19th October 2008 (Trinity 22)
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Paul begins his letter to the Christians in Thessalonica with high praise: he sees them as a model for other churches to copy. They are a model of repentance, turning from false gods to serve the one true and living God. They are a model of faith working through love (to quote Galatians 5:6); their faith and love were expressed in good deeds and hard work. They are a model of hope, looking forward to the coming of our Lord Jesus when everything will be put to rights, and motivated by that to keep going despite their hardships and suffering. All this came from their relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ; a living God is an active God, working out his purposes, involving his people in his activity.
Such a model is good for us to copy. We do not have the same false gods as the Thessalonians; but the temptation to follow false gods is there. A god is something that somehow controls our destiny, and requires our service in one way or another. Today’s gods insist we worship pleasure, fame or fortune, and the pursuit of those things dominate many people’s lives. The Bible gives such gods a name: Mammon. Jesus warned us that we cannot serve God and Mammon, yet the temptation to try to serve both is common in churches of all flavours. We all need to follow the Thessalonian model, and deliberately turn from them to serve the true and living God. That does not mean avoiding pleasure etc,; but we enjoy good things as gifts, foretastes of what is to come, rather than as goals in this life.
We also can learn from the activity of the Thessalonian church – or rather, from its motivation. They were not doing good things just because they had a moral code or set of religious principles which told them they had to. They did good because of their faith – faith in a living God who did good things, as shown especially by the Son of God who loved them, who went about doing good, and who gave his life that they might live in God’s presence as his children. Their activity was motivated also by love – not only by their love for God which gave them the desire to please him in everything they did, but also by God’s love for them and for those around them, a love which filled them and overflowed from them.
A third motivation for their activity was hope: they knew that God was working his purposes out, and that he was working through them. Nothing they did for God was in vain, everything was somehow worth while, even if they could not see how, and so they were motivated to keep going, to keep loving, even when the world seemed against them. The Thessalonians suffered much; they can be a model for those of us who are going through hard times. ‘We will reap a harvest if we do not give up’ (Galatians 6:9).
Questions:
1) What other gods try to claim your allegiance? How do you answer them?
2) What models of living attract you?