1 Thessalonians 1:9

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

1Th_1:9. What manner of entering in.—In Acts 17 we have an account of how the Jews instigated men ever ready for a brawl to bring a charge of high treason—the most likely way of giving the quietus to the disturbers of ancient traditions, Paul and Silas. To serve the living and true God.—The Thessalonians had not been delivered from the bondage of fear that they might lead lives irresponsible. “Get a new master,” then “be a new man.”

1Th_1:10. And to wait for His Son.—The compound word for wait is only found here in the New Testament. The idea may be compared with our Lord’s figure of the bondservants waiting with lights and ready for service on their Lord’s return (Luk_12:35-40). Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.—R.V. “delivereth.” The wrath to come “revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom_1:18) is the penalty threatened against sin persisted in.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Th_1:9-10

Conversion and its Evidence.

A good work cannot be hid. Sooner or later it will manifest itself and become the general topic of a wide region. The successful worker meets with the fruit of his labours at times and places unexpected. Wherever the apostles went, the reputation of the newly founded Church had preceded them, and the varied features of the great change that had passed over the Thessalonians were eagerly discussed. We have here a description of conversion and its evidence.

I. The conversion of the Thessalonians.—“For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols” (1Th_1:9). You have watched a vessel lying at anchor in a tidal river with her bowsprit pointing seaward. After a brief interval you have observed the force of the incoming tide swing the vessel completely round, so that her head points in an exactly opposite direction. Not less apparent was the change among the Thessalonians when the flood-tide of gospel blessing entered the city. Conversion is a turning about—a change from sin to holiness, from unbelief to faith, from darkness to light, from Satan to God.

1. They turned from idols.—For generations the majority of the members of this Church, with their forefathers, had been idolaters, “walking as other Gentiles walked in the vanity of their mind,” etc. (Eph_4:17-18; Eph_2:12). Any creature, real or imaginary, invested with divine properties is an idol. An angel, a saint, wealth, an idea, or any object to which we ascribe the omnipotence that belongs to God, becomes to us an idol—a false deity. An idol is also the true God falsely conceived. The Pantheist, mistaking the effect for the cause, regards the vast fabric of created things as God, and Nature, with her grand, silent motions, is the object of his idolatry. The sensualist, reluctant to believe in punishment for sin, exalts the boundlessness of divine mercy, and ignores the other perfections, without which there could be no true God. Idolatry is a sin against which the most faithful warnings have been uttered in all ages, and on account of which the most terrible judgments have been inflicted, yet it is the worship to which man is most prone.

2. They turned to God.—The one God whom Paul preached as “the God that made the world and all things therein”; the living God, having life in Himself, and “giving to all life and breath and all things”; the true God, having in Himself the truth and substance of essential deity, in extreme contrast with an “idol, which is nothing in the world.” With shame and confusion of face as they thought of the past, with penitential sorrow, with confidence and hope, they turned to God from idols.

II. The evidence of their conversion.—Seen:

1. In the object of their service. They “serve the living and true God,” serve Him in faithful obedience to every command, serve Him in the face of opposition and persecution—with every faculty of soul, body, and estate—in life, in suffering, in death. This is a free, loving service. The idolater is enslaved by his own passions and the iron bands of custom. His worship is mechanical, without heart and without intelligence. The service acceptable to God is the full, spontaneous, pure outflow of a loving and believing heart. It is an ennobling service. Man becomes like what he worships; and as the object of his worship is often the creation of his own depraved mind, he is debased to the level of his own gross, polluted ideas. Idolatry is the corrupt human heart feeding upon and propagating its own ever-growing corruptions. The service of God lifts man to the loftiest moral pinnacle and transfigures him with the resplendent qualities of the Being he adores and serves. It is a rewardable service. It brings rest to the world-troubled spirit, fills with abiding happiness in the present life, and provides endless felicity in the future—results idolatry can never produce.

2. Seen in the subject of their hope.—“And to wait for His Son” (1Th_1:10).

(1) Their hope was fixed on Christ as a Saviour. “Even Jesus, who delivereth us from the coming wrath.” Terrible will be the revelation of that wrath to the impenitent and unbelieving. As soon as one wave of vengeance breaks another will follow, and behind that another and another interminably, so that it will ever be the wrath to come! From this Jesus delivers even now.

(2) Their hope was fixed on Christ as risen. “Whom He raised from the dead.” They waited for and trusted in no dead Saviour, but One who, by His resurrection from the dead, was powerfully declared to be indeed the Son of God.

(3) Their hope was fixed on Christ as coming again. “To wait for His Son from heaven.” There is a confusing variety of opinions as to the character of Christ’s second advent; as to the certainty of it nothing is more plainly revealed. The exact period of the second coming is veiled in obscurity and uncertainty; but it is an evidence of conversion to be ever waiting for and preparing for that coming as if there were a perpetual possibility of an immediate manifestation. The uncertainty of the time has its use in fostering a spirit of earnest and reverential inquiry, of watchfulness, of hope, of fidelity.

Lessons.—

1. Conversion is a radical change.

2. Conversion is a change conscious to the individual and evident to others.

3. The gospel is the divinely appointed agency in conversion.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

1Th_1:9-10. The Change effected by the Gospel—

I. In religious belief.

II. In corresponding conduct.

III. In the hope cherished.—

1. Of the second coming of Christ.

2. Proved by His resurrection from the dead.

3. The object of His second coming to deliver from wrath.

4. The spirit of earnest but patient waiting induced.

1Th_1:10. The Christian waiting for his Deliverer—

I. Implies a firm belief in Christ’s second coming.

II. Habitually endeavouring to be prepared for His second coming.

III. Earnestly desiring it.

IV. Patiently waiting for it.—Bradley.

The Wrath to come.

I. It is divine wrath.

II. Unmingled wrath.—Judgment without mercy; justice without the least mixture of goodness.

III. Provoked wrath.

IV. Accumulated wrath.—A wrath we have inflamed and increased by every act of sin we have committed.

V. Future wrath.—The wrath to come; lasting as the holiness of the Being who inflicts and the guilt of the sinners who endure it.

VI. Deliverance from wrath.—

1. Undeserved.

2. Complete.

3. Eternal.—Ibid.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 4

CONVERSION

1Th_1:9-10 (R.V.)

THESE verses show what an impression had been made in other places by the success of the gospel at Thessalonica. Wherever Paul went, he heard it spoken about. In every place men were familiar with all its circumstances; they had heard of the power and assurance of the missionaries, and of the conversion of their hearers from heathenism to Christianity. It is this conversion which is the subject before us. It has two parts or stages. There is first, the conversion from idols to the one living and true God; and then the distinctively Christian stage of waiting for the Son of God from heaven. Let us look at these in order.

The Apostle, so far as we can make out, judged the religions of heathenism with great severity. He knew that God never left Himself without a witness in the world, but Gods testimony to Himself had been perverted or ignored. Ever since the creation of the world, His everlasting power and divinity might be seen by the things He had made; His law was written on conscience; rain from heaven and fruitful seasons proved His good and faithful providence; yet men were practically ignorant of Him. They were not willing, in fact, to retain Him in their knowledge; they were not obedient; they were not thankful; when they professed religion at all, they made gods after their own image, and worshipped them. They bowed before idols; and an idol, says Paul, is nothing in the world. In the whole system of pagan religion the Apostle saw nothing but ignorance and sin; it was the outcome, in part, of mans enmity to God; in part, of Gods judicial abandonment of men; in part, of the activity of evil spirits; it was a path on which no progress could be made; instead of pursuing it farther, those who wished really to make spiritual advance must abandon it altogether.

It is possible to state a better case than this for the religion of the ancient world; but the Apostle was in close and continuous contact with the facts, and it will take a great deal of theorising to reverse the verdict of a conscience like his on the whole question. Those who wish to put the best face upon the matter, and to rate the spiritual worth of paganism as high as may be, lay stress on the ideal character of the so-called idols, and ask whether the mere conception of Zeus, or Apollo, or Athene, is not a spiritual achievement of a high order. Let it be ever so high, and still, from the Apostles ground, Zeus, Apollo, and Athene are dead idols. They have no life but that which is conferred upon them by their worshippers. They can never assert themselves in action, bestowing life or salvation on those who honour them. They can never be what the Living God was to every man of Jewish birth-Creator, Judge, King, and Saviour; a personal and moral power to whom men are accountable at every moment, for every free act.

"Ye turned unto God from. idols, to serve a living and true God." We cannot overestimate the greatness of this change. Until we understand the unity of God, we can have no true idea of His character, and therefore no true idea of our own relation to Him. It was the plurality of deities, as much as anything, which made heathenism morally worthless. Where there is a multitude of gods, the real power in the world, the final reality, is not found in any of them; but in a fate of some sort which lies behind them all. There can be no moral relation of man to this blank necessity; nor, while it exists, any stable relation of man to his so-called gods. No Greek or Roman could take in the idea of "serving" a God. The attendants or priests in a temple were in an official sense the deitys ministers; but the thought which is expressed in this passage, of serving a living and true God by a life of obedience to His will, a thought which is so natural and inevitable to either a Jew or a Christian, that without it we could not so much as conceive religion-that thought was quite beyond a pagans comprehension. There was no room for it in his religion; his conception of the gods did not admit of it. If life was to be a moral service rendered to God, it must be to a God quite different from any to whom he was introduced by his ancestral worship. That is the final condemnation of heathenism; the final proof of its falsehood as a religion.

There is something as deep and strong as it is simple in the words, to serve the living and true God. Philosophers have defined God as the ens realissimum, the most real of beings, the absolute reality; and it is this, with the added idea of personality, that is conveyed by the description "living and true." But does God sustain this character in the minds even of those who habitually worship Him? Is it not the case that the things which are nearest to our hand seem to be possessed of most life and reality, while God is by comparison very unreal, a remote inference from something which is immediately certain? If that is so, it will be very difficult for us to serve Him. The law of our life will not be found in His will, but in our own desires, or in the customs of our society; our motive will not be His praise, but some end which is fully attained apart from Him. "My meat, said Jesus, is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work"; and He could say so because God who sent Him was to Him the living and true God, the first and last and sole reality, whose will embraced and covered all His life. Do we think of God so? Are the existence of God and the claim of God upon our obedience the permanent element in our minds, the unchanging background of all our thoughts and purposes? This is the fundamental thing in a truly religious life.

But the Apostle goes on from what is merely theistic to what is distinctively Christian. "Ye turned to God from idols to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead."

This is a very summary description of the issue of Christian conversion. Judging by the analogy of other places, especially in St. Paul, we should have expected some mention of faith. In Act_20:1-38, e.g., where he characterises his preaching, he names as its main elements, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. But here faith has been displaced by hope; the Thessalonians are represented not as trusting in Christ, but as waiting for Him. Of course, such hope implies faith. They only waited for Him because they believed He had redeemed them, and would save them at the great day. If faith and hope differ in that the one seems to look mainly to the past and the other to the future, they agree in that both are concerned with the revelation of the unseen.

Everything in this revelation goes back to the resurrection and rests upon it. It is mentioned here, in the first instance, exactly as in Rom_1:4, as the argumentum palmarium for the Divine Sonship of Jesus. There are many proofs of that essential doctrine, but not all can be brought forward in all circumstances. Perhaps the most convincing at the present time is that which is drawn from the solitary perfection of Christs character; the more truly and fully we get the impression of that character, as it is reflected in the Gospels, the surer we are that it is not a fancy picture, but drawn from life; and that He whose likeness it is stands alone among the sons of men. But this kind of argument it takes years, not perhaps of study, but of obedience and devotion, to appreciate; and when the apostles went forth to preach the gospel they needed a more summary process of conviction. This they found in Christs resurrection; that was an event standing alone in the worlds history. There had been nothing like it before; there has been nothing like it since. But the men who were assured of it by many infallible proofs, did not presume to disbelieve it because of its singularity; amazing as it was, they could not but feel that it became one so unique in goodness and greatness as Jesus; it was not possible, they saw after the event, that He should be holden by the power of death; the resurrection only exhibited Him in His true dignity; it declared Him the Son of God, and set Him on His throne. Accordingly in all their preaching they put the resurrection in the forefront. It was a revelation of life. It extended the horizon of mans existence. It brought into view realms of being that had hitherto been hidden in darkness. It magnified to infinity the significance of everything in our short life in this world, because it connected everything immediately with an endless life beyond. And as this life in the unseen had been revealed in Christ, all the apostles had to tell about it centred in Him. The risen Christ was King, Judge, and Saviour; the Christians present duty was to love, trust, obey, and wait for Him.

This waiting includes everything. "Ye come behind in no gift," Paul says to the Corinthians, "waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ." That attitude of expectation is the bloom, as it were, of the Christian character. Without it, there is something lacking; the Christian who does not look upward and onward wants one mark of perfection. This is, in all probability, the point on which we should find ourselves most from home, in the atmosphere of the primitive Church. Not unbelievers only, but disciples as well, have practically ceased to think of the Second Advent. The society which devotes itself to reviving interest in the truth uses Scripture in a fashion which makes it impossible to take much interest in its proceedings; yet a truth so clearly a part of Scripture teaching cannot be neglected without loss. The door of the unseen world closed behind Christ as He ascended from Olivet, but not forever. It will open again; and this same Jesus shall so come in like manner as the apostles beheld Him go. He has gone to prepare a place for those who love Him and keep His word; but "if I go," He says, "and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and take you to Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." That is the final hope of the Christian faith. It is for the fulfilment of this promise that the Church waits. The Second Coming of Christ and His Resurrection stand and fall together; and it will not long be possible for those who look askance at His return to receive in all its fulness the revelation of life which He made when He rose again from the dead. This world is too much with us; and it needs not languor, but strenuous effort on the part of faith and hope, to make the unseen world as real. Let us see that we come not behind in a grace so essential to the very being of Christianity.

The last words of the verse describe the character in which the Son of God is expected by Christians to appear-Jesus, our deliverer from the wrath to come. There is, then, according to apostolic teaching, a coming wrath - a wrath impending over the world, and actually on its way towards it. It is called the wrath to come, in distinction from anything of the same nature of which we have experience here. We all know the penal consequences which sin brings in its train even in this world. Remorse, unavailing sorrow, shame, fear, the sight of injury which we have done to those we love and which we cannot undo, incapacity for service, -all these are Dart and parcel of the fruit which sin bears. But they are not the wrath to come. They do not exhaust the judgment of God upon evil. Instead of discrediting it, they bear witness to it; they are, so to speak, its forerunners; the lurid clouds that appear here and there in the sky, but are finally lost in the dense mass of the thunderstorm. When the Apostle preached the gospel, he preached the wrath to come; without it, there would have been a missing link in the circle of Christian ideas. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," he says. Why? Because in it the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness which is Gods gift and acceptable in Gods sight. But why is such a revelation of righteousness necessary? Because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The gospel is a revelation made to the world in view of a given situation, and the most prominent and threatening element in that situation is the impending wrath of God. The apostles do not prove it; they declare it. The proof of it is left to conscience, and to the Spirit of God reinforcing and quickening conscience; if anything can be added to this, it is the gospel itself; for if there were no such thing as the wrath of God, the gospel would be gratuitous. We may, if we please, evade the truth; we may pick and choose for ourselves among the elements of New Testament teaching, and reject all that is distasteful; we may take our stand upon pride, and decline to be threatened even by God; but we cannot be honest, and at the same time deny that Christ and His apostles warn us of wrath to come.

Of course we must not misconceive the character of this wrath. We must not import into our thoughts of it all that we can borrow from our experience of mans anger-hastiness, unreason, intemperate rage. The wrath of God is no arbitrary, passionate outburst; it is not, as wrath so often is with us, a fury of selfish resentment. "Evil shall not dwell with Thee," says the Psalmist: and in that simple word we have the root of the matter. The wrath of God is, as it were, the instinct of self-preservation in the Divine nature; it is the eternal repulsion, by the Holy One, of all evil. Evil shall not dwell with Him. That may be doubted or denied while the day of grace lasts, and Gods forbearance is giving space to the sinful for repentance; but a day is coming when it will no more be possible to doubt it-the day which the Apostle calls the day of wrath. It will then be plain to all the world that Gods wrath is no empty name, but the most terrible of all powers-a consuming fire in which everything opposed to His holiness is burnt up. And while we take care not to think of this wrath after the pattern of our own sinful passions, let us take care, on the other hand, not to make it an unreal thing, without analogy in human life. If we go upon the ground of Scripture and of our own experience, it has the same degree and the same kind of reality as the love of God, or His compassion, or His forbearance. In whatever way we lawfully think of one side of the Divine nature, we must at the same time think of the other. If there is a passion of Divine love, there is a passion of Divine wrath as well. Nothing is meant in either case unworthy of the Divine nature; what is conveyed by the word passion is the truth that Gods repulsion of evil is as intense as the ardour with which He delights in good. To deny that is to deny that He is good.

The Apostolic preacher, who had announced the wrath to come, and awakened guilty consciences to see their danger, preached Jesus as the deliverer from it. This is the real meaning of the words in the text; and neither "Jesus which delivered," as in the Authorised Version, nor, in any rigorous sense, "Jesus which delivereth," as in the Revised. It is the character of Jesus that is in view, and neither the past nor the present of His action. Everyone who reads the words must feel, How brief! how much remains to be explained! how much Paul must have had to say about how the deliverance is effected! As the passage stands, it recalls vividly the end of the second Psalm: "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way, for His wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." To have the Son a friend, to be identified with Jesus-so much we see at once-secures deliverance in the day of wrath. Other Scriptures supply the missing links. The atonement for sin made by Christs death; faith which unites the soul to the Saviour, and brings into it the virtue of His cross and resurrection; the Holy Spirit who dwells in believers, sanctifying them, and making them fit to dwell with God in the light, -all these come into view elsewhere, and in spite of the brevity of this notice had their place, beyond doubt, in Pauls teaching at Thessalonica. Not that all could be explained at once: that was unnecessary. But from imminent danger there must be an instantaneous escape; and it is sufficient to say that it is found in Jesus Christ. "Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." The risen Son is enthroned in power; He is Judge of all; He died for all; He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him. To commit everything definitely to Him; to leave Him to undertake for us; to put on Him the responsibility of our past and our future, as He invites us to do; to put ourselves for good and all at His side, -this is to find deliverance from the wrath to come. It leaves much unexplained that we may come to understand afterwards, and much, perhaps, that we shall never understand; but it guarantees itself, adventure though it be; Christ never disappoints any who thus put their trust in Him.

This description in outline of conversion from paganism to the gospel should revive the elementary Christian virtues in our hearts. Have we seen how high a thing it is to serve a living and true God? Or is it not so, that even among Christians, a godly man-one who lives in the presence of God, and is conscious of his responsibility to Him-is the rarest of all types? Are we waiting for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead? Or are there not many who hardly so much as form the idea of His return, and to whom the attitude of waiting for Him would seem strained and unnatural? In plain words, what the New Testament calls Hope is in many Christians dead: the world to come and all that is involved in it-the searching judgment, the impending wrath, the glory of Christ-have slipped from our grasp. Yet it was this hope which more than anything gave its peculiar colour to the primitive Christianity, its unworldliness, its moral intensity, its command of the future even in this life. If there were nothing else to establish it, would not its spiritual fruits be sufficient?

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

1:9 Among the Gentiles, the message of the apostles was an exhortation to turn from false idols to serve the living and true God, who created all things (Acts 14:11-18; 17:22-31; 19:23-41). In a pluralistic religious environment, the call to forsake ancestral gods was unusual (cp. Jer 10:8-10; 1 Cor 8:4-6).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Th 1:9. Περὶ ἡμῶν, concerning us) both teachers and believers [both us who taught, and you who believed].—δουλεύειν Θεῳ, to serve God) The Thessalonians are thus distinguished from the Gentiles; so also from the Jews, in the following verse.—καὶ ἀληθινῷ and true) This denotes the truth of [His] nature.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Th_1:9. Αὐτοί] not: sponte, αὐτομαθῶς, of themselves (Pelt), but emphatically opposed to the preceding ἡμᾶς: not we, nay they themselves, that is, according to the well-known constructio ad sensum (comp. Gal_2:2): οἱ ἐν τῇ Μακεδονίᾳ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἀχαΐᾳ καὶ ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ. See Bernhardy, Syntax, p. 288; Winer, p. 137 [E. T. 181]. Beza erroneously (though undecidedly) refers αὐτοί to πάντες οἱ πιστεύοντες (1Th_1:7).

περὶ ἡμῶν] is not equivalent to ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, in our stead (Koppe), but means: concerning us, de nobis; and, indeed, περὶ ἡμῶν is the general introductory object of ἀπαγγέλλουσιν, which is afterwards more definitely expressed by ὁποίαν κ.τ.λ.

ἡμῶν, however, refers not only to the apostle and his assistants, but also to the Thessalonians, because otherwise καὶ πῶς ἐπεστρέψατε in relation to ἡμῶν would be inappropriate. This twofold nature of the subject may be already contained in ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν ἡ πρὸς τὸν Θεόν (1Th_1:8); as, on the one hand, the producing of πίστις by the labours of the apostle is expressed, and, on the other hand, its acceptance on the part of the Thessalonians.

ὁποίαν εἴσοδον ἔσχομεν πρὸς ὑμᾶς] what sort of entrance we had to you, namely, with the preaching of the gospel, i.e. (comp. 1Th_1:5) with what power and fulness of the Holy Spirit, with what inward conviction and contempt of external dangers (Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Theophylact erroneously limit ὁποίαν to danger), we preached the gospel to you. Most understand ὁποίαν εἴσοδον (led astray by the German Eingang) of the friendly reception, which Paul and his companions found among the Thessalonians (indeed, according to Pelt, εἴσοδος in itself without ὁποία denotes facilem aditum); and accordingly some (Schott, Hofmann) think of the eager reception of the gospel, or of its entrance into the hearts of the Thessalonians (Olshausen). The first view is against linguistic usage, as εἴσοδον ἔχειν πρός τινα can only have an active sense, can only denote the coming to one, the entrance (comp. 1Th_2:1); as also in the classics εἴσοδος is particularly used of the entrance of the chorus into the orchestra (comp. Passow on the word). The latter view is against the context, as in πῶς ἐπεστρέψατε κ.τ.λ. the effect of the apostles preaching is first referred to.

πῶς] how, that is, how joyfully and energetically.

ἐπιστρέφειν] to turn from the false way to the true.

πρὸς τὸν Θεόν] to be converted to God: a well-known biblical figure. It can also denote to return to God; for although this is spoken of those who once were Gentiles, yet their idolatry was only an apostasy from God (comp. Rom_1:19 ff.).

δουλεύειν] the infinitive of design. See Winer, p. 298 [E. T. 408].

Θεῷ ζῶντι] the living God (comp. אֱלֹהִים חַי, 2Ki_19:4; 2Ki_19:16, and Act_14:15), in contrast to dead idols (Hab_2:19).

ἀληθινός] true, real (comp. אֱלֹהִים אֶמֶת, 2Ch_15:3; Joh_17:3; 1Jn_5:20), in contrast to idols, which are vain and unreal. The design intended by δουλεύειν Θεῷ ζῶντι καὶ ἀληθινῷ contains as yet nothing specifically Christian; it is rather δουλεία consecrated to the living and true God, common to Christians and Jews. The specific Christian mark, that which distinguishes Christians also from Jews, is added in what immediately follows.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Th 1:9 . The positive and negative aspects of faith: “Videndum est ut ruinam errorum sequatur aedificium fidei” (Calvin). ἀληθινῷ = “real” as opposed to false in the sense of “counterfeit”. ζῶντι , as opposed to dead idols (see above, p. 5) impotent to help their worshippers. Elsewhere the phrase ( cf. 1Ti 3:15 ; Heb 3:12 ) “implies a contrast with the true God made practically a dead deity by a lifeless and rigid form of religion” (Hort, Christian Ecclesia , 173). Nothing brings home the reality of God ( i.e. , as Father, 1Th 1:1-3 ) to the Christian at first so much as the experience of forgiveness.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

They themselves shew [αυτοι απαγγελλουσιν] . They themselves in contrast with we, ver. 8. We need not speak of anything : they themselves volunteer testimony to your faith. Shew, more correctly announce or report. 13 Entering in [εισοδον] . Comp. ch. 1Th 2:1. The thought of ver. 5 is resumed. The repetition of the word in ch. 2 1, and of in vain in ch. 3 5, may point to expressions in a letter of the Thessalonians.

Unto you [προς] . The preposition combines with the sense of direction that of relation and intercourse. Comp. Mt 13:56; Mr 9:16; Joh 1:1; Act 3:25; Col 4:5; Heb 9:20.

Ye turned unto God [επεστρεψατε προς τον θεον] . Comp. Act 14:15. The exact phrase only here. The verb is common in LXX, with both kurion Lord and qeon God.

Idols. See on 1Co 8:3. The word would indicate that the majority of the converts were heathen and not Jews.

Living and true [ζωντι και αληθινω] . The only instance in N. T. of this collocation. It does not occur in O. T. For ajlhqinov genuine, see on Joh 1:9; Joh 4:37; Joh 7:28. Mostly in the Johannine writings.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

It is no true conversion to forsake idols, unless a man therewithall worship the true and living God in Christ the only redeemer.

All the believers.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Strictly there should follow, "For they themselves show of you," &c.; but, instead, he substitutes that which was the instrumental cause of the Thessalonians' conversion and faith, "for they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you"; compare Th1 1:5, which corresponds to this former clause, as Th1 1:6 corresponds to the latter clause. "And how ye turned from idols to serve the living . . . God," &c. Instead of our having "to speak any thing" to them (in Macedonia and Achaia) in your praise (Th1 1:8), "they themselves (have the start of us in speaking of you, and) announce concerning (so the Greek of 'show of' means) us, what manner of (how effectual an) entrance we had unto you" (Th1 1:5; Th1 2:1).

the living and true God--as opposed to the dead and false gods from which they had "turned." In the English Version reading, Act 17:4, "of the devout Greeks a great multitude," no mention is made, as here, of the conversion of idolatrous Gentiles at Thessalonica; but the reading of some of the oldest manuscripts and Vulgate singularly coincides with the statement here: "Of the devout AND of Greeks (namely, idolaters) a great multitude"; so in Act 17:17, "the devout persons," that is, Gentile proselytes to Judaism, form a separate class. PALEY and LACHMANN, by distinct lines of argument, support the "AND."

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 9. How ye turned to God from idols] This could not be spoken either of the Jews or of the devout persons, but of the heathen Greeks, and of such it appears that the majority of the Church was formed. See what is said on this subject in the preface to this epistle.

To serve the living and true God] The living God; in opposition to the idols, which were either inanimate stocks or stones, or the representations of dead men.

The true God-In opposition to the whole system of idolatry, which was false in the objects of its adoration, false in its pretensions, false in its promises, and false in all its prospects.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

He says that the report of their conversion had obtained great renown everywhere. What he mentions as to his entering in among them, refers to that power of the Spirit, by which God had signalized his gospel. He says, however, that both things are freely reported among other nations, as things worthy of being made mention of. In the detail which follows, he shews, first, what the condition of mankind is, before the Lord enlightens them by the doctrine of his gospel; and farther, for what end he would have us instructed, and what is the fruit of the gospel. For although all do not worship idols, all are nevertheless addicted to idolatry, and are immersed in blindness and madness. Hence, it is owing to the kindness of God, that we are exempted from the impostures of the devil, and every kind of superstition. Some, indeed, he converts earlier, others later, but as alienation is common to all, it is necessary that we be converted to God, before we can serve God. From this, also, we gather the essence and nature of true faith, inasmuch as no one gives due credit to God but the man, who renouncing the vanity of his own understanding, embraces and receives the pure worship of God.

9 To the living God. This is the end of genuine conversion. We see, indeed, that many leave off superstitions, who, nevertheless, after taking this step, are so far from making progress in piety, that they fall into what is worse. For having thrown off all regard to God, they give themselves up to a profane and brutal contempt. Thus, in ancient times, the superstitions of the vulgar were derided by Epicurus, Diogenes the Cynic, and the like, but in such a way that they mixed up the worship of God so as to make no difference between it and absurd trifles. Hence we must take care, lest the pulling down of errors be followed by the overthrow of the building of faith. Farther, the Apostle, in ascribing to God the epithets true and living, indirectly censures idols as being dead and worthless inventions, and as being falsely called gods. He makes the end of conversion to be what I have noticed — that they might serve God. Hence the doctrine of the gospel tends to this, that it may induce us to serve and obey God. For so long as we are the servants of sin, we are free from righteousness, (Romans 6:20) inasmuch as we sport ourselves, and wander up and down, exempt from any yoke. No one, therefore, is properly converted to God, but the man who has learned to place himself wholly under subjection to him.

As, however, it is a thing that is more than simply difficult, in so great a corruption of our nature, he shews at the same time, what it is that retains and confirms us in the fear of God and obedience to him — waiting for Christ. For unless we are stirred up to the hope of eternal life, the world will quickly draw us to itself. For as it is only confidence in the Divine goodness that induces us to serve God, so it is only the expectation of final redemption that keeps us from giving way. Let every one, therefore, that would persevere in a course of holy life, apply his whole mind to a expectation of Christ’s coming. It is also worthy of notice, that he uses the expression waiting for Christ, instead of the hope of everlasting salvation. For, unquestionably, without Christ we are ruined and thrown into despair, but when Christ shews himself, life and prosperity do at the same time shine forth upon us. Let us bear in mind, however, that this is said to believers exclusively, for as for the wicked, as he will come to be their Judge, so they can do nothing but tremble in looking for him.

This is what he afterwards subjoins — that Christ delivereth us from the wrath to come. For this is felt by none but those who, being reconciled to God by faith, have conscience already pacified; otherwise, his name is dreadful. Christ, it is true, delivered us by his death from the anger of God, but the import of that deliverance will become apparent on the last day. This statement, however, consists of two departments. The first is, that the wrath of God and everlasting destruction are impending over the human race, inasmuch as all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) The second is, that there is no way of escape but through the grace of Christ; for it is not without good grounds that Paul assigns to him this office. It is, however, an inestimable gift, that the pious, whenever mention is made of judgment, know that Christ will come as a Redeemer to them.

In addition to this, he says emphatically, the wrath to come, that he may rouse up pious minds, lest they should fail from looking at the present life. For as faith is a looking at things that do not appear, (Hebrews 11:1) nothing is less befitting than that we should estimate the wrath of God, according as any one is afflicted in the world; as nothing is more absurd than to take hold of the transient blessings which we enjoy, that we may from them form an estimate of God’s favor. While, therefore, on the one hand, the wicked sport themselves at their ease, and we, on the other hand, languish in misery, let us learn to fear the vengeance of God, which is hid from the eyes of flesh, and take our satisfaction in the secret delights of the spiritual life.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(9) They themselves—i.e., the inhabitants of those countries. “Wherever we go we find our own story told us.”

Shew.—Rather, announce. Both sides of the story are told: (1) of us—what kind of entry we made among you, explained in 1Th_2:1-12 to mean with “the word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness” (Psa_45:5); (2) of you—how truly converted you were, as he proceeds to show further in 1Th_2:13 to 1Th_3:13.

Living and true God.—In contrast to the lifeless and false idols. The Thessalonians had been Gentiles, Perhaps St. Paul was thinking of his own speech on Mars Hill, which had been recently uttered.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

9. For they themselves shew of us] Rather, report concerning us (R.V.) “They” points to “those in Macedonia and Achaia” and “in every place,”—any whom the Apostle visited, or to whom he had thought of sending the news. “Instead of waiting to be told by us, we find them spreading the joyful news already!” And this self-diffusing report concerned not the Thessalonians alone, but Paul and his colleagues. It published their success at this great city, and helped their further progress: they report … what kind of an entrance we had unto you.

The “manner” of this “entering in” is not to be found in the kind of reception given to the evangelists at Thessalonica, but in the way in which they presented themselves and entered on their ministry here: comp. 1Th_1:5, and ch. 1Th_2:1-2. The reports that told of the heroic faith of the Thessalonians, told also of the wonderful energy and success with which Paul and Silas had preached to them.

and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God] Lit., from the idols, to be bondmen to a God living and true. This explains the “faith toward God” of 1Th_1:8. “How” implies not the fact alone, but the manner of their conversion—“with what decision and gladness” (1Th_1:3; 1Th_1:6), parallel to “what manner of entrance.” The Thessalonian Christians had been mainly Gentiles and heathen; comp. ch. 1Th_2:14,—also Act_17:4-5, from which it appears, however, that there was a sprinkling of Jews among them, and “a great multitude” of proselytes, already more or less weaned from idolatry.

The “faith toward God” defined in this verse, is the faith of the whole Bible, in which from first to last God asserts Himself as “the Living and True,” against the ten thousand forms of human idolatry. The word idol (Greek eidôlon) means properly an appearance, a mere image, or phantom. Homer, e.g., applies the term to the phantasms of distant persons by which his gods sometimes impose on men (Iliad, v. 449; Odyssey, IV. 796). Comp. Lord Bacon’s idola tribus, specus, fori, theatri, in the Novum Organum. This word is the equivalent in the Septuagint Version of Hebrew designations for heathen gods and their images of like significance—vapours, vanities, nothings. To all these the Name of the God of Israel—Who “is the true God, and the living God” (Jer_10:10)—is the constant, tacit antithesis: “I am Jehovah” (more strictly Jahveh, or Yahweh, commonly “the Lord” in the English O. T.)—the HE IS (see Exo_3:13-14 for its interpretation; and for its use in argument against idolatry, such passages as Isa_42:8; Isa_45:5-6; Isa_45:18; Isa_45:21-22). Like the Prophets and Psalmists (e.g. in Psa_115:4-8; Isa_44:9-20; Jer_10:1-10), St Paul was powerfully impressed with the illusion and unreality of heathen religions. He defines idolatry in two passages, 1Co_8:4; 1Co_10:19-20, as being half lies, half devilry; and in the horrible immorality then existing in the Gentile world he saw its natural consequence and judicial punishment (Rom_1:18-25).

“True” signifies truth of fact, not word: “true God” is the “very God” of the Nicene Creed, the real God: comp. Joh_17:3,—“that they should know Thee, the only true God;” and 1Jn_5:20, “This is the true God, and life eternal.”

The service to this “living and true God” which the Thessalonians had embraced, was that of bondmen, acknowledging themselves His property and at His absolute disposal. St Paul habitually calls himself “Christ’s” (once “God’s,” Tit_1:1) “bondman.” In Gal_4:8 he speaks of heathenism as bondage to false gods; in Rom_6:15-23 he shows that to become a Christian is to exchange the bondage of sin for bondage to righteousness and to God, bondage under grace. The full conception of the Christian relationship to God is formed by the combination of the idea of sonship (in respect of affection and privilege) with that of bond-service (in respect of duty and submission), to Him “Whose service is perfect freedom.”

On the relation of this passage to St Paul’s general teaching see Introd. pp. 17, 18. So far, in 1Th_1:8-9, St Paul has related the conversion of the Thessalonians in the language and spirit of the O. T., and as an acceptance of Hebrew faith. In the next verse he advances to that which was distinctively Christian in their new creed:—

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For they themselves show of us,.... Either the above reports of the preaching of the Gospel to the Thessalonians, and of their faith in God; or rather the persons to whom these reports were brought, openly and publicly, and largely declared concerning

the apostles, what manner of entering in we had unto you; under what difficulties they laboured, what contention they had with the unbelieving Jews, what reproaches were cast upon them, and what persecutions they endured when they first entered their city and synagogue, and preached the Gospel to them; and in what manner they did preach it, with what boldness, sincerity, uprightness and affection, and without flattery, covetousness, and vain glory; and with what power it came to them, and what success attended it, and how readily, cheerfully, and reverently both they and that were received by them:

and how ye turned to God from idols; immediately and at once, upon the preaching of the Gospel to them, being first turned by the powerful and efficacious grace of God; for the first work of conversion is God's work; then they themselves, under the influence of the same grace, turned to the one God, from their internal idols, their sins and lusts, and from their external idols, their many false and fictitious deities: for the Thessalonians before the Gospel came among them were idolaters; here the "Dii Cabiri", the great and chief gods of the Gentiles, were worshipped; as Jupiter and Bacchus, Ceres and Proserpina, Pluto and Mercury, Castor and Pollux, and Esculapius; these the Macedonians, and particularly the Thessalonians, worshipped with great devotion and reverence (d): but now they turned from them and forsook them,

to serve the living and true God; who is called the living God, because he has life in and of himself, and is the fountain of life to others; from whom all living creatures have their life, and are supported in it by him; and in opposition to the above idols, which were inanimate things made of wood or metal, and were images of men that had been dead long ago: and the "true" God, because he is truth itself, and cannot lie, who faithfully performs all his promises, and is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth; and in opposition to the nominal and fictitious deities of the Gentiles, which were only in name, not in truth and reality, or by nature gods: now though these Thessalonians had before done service to these idols, they now turned from them to serve the one living and true God; not only externally, by embracing and professing his Gospel, submitting to his ordinances, and walking according to the rules prescribed by him; but also internally, in the exercise of faith, hope, love, and every other grace.

(d) Gutherlothus de mysteriis Deor. Cabirorum, c. 15. p. 94, 95. Jul. Firmicus. de errore prof. relig. p. 18.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

9 For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God;

Ver. 9. What manner of entering in, &c.] The pastor hath his part and share in the people’s commendation. If they grow famous, he cannot lie obscured.

Ye turned to God from idols] They gave not the half turn only from east to south, but the whole turn, from the east to west, from idols to God, Hos 6:4. Ephraim shall say, "What have I to do any more with idols?" Hos 14:8; those Balaam blocks, those mawmets and monuments of idolatry, those images of jealousy? Ephraim is now no longer as a cake half-baked, as a speckled bird, Jer 12:9. Better be a Papist than an atheist, a gross idolater than a profligate professor, a carnal gospeller.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For they themselves - They who have visited you, and they whom you have sent out; all persons testify of your piety. The apostle seems to refer to all whom he had met or had heard of “in all places,” who said anything about the Thessalonians They were unanimous in bearing testimony to their fidelity and piety.

Show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you - The testimony which they bear of you is, in fact, testimony of the manner in which we preached the gospel, and demeaned ourselves when we were with you. It shows that we were intent on our Master’s work, and that we were not actuated by selfish or sinister motives The argument is, that such effects could not have been produced among them if Paul, Silas, and their fellow laborers had been impostors. Their sound conversion to God; their change from idolatry to the true religion, and the zeal which had been the result of their conversion, was an argument to which Paul and his fellow-laborers might appeal in proof of their sincerity and their being sent from God. Paul often makes a similar appeal; compare notes on 2Co 3:2-3. It is certain that many of the Jews in Thessalonica, when Paul and his fellow-laborers were there, regarded them as impostors Act 17:6, Act 17:8, and there is every reason to suppose that after they left the city, they would endeavor to keep up this impression among the people. To meet this, Paul now says that their own undoubted conversion to a life of holiness and zeal under their ministry, was an unanswerable argument that this was not so. How could impostors and deceivers have been the means of producing such effects?

And how ye turned to God from idols - That is, under our preaching. This proves that the church was to a considerable extent composed of those who were converted from idolatry under the preaching of Paul; compare Intro. 4. The meaning here is, that they who came from them, or they who had visited them, bore abundant testimony to the fact that they had turned from idols to the worship of the true God; compare notes 1Co 12:2; Gal 1:8.

To serve the living and true God - He is called the “living God” in opposition to idols - who are represented as dead, dumb, deaf, and blind; compare Psa 135:15-17; notes, Isa 44:10-17; Mat 16:16; Joh 5:26; Act 14:15.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

For they themselves show of us, what manner of entering in we had unto you: the believers of Macedonia and Achaia do speak of these things απαγγελλουσιν, openly, whereby it is evident the word of the Lord sounded forth to them from you, and they, without any information from us, declare the great entertainment you gave us and our gospel at our first entrance among you.

And how ye turned to God from idols; particularly your forsaking your former idolatry, when you worshipped idols, that were either the images or shapes of the true God, formed by men; or men whom they deified, and set up as gods, and worshipped them and their images; or inanimate creatures, as sun, moon, and stars, or whatever creature they found beneficial to them, the heathens made idols of them. These ye turned from: though it was by the power of God and the gospel upon your hearts, yet it was an act of your own. And though it was the worship of these idols you had been trained up in, and wits generally practised, yet you turned from it. And as to the manner of it, how ye turned from these idols, as in the text; that is, how readily, how sincerely, how speedily, with a holy indignation of them: or, πως, how, that is, by what means; meaning by our entrance amongst you, and the power of our gospel upon your hearts, according to that prophecy, Isa 2:20,21, which refers to gospel times.

To serve the living and true God; to serve with religious worship proper to God; though the papists would confine the Greek word δουλευειν to some lower worship they give to saints or angels; or it may signify the whole service of God. And here the apostle speaks of their religion in the positive part, the former being negative. The living God, so called in opposition to idols, which were either images without life, or inanimate creatures, or men that were dead whom they worshipped; or living, because God is so eminently, being life essentially, originally, eternally, immutably, and derivatively to all things that live. As I live, saith the Lord, as if none had life but himself, Isa 49:18, &c. And called the true God in opposition to false gods. The heathen gods had no deity but what men gave them by worshipping them. They were not gods by nature, Gal 4:8, and so not true. And as these things are spoken to show the power of the gospel, so in a way of commendation, that they did not only turn from idols, but did serve the true God; many profess the true God, but serve him not. As also they denote their privilege, that they served a God that could save them, which their idols could not.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

9. They themselves—The above anticipators, implied but not expressed.

Manner of entering—More fully depicted in 1Th_2:1-2.

From idols—From the fabled Jove to the divine Jehovah.

Living and true—In contrast to the idols, which were lifeless and false.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For they themselves; that is, the reporters, those in Macedonia, Achaia, and every other place. Show of us; or, report concerning us (R.V) in regard to our preaching or entrance among you. Instead of questions being asked of us by them, as would naturally be expected, they of their own accord give information. What manner of entering in we had among you. "Entering" here evidently refers, not merely to the outward entrance, the mere preaching of the gospel among the Thessalonians; but to the access, the internal entrance, which the gospel found into their hearts; that is, with what power and fullness of the Holy Ghost we preached the gospel unto you, and with what joy and confidence and contempt of danger ye received it. And how ye turned to God from idols. This, as already remarked, is one of the proofs that the Church of Thessalonica was chiefly composed of Gentile converts, though, of course, not to the exclusion of the Jewish element. (Act_17:4) To serve the living and true God. Two epithets there employed in contrast to the idols of the heathen: living," in opposition to dead idols, which were nothing in the world; "true," not in the sense of veracious, but of real in opposition to the imaginary gods of the heathen.

Vers. 9, 10.

The nature of the impression made upon the world by the spectacle of Thessalonian piety.

It was a truly providential foresight that led the apostles at the beginning of the gospel to plant it first in the great cities of the world. Thus it first appeared at Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Rome, and Corinth.

I THE WORLD WAS FIRST IMPRESSED BY THE RAPID AND IMMEDIATE SUCCESS OF THE APOSTLES. "For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you." The world seemed to appreciate the boldness, the sincerity, the uprightness of the preachers, as elements of their success; for there was no dexterous flattery, there was no spirit of self-seeking, there was no guileful strategy, in the proclamation of the gospel.

II THE WORLD WAS STILL MORE DEEPLY IMPRESSED BY THE BLESSED EFFECTS OF THE APOSTLES" PREACHING, "And how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

1. It was a conversion from idolatry, Immediately and at once they received converting grace, under the influence of which they turned to the Lord from their dead and fictitious deities.

(1) Idolatry is apostasy from God. These Thessalonians" had changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things". (Rom_1:23) They had been "joined to their idols" for ages. (Hos_4:17) They had been hitherto walking just like other Gentiles, in all moral blindness and carnality of heart. (Eph_4:17, Eph_4:18)

(2) Their conversion was a repudiation of idolatry. It was not mere proselytism. It was the bursting asunder of ties which had an immense social as well as religious weight in pagan life.

(3) It was a thorough consecration to the service of the living and true God. As their God was true God and living God, having life in himself and a true and faithful relation to his worshippers, they could give him the living service of faith, obedience, and dependence.

2. Another effect of the apostlespreaching was their expectation of our Lords coming. The doctrine of the advent occupies the foreground in the thoughts of the Thessalonians, as in the two Epistles addressed to them. As faith underlies the service of the true God, so hope underlies the expectation of the Lord"s coming. "And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivereth us from the wrath to conic.

(1) This implies the belief that Jesus is in heaven, to reign, to plead, to prepare a place for us.

(2) It implies the belief that he will return from heaven. The Thessalonians may have believed that he would return in that age, but all Christians live in the "blessed hope" of his second coming.

(3) This waiting attitude implied the recognition of a certain connection between Christ"s resurrection and our deliverance from the wrath to come. They were not waiting for a dead man lying in a Jewish grave, but for One raised from the dead, and living in the power of an endless life. His resurrection implied the completion of his atoning work, as the work of atonement supplies the ground for our continuous deliverance from the wrath that is coming. There is a wrath coming upon disobedient sinners, but there is a way of deliverance provided in the Word of Jesus Christ ratified by his resurrection from the dead. T.C. Vers. 9, 10.

The great change.

The Thessalonians were converted heathens. To them the blessedness of the gospel would be largely measured by its contrast with the darkness of paganism. In Christendom the language descriptive of the acceptance of the spiritual blessings of the gospel would, of course, be different. But little else than the language; anti with the essential, spiritual signification of it, even this would scarcely need altering. St. Paul regards the great change in two aspects, present and future.

I THE PRESENT ASPECT OF THE GREAT CHANGE. "Ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God.

1. It is emancipation from an evil service and enlistment in a good service.

In the old condition a man is a servant, of idols, of sin, of passion, of the world, of Satan. He thinks himself free, but he is really a miserable slave. In the changed condition the Christian is freed from this thraldom. But he is not the leas a servant. He no longer serves in hard bondage. Love is his chain, and free devotion his service. Still he serves.

2. It is the giving up of death and falsehood and the acceptance of truth and life.

(1) The idol is lifeless. All worldly, sinful living is a devotion to lifeless gods, to mere material things that perish in the using. The Christian serves a living God, who can give vital grace, accept loving devotion, and commune with his people.

(2) The idol is false. Idolatry is a lie. All earthly things when exalted into gods become unreal and only mock their devotees. God is real, and he only can be rightly served in spirit and in truth. We come to reality, to fact, to truth, when we come to God.

II THE FUTURE ASPECT OF THE GREAT CHANGE.

1. It consists in a tutoring from wrath. Whether we anticipate it with fear, or delude ourselves in the dream of evading it, or simply ignore it with stolid indifference, the fact remains that for all of us, while in ore" sins, there is a certain looking for of judgment. If we are children of sin we must be children of wrath. It is no small blessing to be able to face the future and to see that reasonably and righteously all the horror of Divine wrath is gone in the free pardon of sin. It is like turning one"s face from the lowering thundercloud to the silver light of sunrise.

2. It leads on to an anticipation of the coming glory of Christ. All the early Christians were much occupied with this anticipation, but none more so than the Thessalonians. The hope of the Parousia is an ever-recurrent theme in the two Epistles of St. Paul to this Church. His own mind must also have been very full of it when he wrote these letters. In their immediate expectation-at least, as far as a visible appearance and triumph of Christ was concerned the first Christians were disappointed. But the great promises still cheer us as we wait for the glory that is reserved in the future. The Christian conversion thus not merely results in a deliverance from wrath; it inspires a grand hope and promises a rich glory in the days to come. W.F.A.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For they themselves - The people wherever we come.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

how ye turned

The tenses of the believer’s life here indicated are logical and give the true order. They occur also in 1Th 1:3. The "work of faith" is to "turn to God from idols" (cf) Joh 6:28; Joh 6:29 the "labour of love" is to "serve the living and true God"; and the "patience of hope" is to "wait for his Son from heaven" (cf); Mat 24:42; Mat 25:13; Luk 12:36-48; Act 1:11; Php 3:20; Php 3:21. Paul repeats this threefold sequence in Tit 2:11-13.

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For they themselves [those to whom Paul came] report concerning us what manner of entering in we had unto you; and how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God ,

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

9. For they themselves. The people “every place” (verse 8). How ye turned to God from idols. Most of them had been heathen. See the accounts in Acts 17:4.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

9. B, with 20 minuscules, sah cop, Thdrt Dam Oec, reads περι υμων (for ημων), a mistake due perhaps to the prominent υμων of 1Th 1:8; WH place υμων in the margin.

The εχομεν of T.R. is found only in a few minuscules; εσχομεν in all uncials and best versions. Present and 2nd aorist forms of this verb are often confused through the resemblance of uncial ε and c.

9. αὐτοὶ γὰρ περὶ ἡμῶν ἀπαγγέλλουσιν ὁποίαν, κ.τ.λ. For of their own accord they (the people we meet with in Macedonia or Achaia, or hear from “in every place”) report about us (or you: see Textual Note). It must be remembered that these are the statements (1Th 1:7-9) not of St Paul alone, but of Silvanus and Timothy besides, who had newly joined the Apostle at Corinth after separately visiting Macedonia and traversing a wide extent of country.

ὁποίαν (the proper indirect interrog.: cf. note on οἶοι, 1Th 1:5) εἴσοδον—qualem ingressum (Calvin, Beza), rather than introitum (Vulg.)—what sort of an entrance, how happy and successful (1Th 1:5; 1Th 2:1 f., where εἴσοδος recurs; 1Th 2:13: cf. also Heb 10:19). The noun nowhere implies reception.

καὶ πῶς ἐπεστρέψατε πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀπὸ κ.τ.λ. completes the report of the success of the writers, just as 1Th 1:6 completed the description of the conversion of the readers given by 1Th 1:5. Πῶς—the direct for indirect interrogative (ὅπως in this sense only in Luk 24:20 in N.T.; otherwise telic)—implies the manner as well as the fact of conversion: see 1Th 1:6, 1Th 2:13. Ἐπ-in the verb marks not regression (as in Gal 4:9, &c.), but direction (as in Act 9:40); πρός, as in 2Co 3:16, gives the object toward which “you turned,” resuming the phrase of 1Th 1:8—oftener ἐπί in this connexion (as in Gal 4:9; Act 14:15); εἰς, with characteristic difference, in Mat 12:44, Luk 2:39, &c.

The aforesaid report describes a conversion from Paganism to the service of “the (one, true) God”—πρὸς τὸν θεόν. The Thessalonian Christians had been mainly heathen, “not knowing God” (2Th 1:8; Gal 4:8; cf. Gal 2:14 below); there was, however, a sprinkling of Jews among them, with “a great multitude” of proselytes more or less weaned previously from idolatry, according to Act 17:4. “The God” whom they now “serve,” is a God living and real (vivo et vero). This is the dialect of O.T. faith; so much might have been said of converts to Judaism.

ζῶντι καὶ ἀληθινῷ is categorically opposed to τῶν εἰδώλων: Jahveh (Jehovah), the HE IS (see Exo 3:13 f., for the Israelite reading of the ineffable Name; and cf. Isa 42:8; Isa 45:5 ff., Isa 45:18; Isa 45:21 ff., for its controversial use against heathenism), is by His very name “the true God and the living God” (Jer 10:10); all other deities are therefore dead and unreal—mere λεγόμενοι θεοί (1Co 8:4 ff.). In this sense they are stigmatized as εἴδωλα, the Septuagint rendering of אֱלִילִים (nothings, Psa 97:7, &c.), or הֲבָלְים (vapours, emptinesses, Deu 32:21, &c.). Εἴδωλον denotes an appearance, an image or phantom without substance: the word was applied by Homer to the phantasms of distant persons imposed on men by the gods (Iliad 449; Odyssey iv. 796); cf. Bacon’s idola tribus, specus, &c. In the Theœtetus 150 a c e and 151 c, Plato identifies εἴδωλον with ψεῦδος (cf. Rom 1:23; Rom 1:25) and contrasts it with what is ἀληθινόν, γνήσιον, ἀληθές. Similarly, heathen gods and their rites are styled τὰ μάταια in Act 14:15, as occasionally in the LXX. (cf. Rom 1:21; Eph 4:17: for the O.T., see in illustration Psa 115:4-8; Isa 44:9-20; Jer 10:1-11). St Paul was powerfully impressed by observation with the hollowness of the Paganism of his time. Ἀληθινός, verus—to be distinguished from ἀληθής (cf. Rom 3:4), verax—denotes truth of fact, the correspondence of the reality to the conception or the name (see e.g. Joh 15:1; Joh 17:3; 1Jn 5:20); θεὸς ἀληθινός is the “very God” of the Nicene Creed.

With δουλεύειν, to serve as bondmen, cf. St. Paul’s habitual designation of himself as δοῦλος Χριστοῦ, once δοῦλος θεοῦ (Tit 1:1),—the O.T. עֶבֶד יהוה. Religious obligation was conceived under this usual form of personal service, which implied ownership on the master’s and absolute dependence on the servant’s part. Elsewhere St Paul corrects the term in contrasting Christian and pre-Christian service to God—“no longer a slave but a son”: Gal 4:1-10; Rom 8:12-17; cf. Joh 8:31-36; 1Jn 3:1 f.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

9.] αὐτοί, the people ἐν τῇ Μακ. κ. Ἀχ., κ. ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ: see reff., and Bernhardy, p. 288.

περὶ ἡμῶν] concerning us, Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus; not as Lün., ‘us both,’ including the Thessalonians. This he does, to square the following clauses, which otherwise are not correspondent: but there are two objections to his view: (1) the emphatic position of περὶ ἡμῶν, which seems to necessitate its keeping its strict meaning: (2) that it would in this case have been much more naturally ὑμῶν than ἡμῶν, as the second person has prevailed throughout, and our εἴσοδος to you was quite as much a matter happening to you as to us. That καὶ περὶ ὑμῶν, πῶς should be abbreviated as we find it, will surely not surprise any one familiar with the irregularities, in point of symmetry, of St. Paul’s style.

The ἀπαγγελλόμενα here correspond to the two members of the above proof, verses 5 and 6. ὁποίαν has no reference to danger, as Chrys., al. εἴσοδος merely access, in the way of coming to them: see ch. 2:1: not of itself facilis aditus, as Pelt. πῶς, merely how that, introducing matter of fact,—not ‘how,’ ‘in what manner,’ how joyfully and energetically, as Lünem.: if so, the long specification (πρὸς … ἐρχομένης), which follows the (thus) unemphatic verb, drags wearily: whereas, regarded as indicating matter of fact only, the πῶς is unemphatic, and the matter of fact itself, carrying the emphasis, justifies the full statement which is made of it.

ζῶντι κ. ἀληθινῷ] ζῶντα μὲν αὐτὸν ὠνόμασεν, ὡς ἐκείνων οὐ ζώντων. ἀληθινὸν δέ, ὡς ἐκείνων ψευδῶς θεῶν καλουμένων. Thdrt.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

9. αὐτοὶ γάρ κτλ There is no need for us missionaries (ἡμᾶ) to speak, for they themselves, that is, such believers from Greece and elsewhere as happen to be in Corinth (αὐτοι in contrast with ἡμᾶ) keep reporting (ἀπαγγέλλουσι is a progressive present) to us, first of all and somewhat unexpectedly, about us (περὶ ἡμῶ) namely, what kind of a visit we paid you, and then about you, “how you turned,” etc. It is unnecessary to remark that Paul’s version of the report need not be literal. As he writes, he has in mind the insinuations of the Jews (v. 5, 2:1-12); hence περὶ ἡμῶ is put first.

αὐτοι is constructio ad sensum as αὐτοῖ Gal 2:2. ἀπαγγέλλει (1Co 14:25) is frequent in Lxx and Luke; ἡμῖ is to be understood. The reading περὶ ὑμῶ (B) misses the point of contrast between visit and welcome. adnuntiatis (r), which Rendel Harris prefers, is due to the supposed difficulty in περὶ ἡμῶ (Dob.).—The indirect interrogative ὁποῖο (Gal 2:6, 1Co 3:13), which is rare in Gk. Bib., expresses like οἷο (v. 5) the quality of the visit.—εἴσοδο in Lxx is used both of the action (Mal 3:2) and of the place (Eze 42:9). ἔχειν εἴσοδον πρό appears to be unique in Gk. Bib. (cf. 2:1); the reference is not to a door opening into their hearts (cf. Marc. Aur. 5:19 ἔχει εἴσοδον πρὸς ψυχή and Hermas Sim. IX, 12:6), for that is excluded by 2:1; nor to the favourable reception (which even P. Oxy. 32 peto a te ut habeat introitum ad te does not of necessity suggest), for the welcome is not mentioned until πῶς ἐπεστρέψατ (cf. 2:1-12 the visit; 2:13 ff. the welcome); but simply to the act of entering (Act 13:24, Heb 10:19, 2Pe 1:11). εἴσοδο = παρουσί “visit” (Php 1:26, Php 1:3 Mal 3:17); cf. also εἰσέρχεσθαι, εἰσπορεύεσθαι πρό (Act 16:40, Act 28:30).

καὶ πῶς ἐπεστρέψατε κτλ. “And” about you they report “how you turned to God,” etc. πῶ introduces a second object clause parallel to ὁποία In keeping with v. 8, faith in God is singled out as the primary characteristic of the readers, but the idea is expressed not, as we might expect, with ἐπιστεύσατε ἐν τῷ θεῷ but, since Gentile rather than Jewish converts are in mind, with a phrase perhaps suggested by the contrast with idols, ἐπεστρέψατε πρὸς τὸν θεό In facing God, they turned their backs on idols. These εἴδωλ are looked upon as dead (1Co 12:2) and false, not being what they purport to be. While the idol in itself is nothing (1Co 10:19), communion with it brings the worshipper under the power of the gods and demons who are conceived as present at the ritual act, or as resident in the idol, or, to the popular mind, as identified with the idol (1Co 10:20). Unlike these dead and false idols, God is living and genuine, what he purports to be (contrast 1Co 8:5, Gal 4:8).

πῶ describes the fact (Rth 2:11, Act 11:13) rather than the manner (Sap. 6:22 τί δέ ἐστιν σοφία καὶ πῶς ἐγένετο ἀπαγγελω), that is, πῶ tends to become ὅτ (Bl 70:2). The ἐπι in ἐπιστρέφει is directive as in Gal 4:9 πῶς ἐπιστρέφετε πάλιν ἐπιστρέφειν rare in Paul, is frequent in Lxx In the phrase ἐπιστρέφει .… κύριον (θεόν). the Lxx uses both ἐπί which Luke prefers, and πρό (Luk 17:4, Act 9:40, 2Co 3:16). The article in τὸν θεό need not be pressed as Gal 4:8 indicates.—εἴδωλο (Rom 2:22, 1Co 8:4, etc.) in the Lxx renders a variety of Hebrew words both proper and opprobrious. For the meaning of these words and for the forms of idolatry mentioned in the Bible, see G. F. Moore, EB 2146 ff. The polemic against images begins with the prophets of the eighth century. “With the prophets of the seventh century begins the contemptuous identification of the gods of the heathen with their idols, and in the sixth the trenchant satire upon the folly of making gods of gold and silver, of wood and stone, which runs on through the later Psalms, Wisdom, Baruch, the Jewish Sibyllines, etc., to be taken up again by Christian apologists” (op. cit. 2158). See further Bousset, Relig. 350 ff. and Wendland, Die hellenistische-römische Kultur, 142.—θεὸς ζῶ (Rom 9:26 = Hos 1:10, 2Co 3:3, etc.) is common in Gk. Bib. (Isa 37:4, Isa 37:17, etc.); ἀληθινό = “genuine” (Trench, Synonyms, 12 27) appears only here in Paul as a description of God (cf. Joh 17:3, 1Jn 5:20, 2Ch 15:3, 2Ch 15:3 Mal 2:11, 6:18). The total phrase θεὸς ζῶν καὶ ἀληθινό seems to be unique in Gk. Bib. (καὶ ἀληθινῷ Heb 9:14 (AP) is a scribal reminiscence of our passage).

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.