Week 48 1-2 Thessalonians
If I was a church member in the Roman world in the 1st-century and if I had the choice of getting one of Paul’s letters and if my choices were either Romans Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians or Thessalonians then I think I’d choose the Thessalonian letters.
What I noticed this year was that the two letters seemed like mostly friendly-reminders to the congregation about things they already knew. I red-underlined the verses:
just as you know (Paul said it twice)
you yourselves know (three times)
as you know (twice)
you know (twice)
each of you know
you yourselves know full well.
It all seemed pretty consistently affirmative to me. Not overbearing or domineering or repressive. More like prompts.
I checked a word book to see how often Paul used the word ‘know’ in the nine letters: about 88 times.
14 of them were in the Thessalonians (but 18 times in Romans & 37 in the Corinthians!) So then I did a quick survey to see how the word was used. In Romans & Corinthians Paul talked more often about a) things he himself knew and b) things the people do not know and c) things that it’d be better not to know.
So by the end of the exercise I figured my hunch was correct and that Paul was being mostly congratulatory with the Thessalonians for the good things they already knew. And I figured I’d like to get the Thessalonian letters most of all.
Note: quotes from 1 Thessalonians 2:1 5 11 3:3 4 4:2 4 5:2 & 2 Thessalonians 2:6 3:7 (NASB)