldn't believe it. They made it a point to show up at every gathering and persecuted those who did. They ran Paul out of Thessalonica on his first visit there. (Acts 17:5-10).
So Paul, Silas, and Timothy had genuine reason to be thankful for the believers in Thessalonica.
