1 Thessalonians 2: Paul Keeps Telling Them to Check

I think the first twelve verses of 1 Thessalonians 2 usually get read as a man defending his good name, and that undersells how he goes about it. Paul spends those verses pointing at things the Thessalonians saw with their own eyes and telling them to go ahead and check.

I was reminded of this on a Thursday two weeks ago, working from home on a call with a payments processor we use. Their account rep spent the first ten minutes telling us how seriously they take reconciliation, that they'd matched settlements to the penny for eleven years and we could rely on the numbers. He was pleasant about it, and my teammate Piotr, who rarely says much on calls, unmuted and asked if he could have the raw settlement file for the 14th. The rep said he'd follow up, and the file showed up Friday morning with one batch where a fee had been counted twice, forty-one dollars and eighteen cents. Nobody was upset.

What is Paul actually doing in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12?

Try counting the appeals, starting with verse 1, which begins "For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you," and verse 2 gives the Philippi history and adds "as ye know." Verse 5 says "as ye know" a second time, verse 9 starts "For ye remember," verse 10 calls them witnesses and verse 11 opens with "As ye know" once more. Six of the twelve verses send the reader back to what the Thessalonians could remember for themselves.

Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.
(1 Thessalonians 2:10)

The chapter never tells us who was saying what about Paul. I'd guess somebody was, because nobody writes twelve verses like this to a church that has no questions. The letter doesn't name the charge. What the letter does give us is the method. He doesn't tell them how he felt while he was in their city. He tells them what he did and where, and he lets them fact-check him.

The setup for it is verse 2, where he reminds them that he and his companions had "suffered before, and were shamefully entreated" at Philippi. Acts 16:22-24 says the magistrates had them beaten with "many stripes," threw them into prison and put their feet "fast in the stocks." Then they walked into Thessalonica and, as Paul puts it, "we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention." Acts 17:2 says he reasoned in the synagogue "three sabbath days," and by verse 5 there was a mob at Jason's house. Anyone in that city who wanted to remember what Paul's arrival looked like had plenty to go on.

What could the Thessalonians check, and what couldn't they?

The part I like best sits inside a single verse, and it only shows up if you ask who is being called to testify for what.

For neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness; God is witness.
(1 Thessalonians 2:5)

Flattering words are something a listener hears, so the Thessalonians are the witnesses: "as ye know." A cloak of covetousness is another matter. A cloak is what you wear to hide something underneath, and no congregation can testify to what was under it. So for that half he gives the stand to God. The verse before has the same idea in different words, that God "trieth our hearts," which means Paul is asking to be examined where the Thessalonians can't reach.

Verse 10 does the same split in a slightly different shape. "Ye are witnesses, and God also." They cover what was visible and God covers the rest, and Paul doesn't claim more than his side of the arrangement can bear. He hands over the part they can inspect and says plainly that the rest isn't theirs to inspect.

Verses 7 and 11 hold the two pictures people remember, "a nurse" who cherisheth her children and "a father" who exhorts and charges them, and I'd set verse 8 beside both. He says he was willing to give them "not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls." People can only vouch for that if they saw it, which is why it sits easily in a chapter that keeps saying "ye know."

Verse 6 has a smaller line that I'd almost skip, "Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ." He's counting what he gave up, not only what he avoided doing wrong. He had the standing to ask for support, and he says outright that he left it unspent.

Why does Paul keep mentioning that he worked night and day?

Verse 9 is the one I slow down for, since it's the easiest of the appeals to check against what anyone could have seen.

For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.
(1 Thessalonians 2:9)

Nobody has to guess at a man's motives when they watched him work with his hands and preach on top of it. He says it again in 2 Thessalonians 3:8-9 in nearly the same words and gives a reason: "Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us." So he's telling them he had the right to be supported, and chose not to take it because he wanted to be copied.

We know he had a trade. Acts 18:3 has him in Corinth living and working with Aquila and Priscilla because "he was of the same craft," and "by their occupation they were tentmakers." Acts doesn't tell us that's what he did in Thessalonica, so I'll stay at "likely."

Something complicates a tidy reading. In Philippians 4:15-16 Paul tells the Philippians that when he left Macedonia no other church shared with him in giving and receiving "but ye only," and then adds, "For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity." So while Paul was refusing to be chargeable to the Thessalonians, a different church was sending him help at the very same address. I wrote about how carefully he words his thanks to them in Philippians 4, where Paul thanks them without quite saying thanks, and this verse 16 is the other side of that letter. Two gifts, in a city where Acts mentions only three sabbaths in the synagogue. That tells me he stayed longer in Thessalonica than a quick read of Acts 17 suggests, though I'm inferring it and the text doesn't say.

I don't think Paul held that taking help was wrong. He took it from Philippi and thanked them. What he seems to have been picky about was who paid him while he was standing in front of a brand-new congregation that had every reason to wonder what he was after. That's a rule about timing and trust. It isn't a rule about money.

What do I do with verses 14 through 16?

Verse 13 says they received the word "not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God." Verse 14 begins with "for," so the next thing is the consequence: they "became followers of the churches of God which in Judæa are in Christ Jesus," because they "suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews." In 1 Thessalonians 3:4 he reminds them again, with another "ye know," that he'd told them beforehand they'd suffer tribulation and it came to pass.

Then verse 15 says of some people that they "both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us," and verse 16 is harsher still. I don't read this as a statement about a whole people. Paul is Jewish and says so elsewhere. The Judaean churches he holds up as the example in verse 14 were made of Jewish believers. And Acts 17:5 describes the riot in Thessalonica as the work of "the Jews which believed not" and "lewd fellows of the baser sort," which is a particular group of people doing a particular thing in one city. That's my reading of the verses, and I think the chapter's own details support it.

Verse 16 ends "The wrath is come upon them to the uttermost," and I don't know what to do with that line. I'm leaving it there.

What does "Satan hindered us" leave out?

The tone changes at verse 17 with "Being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart" and then verse 18, "we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us."

Paul doesn't say what form it took. Acts 17:10 says the brethren sent Paul and Silas away "by night," and in 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2 he says he was left at Athens alone and sent Timothy instead. Either of those could be what he means, or none of them. He trusted the Thessalonians to know what he meant, so he didn't spell it out, and we weren't there.

"Once and again" is the same pair of words Philippians 4:16 uses for the gifts. Philippi's help got through twice and Paul's visits didn't.

The last two verses are the ones I keep going back to, because of how they line up with verse 6. In verse 6 he says he didn't seek glory of men, "neither of you." In verse 19 he asks "what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing" and answers it himself in verse 20: "For ye are our glory and joy." The thing he said he never went looking for is the thing he ends up saying they are.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Paul accused of something specific in Thessalonica?

The chapter doesn't say, and Acts 17:7 records a charge that he and the others acted against Caesar's decrees by saying there was another king, which is a different matter from money or flattery. Verses 3 to 6 sound like an answer to a quieter whisper about motives, but that's an inference from how he writes.

Does verse 9 mean Latter-day Saint leaders should serve without pay?

Bishops and most ward leaders in our church serve unpaid, so it won't sound strange to us. But Paul isn't laying down a rule, and Philippians 4:15-16 shows that he took help from Philippi while he was in Thessalonica. I'd read it as Paul being careful about a new congregation's trust.

What does "much contention" mean in verse 2?

I read it as the resistance the missionaries ran into, not as quarreling among themselves or loud preaching. The verse sets it right next to Philippi, where they'd just been beaten, so the contest was clearly coming from outside.

Why does Paul compare himself to both a nurse and a father?

I think he wants them to hear the care and the instruction together. Verse 11 says he exhorted and comforted and charged each one, and that puts encouragement and instruction in the same breath and doesn't ask the Thessalonians to pick.

I replaced the battery in the garage keypad this afternoon. It turned out to be a CR2032 and the drawer had only two of them, both dated 2019, so I tried the newer-looking one first and it works.

— D.