Introduction - Paul, lacking love?
A good number of Bible scholars, particularly perhaps if they are of a feminist bent, have been - in my opinion - and I, as a white male of European descent have to careful here - too hard on the Apostle Paul. Yes, he said a couple of things about the place of women in the church that some find unacceptable today, for example, I Corinthians (Cor.). 14:33-35 being the passage most often referred to, 11:2-16 being another) - and ‘today’ is the point.
These things were written to new communities of believers in a world hostile to Christianity nearly 2,000 years ago. Paul was human, and he did not want the gospel and its adherents to m make a bad impression in the society of the day. And yes, he did seem to favour singleness in another place (I Cor. 7:1-17). But that was only in terms of his thoughts of all believers being single so they could be as single-mindedly zealous for his accepted task of spreading the gospel for his Lord as he was. And when you realize how many thousands of kilometres he traveled - much on foot - many miles by ship - you have to have some respect for his remarkable commitment to his calling. We know too it was from from easy. Just read the litanies of troubles he encountered in passages like II Cor. 11:21-12:10.
Paul, the writer
In spite of, and in large part because of, these travels and the new communities of Jesus followers established, Paul found time to write a number of letters. This must show some bond between Paul and the people he writes to. Traditionally, Paul has been credited with thirteen letters, which we often refer to as books, as in ‘the books of the Bible’. In some cases, he wrote to communities in which he had spent time - I & II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, I & II Thessalonians, with one example of a place to which he wished to go - Romans, and in one case to a place for which we have no record of him having visited - Colossians. In addition, he wrote 4 personal letters - two to his beloved ‘spiritual’ son and co-worker, Timothy, one to his co-worker, Titus, and one to Philemon, a man he seems to have met or at least fellowshipped with. Finally, we have note of one letter for which we have no record - a letter to the Laodiceans Paul asks the Colossians to read in exchange for the one they have (Col. 4:16). Colossae, where it is assumed Philemon lived, as Archippus, addressed in Philemon v. 2 seemingly a a member of Philemon’s household, is viewed as the same Archippus mentioned in Col. 4:17 with an admonishment to complete some task he had been given.
The World of Paul
This year, my wife and I and some 20 others had the privilege of being able to follow in Paul’s footsteps from Asia Minor (now Türkiye) through Macedonia, Achaia (those are both part of Greece) and on to land in Italy where he did and then on to Rome, where it is believed he met his death. We noted how different our travel was though - air conditioned buses and seagoing vessels that were not as much at the mercy of the wind as those in which Paul traveled. Our sightseeing tour was much enhanced by the input of New Testament scholar/teacher/writer Tom Yoder Neufeld, a Manitoban, most recently from Conrad Grebel College. Indeed, such seeing coupled with learning was the whole point of the trip.
As described, this tour, of course, only covered the regions Paul visited in his so-called 2nd and 3rd Missionary Journeys. The 1st was to the region west and next to Syria, from where Paul came. As well, we know we first meet Paul in Jerusalem, already a Pharisee of some authority and scholarly background. Then he went to Damascus, after which he apparently spent quite some time in ‘Arabia’, which some believe to be what is sometimes known as Nabatea in southern contemporary Jordan. Before starting on the major expeditions referred to, Paul did visit Jerusalem to meet the other leaders in the new Jesus movement, but spent the most of the next 14 years or so in Syria, working out of his hometown, Tarsus, but mainly Antioch, which became the centre of the Eastern Church after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70. Paul summarizes much of this in his letter to the Galatians 1:11-2:14.
After seeing the places Paul visited, being on the ground there and listening to Tom explain Paul’s letters as they pertained to these cities (Ephesus - now a wondrous and much-visited collection of ruins, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Colossae - although we did not go to this last, as there is really nothing to see there now, Neapolis, now Kavala, Philippi - now basically ruins only, Beroea, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Puteoli, now Pozzuoli, a suburb of Naples, and finally Rome, one gains a new appreciation and understanding of these epistles. The whole experience stimulated revisiting Paul’s letters with renewed study, especially with the background this trip provided.
Love in Paul’s Writing in I Thessalonians
Many believe the first letter to the new Thessalonian believers is the oldest writing of Paul’s that we have. It is generally held that he wrote it after continuing south from Thessalonica and arriving, eventually, for an extended stay as it turned out, in Corinth.
Perhaps because the letters to the Thessalonians somehow seem to be those I have least studied, I was keen to look at hem anew and in more depth. When I turned to these letters, realizing the first letter at least is the oldest New Testament writing, save possibly for the Gospel According to Mark, I was all the more interested to see what we could learn from ‘early Paul.’ However, even this is probably twenty years after his unique ‘Damascus Road’ conversion.
Some students of these letters also find them interesting because the teaching on Christ’s return is still fresher in Paul’s mind here than later writing, so it is interesting to see what that entails. What really struck me as I re-read the first letter though, was the evident love contained in it. This is what led to this essay.
The New International Version English translation of the Bible has 588 uses of the word ‘love’, with 204 of these being in the New Testament. Almost half, 100, are in Paul’s writings. This from an apostle whom some want to see as a stern champion of serious patriarchy? Seven of these references are in I Thessalonians and 3 in II Thessalonians.
I would venture today that all believers soon encounter in their Christian life Paul’s most famous writing on love, chapter 13 of I Corinthians, devoted entirely to what Paul describes, when he leads into the section of the letter, as the “more excellent way” (I Cor. 12:31).
Jesus himself taught that love was what was needed to be able to keep all the laws the Jews adhered to. Indeed, his teaching, recorded in Matthew 22:34-40, is linked to the Old Testament law in Deuteronomy 6:5. When asked what the greatest law was, Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might. This is the greatest and first commandment.” Then he added, referencing Lev. 19:18: “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” This teaching has come to be known as The Royal Law, based on Jesus’ brother James reference to it as such in 2:8 of his short ‘book’: “You do well if you really follow the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
Paul does not ignore this emphasis on the need for love. In Rom. 13:8-10, this devout student of and formerly legalistic adherent to the Mosaic Law writes: “Owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments… are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” This same teaching is included more briefly in Gal. 5:13-15.
Let us turn to I Thessalonians now to see what it shows as evidence that Paul was a man with love. Acts 16:11-18:21 give us the narrative third-party story of Paul in Thessalonica and the context around that. But what is Paul himself saying beyond what Luke, the author acts, wrote?
Paul more often addresses the new converts as brothers (e.g. 1:4, 2:1,9, 17, 4:1, 13, 5:1, 12) than he has a habit of doing in his other letters. Look though at 2:7-8: “…we were gentle along you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply did we care for you that we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but our own selve, because you have become very dear to us.” Then, there is 2:11-12: “…we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God…”
Do these expressions sound like a harsh, legalistic patriarch? If you read them in context you can hardly not acknowledge the deep feelings Paul has for these people. Would you not agree there is love in there somewhere?
Paul then writes about how he misses them. He had left suddenly, at the encouragement of some his companions it seems, because of the opposition they were experiencing, with its focus, naturally, on Paul as their leader. Perhaps the Jewish people who were persecuting them regarded Paul, as a Pharisee, as a traitor for believing in Jesus as the Messiah, whom their compatriots in Jerusalem had killed. We know from their responses to the Apostles in Jerusalem earlier that they also felt the Apostles were trying to make them feel guilty (Acts 5:17-42). No one likes to be reminded of their bad deeds.
Now there is the situation of what happened in Philippi and where that left Paul and his companions when they arrived in Thessalonica. In 2:1 he writes “our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition.” In Philippi, Paul and Silas had their clothes stripped and been beaten with rods publicly and thrown in the stocks in jail without a charge, let alone a trial, all of which was entirely against Roman law. Paul had protested this greatly when the jailer had simply received word to let the men out to go in peace. Indeed, when the authorities had found out, they had almost come on their knees, begging Paul and Silas to simply go away quietly, as it were (Acts 16:16-39).
The description in Luke's writing in Acts, coupled with how Paul himself described their treatment in Philippi, suggest that what had happened had really had a strongly negative impact on them. If we did not know Paul better, we might have thought Paul suffered a real blow to his ego, and perhaps there was some of that in what he wrote. That may be what prompted him to quickly add that they still had the courage to preach the gospel to the Thessalonians when they arrived; they were still able to ‘do their job’ (2:2).
At the same time, it seems that Paul goes out of his way to make certain that the Thessalonians did not see them as coming for any personal gain. If one reads all of Paul’s protestations in this regard in I Thessalonians 2:3–6 and 9–10, one might also be wondering whether Paul felt their hosts, who appear to have been very good to them it seems, had also responded so positively to Paul's message that Paul may have had a concern that they did so out of pity, and not genuine repentance. This may also be why he strongly points out to the Thessalonians that their faith, the changes in their lives, and their treatment of Paul in his companions, is all evidence of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We see this in 1:5, where Paul says, “…our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction". It seems Paul is making sure that the Thessalonians know that their response to the gospel as it has subsequently been borne out in the changes in their lives can only be the working of the power of the Holy Spirit, not any feelings of being sorry for Paul and Silas and the condition in which they arrived in Thessalonica.
At the same time, the persecution that surfaced in Philippi and had followed the Apostles Thessalonica, was already affecting the new believers (1:6, 2:14-16, 3:1-3). Therefore, Paul wants to reassure them as well and expresses his concern that the persecution may have weaken their commitment to follow Jesus was one of the main reasons why he wanted so badly to go back and visit them (2:18, 3:5). At the same time, he has heard such positive reports of their being example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia because of their imitation of the witness and behaviour of the apostles and of the Lord (1:6-7), that he spends much more time giving thanks and praising them for all of this in the first two chapters than he generally does in his other letters.
Going back to Paul's deep appreciation for the Thessalonians’ response in spite of the circumstances, we read in 2:8: "so deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” In 2:17, Paul writes, “…we were made orphans by being separated from you – in person, not in heart" which made him long "with great eagerness to see you face-to-face” again. Paul writes in vs. 18 about how he wanted to go to them, again and again but believed that Satan was blocking the way.
As Paul then states in 3: 1-3, “Therefore, when we could bear it no longer, we decided to be left alone in Athens; and we sent Timothy, our brother and coworker… to strengthen encourage you for the sake of your faith, so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions,” ending that section with the remarks (3:5) "I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labour had been in vain." However, then he speaks of Timothy's return, bringing the good news of their faith and love and that they remember Paul and Silas “…kindly and long to see us - just as we long to see you “(3:6).
Finally, Paul closes this section with a prayer (3:11-12): “Now may our God father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you." Again, building on what he has heard and already written positively about to the Thessalonians, he adds in 4:9 "Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourself have been taught by God to love one another, and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia."
There is more love language in the final section of the letter. In 5:12-13 Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to "esteem very highly in love [those who labour among you] because of their work.” Then he urged them, as “beloved" (5:14) in various ways of exhibiting the Christian ethic in their lives with one another. Just before his final greeting, Paul also addresses them with a request, "Beloved, pray for us" (5: 25).
Conclusion
I believe that when we read and examine this letter, we see how it is permeated with a strong bond of love between these apostles and the new believer. These are newly met individuals who have received the message he was mandated to give, and with whom Paul is trying to maintain and strengthen ties with, in language that is steeped in caring love.
Would that we see such love between our shepherds and their flocks and that we also do our part to exhibit such love in our lives that we could also be worthy of the type of praise Paul pours out on the Thessalonian Christians.
