Rejoice Always, Pray Continually! (1 Thessalonians 5:12-28)

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

Today is the last in our series of talks on 1 Thessalonians.

The Good Life (1 Thessalonians 5:12-28)

On reading the closing lines of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, if we didn’t know better, we might think that it consisted of a rag-bag of all the stuff the apostle wanted to railroad the Thessalonians into doing. If we didn’t know better, we might think that Paul was giving the church of Thessalonica a list of dos and don’ts which they could use to conduct a tick-box exercise:

• we’re good at respecting our leaders – let’s give ourselves a tick for that one,
• we have some experience of encouraging the timid – another tick,
• we’re really good at being patient with everyone – two ticks for that one,

and so on. If we didn’t know better, we might think that the reason the apostle Paul wrote his letters was simply to tell people exactly what they had to do to live better Christian lives, or else.

It is in fact part and parcel of our human nature not to know any better than this. The Protestant Reformer Martin Luther once wrote that “in our hearts there is always the desire not to be nothing and not to accept that Christ has accomplished everything himself. Rather”, writes Luther, “we always want to be involved in action, doing as much as possible in the service of God, in order to make God see what we are doing so that he will forgive us our sins and be gracious to us on account of what we have done”. And here comes Luther’s warning: “This should not be! This cannot be! For if this were to happen, then Faith and Christ himself would [be unnecessary and] perish”.¹

But we do know better than to think that it’s all down to us to live morally praiseworthy lives, and this is thanks in no small part to Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, which tells us about the utter indispensability of faith, and of Christ, from the beginning to the end. At the start of its first chapter, we read that the Thessalonians’ work was produced by faith, their labour was prompted by love, and their endurance was inspired by hope in the Lord Jesus Christ (1:3) – in other words, that it wasn’t the result of any superhuman effort on their part. And here in the last chapter, we have, not a checklist to use to score ourselves, hoping that we will measure up but fearing that we might not. Rather, we have a beautiful description of the Good Life, the life which it is open to us to live as a result of the superhuman effort which was made on our behalf by Jesus Christ. ‘He died for us’, Paul writes in verse 10, ‘so that … we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up’, on this solid foundation.

Here in the closing lines of the first letter to the Thessalonians, there are at least three things to note about the Good Life: firstly, who is it for? Second, what does it look like? And third, what is its source and destination?

If we read carefully, we will see that this Good Life is for everyone in the Christian family. The apostle Paul uses the household terminology of ‘brothers’, but of course this is not meant in a gender-exclusive way, which is why our modern Bible translations correctly render this as ‘brothers and sisters’.

It’s interesting to note the different ways in which Paul uses this word. We can see examples of this at the end of the reading, in I Thessalonians, chapter 5, verses 25 to 27. ‘Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss … Have this letter read to all the brothers.’ So here brothers and sisters are asked to greet fellow brothers and sisters in the way members of a family would, and some brothers and sisters are asked to ensure that Paul’s letter gets read to all the brothers and sisters, presumably because there were some in the congregation were literate and could read, and there were others who could not read, and who had to rely on hearing what Paul had written. And then if we look back to the start of our reading, to chapter 5, verses 12 to 14, we see that the word ‘brothers’ is used there in two different ways. First in verses 12 and 13 the ‘brothers’ are asked to respect their church leaders and hold them in high regard because of their work. And then in verse 14, the church leaders themselves, also described as ‘brothers’, are told what their work is to consist of: warning the idle, encouraging the weak and so on.

The use of this family language, even when describing distinctive roles and responsibilities within the congregation, is built on the assumption made by Paul of a mutual and radical equality between leaders and followers in the Thessalonian church. The language is not of father and son, or master and servant, but of brother and sister. It reminds me of the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew chapter 23, verse 9: ‘Do not call anyone on earth ‘father’, for you have one Father, and he is in heaven’. The use of this language also suggests the deep and sometimes complicated intimacy, respect and affection not so much of friendship, but actually of family. And, finally, the use of this language is broad and inclusive. The Good Life which is described in this passage is for everyone in the Christian family, everyone who has been invited by Christ to call God their Father.

So what does the Good Life look like? So many aspects to this are described in this passage that it will take me most of the rest of my time to talk about them. However, I can’t do complete justice to any of these aspects in what I say now. The Good Life is for living, rather than for being spoken about. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say.

So here are some of the ingredients that help make up the Good Life recipe, here are nine words or phrases to describe what the Good Life is like: respectful, hardworking, peaceful, forgiving, encouraging and supportive, patient, joyful and thankful, prayerful, and discerning.

1. The respect that the Thessalonian brothers and sisters are asked to show their church leaders in verse 12 does not amount to a blind attribution of status, putting leaders on a pedestal and considering them above criticism. That would be unhealthy and dangerous. It would tend to bring out the worst in people, and would open the way to ugly coercion and abuse. Rather, respect consists of a recognition of the vital function of leaders within a community. Respect them, Paul writes, because of their work. Respect is a two-way street. “Service should be rendered, and … those who render it should receive affectionate recognition and gratitude”.²

2. The Good Life is also hardworking. In chapter 5, verse 12, leaders are to “work hard”, and according to verse 14 anyone who is “idle” is to be warned. Of course, there is a balance to be struck here. We all know that it can be soul-destroying to be over-worked, but we are also aware that time passes more quickly when we are busy, and that it is damaging to one’s sense of self to be under-employed. What Paul tells us in verses 12 and 14 is that every member of the church has a role in it, and that everyone is diminished when anyone is unwilling to play their part.

3. The Good Life is peaceful. “Live at peace with each other”, we are told in chapter 5, verse 13. What we are talking about here is an active commitment to peace-making in the church. Anyone with the slightest experience of church communities knows what an essential requirement this commitment is. Despite appearances, we are not always on our best behaviour in church. In Thessalonica, it is likely that “the leaders in the church had not been sufficiently highly regarded, and their authority had been resisted. Also, in all probability, they had not exercised that authority as tactfully as they might have done.”³ They, all of them, needed a reminder to “live at peace with one another”. Christians today need the same encouragement to peace-making, because they too live in a communities whose imperfections are on show, not always in outright hostility, but sometimes in simple pettiness, self-absorption, and thoughtlessness.

4. The Good Life is forgiving. “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong”, we are told in chapter 5, verse 15. Paul’s teaching here is a mirror of that of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:44-48) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:27-36). Being gracious, forgiving, and non-retaliatory follows logically on, of course, from being peace-making. It is a costly way of living, make no mistake, because it requires a person to surrender a sense of their own rights. But it is part and parcel of the Good Life not to have to keep and hold on to a record of wrongs, which would be exhausting, and would leave a person bitter and twisted.

5. The Good Life is encouraging and supportive. ‘Encourage the timid, help the weak’, we read in chapter 5, verse 14. The timid, “for all [their] conscious inadequacy and diffidence, [are] to be encouraged and made to feel [that they] count”.⁴ Reasonable adjustments must be made for those who are weak. In the absence of such gentle encouragement and support, those who regard themselves as marginal or even worthless to the Christian community are likely to melt away from it, and the only thing left would be an unattractive rump of the strong and the strident.

6. The Good Life is patient. ‘Be patient with everyone’, we read at the end of verse 14. Our fellow Christians are not going to have their sharp corners rubbed off according to any schedule we may impose on them. Thinking about it, our own personal sharp corners must surely place a great strain on others, as well as on God himself, on whom we rely to be ‘compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love’ towards us (Psalm 103:8). So to be constantly demanding perfection of others would be to commit to a life of misery, but to exercise patience is to live gladly and well.

7. The Good Life isjoyful and thankful. ‘Be joyful always’, we have in chapter 5, verse 16, and in verse 18, ‘give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus’. This is not an unthinking thanksgiving and joy, that denies the reality of suffering and flies in the face of sorrow. We are told to give thanks in all circumstances, not for all circumstances, just as we are told elsewhere, not that everything that happens is good, but that in everything, God works for the good of those that love him and are called according to his purpose. It is a joy and thanksgiving secure in the knowledge that though we fear our faith will fail, Christ will hold us fast.

8. The Good Life is prayerful.‘Pray continually’, Paul writes in chapter 5, verse 17. For a sense of what this means, I am going to refer back to Martin Luther, who wrote that “wherever there is a Christian, there too it, in reality, the Holy Spirit, whose only activity is to pray constantly. For even if the Christian is not always moving his lips or producing words, his heart and his arteries are constantly active in his body, giving out sighs: ‘O dear Father, let your name be hallowed, let your kingdom come and your will be done in us and in everyone …’ And if temptations and tribulations increase their pressure, there is a corresponding increase in sighs and entreaties of this kind so that it is impossible to come across a Christian who does not pray as it is to encounter a living person whose heart does not beat…”⁵

9. Lastly, the Good Life is discerning. “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt”, we read in chapter 5, verses 19 and 20 – and then in the verses that follow: “Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.” Discernment was a gift the Thessalonian church really needed. They were possessed by the Holy Spirit, but they themselves did not possess any of the Gospels, or any of the rest of the New Testament, because none of it had yet been written. All they had to guide them into the truths of the Christian faith were the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the memory of the teaching of the apostles who founded the Thessalonian church, and the prophetic utterances of the leaders of the church of Thessalonica. And they needed more.

In response to this situation, the apostle Paul did something which was at that time completely without precedent. For the first time in history, he put apostolic teaching into writing and sent it to them. His first letter to the Thessalonians is by common consent the earliest book of the New Testament. And in time the New Testament itself was recognised by Christians as the repository of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, a measuring rod by which good and evil, truth and error could be distinguished. And here we are two thousand years later, still reading it, and gaining from it an understanding of what makes for the Good Life: who it is for, and what it looks like.

And finally, we consider what is the source and destination of the Good Life: where does it come from, and where will it take us? Here at the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, we learn that the Good Life did not originate with us, or come about by the dint of our effort. None of the nine aspects I have outlined are the product of our moral striving, any more than we can take the credit for nurturing and harvesting the ninefold fruit of the Spirit famously listed by the apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 5. In Galatians chapter 5, the clue is in the name: love, joy, peace, patience and so on are the fruit, of the Spirit. And here in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 we read, in verse 23: ‘May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through’.

God himself, by the power of the same mighty strength he exerted to raise Jesus Christ from the dead, is at work in us, and he himself is the source of all the constituent elements of the Good Life. Likewise, he is the destination towards which it heads. ‘May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ This moral endeavour is not down to us. We have not been left alone. ‘The one who called you is faithful’, verse 24 assures us, ‘and he will do it’. He will sanctify; he will keep blameless. That is why Paul ends the entire letter by invoking the greatest and most needed of all God’s gifts to us: ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you’.

In this way, far from being unnecessary, both Faith and Christ himself stand in for what we are utterly unable to do. “Faith”, to return one last time to the words of Martin Luther, “is a confidence of the heart, living, serious, comforting and … so glorious that we become one with Christ and, through him, one with the Father. … There is something busy, active and powerful about Faith, so that it is impossible for it not to do Good Works without ceasing. Faith does not ask if Good Works need to be done. It has already done them, and is still doing them before even being asked.”⁶

This is indeed the Good Life, both for the Thessalonians two thousand years ago, and for us here today: work produced by faith, labour prompted by love, and endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in which hope we will never be disappointed.

1 Luther Brevier: Worte für jeden Tag (Wartburg Verlag, Weimar, 2007), p. 123.

2 F.F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, page 119.

3 Leon Morris, The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians, pp. 99-100.

4 Bruce, ibid., p. 123.

5 Luther Brevier: Worte für jeden Tag, p. 121.

6 Luther Brevier: Worte für jeden Tag, p. 122.