1 Thessalonians 5

Chap. V. Ver. 1—28. Warnings to prepare for the great day of the resurrection and final judgment, with other practical admonitions.—The suddenness of this great event, and the alarm which it will create, are well represented by comparing it (as our Lord had before done) to the coming of a thief in the night; and to the sudden attacks of pain upon a woman in travail. Ver. 27. I charge you.—Doddridge and Macknight, “I-adjure you.”—— Ver. 12. To know them—That is, take notice of them; treat them with affection and respect, as in the next verse.——And are over you—i.e. preside over you. Ver. 14. Unruly.—Doddridge says this is a military term, applied to soldiers who do not keep their proper ranks, &c.—Be patient.—Doddridge, “long-suffering.” Ver. 19. Quench not the Spirit—i.e. Resist not, nor neglect his influences.

The expression refers to the Holy Spirit having visibly appeared in the form of flames. (Acts 2:3). Ver. 20. Despise not prophesyings.—Though this may primarily refer to miraculous gifts, (as in (1 Corinthians 14:3),) Macknight says, “This precept, in a more general sense, is designed for those who neglect the public worship of God, on pretence that they are so wise, and so well instructed, that they can receive little or no benefit from it.” Ver. 23. And the very God of peace—Doddridge, “May the God of peace himself”—Sanctify you wholly, &c.—Doddridge, “Sanctify your whole {constitution} spirit, and soul, and body.” Macknight, still better—“Your whole {person} spirit,” &c. “It is (says Doddridge) very evident, that the apostle refers to a notion which prevailed among the Rabbies, as well as the philosophers, (Pythagoreans, Platonists, and Stoics,) that the person of man

was constituted of three distinct substances, the rational spirit, the animal soul, and the visible body.” See (Hebrews 4:12). 4. Ver. 24. Who also will do it.—Doddridge, “Do (this:)” that is, “sanctify you wholly.” {THE first Epistle to the Thessalonians, it is generally agreed, was the earliest written of all St. Paul’s epistles; whence we see the reason and propriety of his anxiety that it should be read in all the Christian churches of Macedonia.—“I charge you by the Lord, that this Epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.” ((1 Thessalonians 5:27).) “The existence of this clause,” observes Paley, “is an evidence of its authenticity; because, to produce a letter, purporting to have been publicly read in the church at Thessalonica, when no such letter had been read or heard of in that church, would be to produce an imposture destructive of itself….

Either the Epistle was publicly read in the church of Thessalonica, during St. Paul’s lifetime, or it was not. If it was, no publication could be more authentic, no species of notoriety more unquestionable, no method of preserving the integrity of the copy more secure… If it was not, the clause would remain a standing condemnation of the forgery, and one would suppose, an invincible impediment to its success.” Its genuineness, however, has never been disputed; and it has been universally received in the Christian church, as the production of St. Paul, from the earliest period to the present day. The circumstance of this injunction being given, in the first epistle which the Apostle wrote, also implies a strong and avowed claim to the character of an inspired writer; as in fact

it placed his writings on the same ground with those of Moses and the ancient prophets. It was evidently the chief design of the apostle, in writing to the Thessalonians, to confirm them in the faith, to animate them to a courageous profession of the gospel, and to the practice of all the duties of Christianity; but to suppose, with Macknight, that he intended to prove the divine authority of Christianity by a chain of regular arguments, in which he answered the several objections which the heathen philosophers are supposed to have advanced, seems quite foreign to the nature of the epistle, and to be grounded on a mistaken notion, that the philosophers deigned at so early a period to enter on a regular disputation with the Christians, when in fact they derided them as fools. (The second Epistle to the Thessalonians appears, from Silvanus and Timothy being still with St.

Paul (ch. i. 1,) to have been written soon after the first, A. D. 52, and from the same place, Corinth, and not from Athens, according to the spurious subscription. It seems that the person who conveyed the first Epistle to the Thessalonians speedily returned to Corinth, and gave the Apostle a particular account of the state of the Church; and, among other things, informed him that many were in expectation of the near approach of the advent of Christ, and of the day of judgment, which induced them to neglect worldly affairs, as inconsistent with a due preparation —“That this Epistle be read,” &c.—“This being a command to the presidents and pastors of the Thessalonian church, it is evident that this Epistle must have been first delivered unto them, by his order, although it was inscribed to the Thessalonians in general.

The same course, no doubt, he followed with all his other inspired Epistles. They were sent to the elders of the churches, for whose use they were designed, with a direction that they should be read publicly, by some of their number, to the brethren in their assemblies for worship; and that, not once or twice, but frequently, that all might have the benefit of the instructions contained in them. If this method had not been followed, such as were unlearned would have derived no advantage from the apostolical writings…… The practice, therefore, of the Romish clergy who do not read the Scriptures to the common people in their religious assemblies, or who read them in an unknown tongue, is directly contrary to the apostolical injunction and to the primitive practice.” —Macknight in loc.

The subscription to this (as well as to the following Epistle) is judged to be erroneous. Paley remarks, that though dated from Athens, it speaks of “the coming of Timotheus from Thessalonica.” ((1 Thessalonians 3:6).) And the history informs us, (Acts 18:5), that “Timothy came out of Macedonia to Paul at Corinth.” The same learned writer also rejects the dating at Athens the second Epistle; remarking, that “the history does not allow us to suppose that Paul, after he had reached Corinth, went back to Athens.” But the subscriptions to the Epistles generally are considered of so little authority, that they are altogether omitted by Doddridge, Macknight, and others. The philosophers branded their doctrines as “foolishness.”

In pursuance of his grand object, “it is remarkable,” says Doddridge, “with how much address he improves all the influence, which his zeal and fidelity in their service must naturally give him, to inculcate upon them the precepts of the gospel, and persuade them to act agreeably to their sacred character. This was the grand point he always kept in view, and to which every thing else was made subservient. Nothing appears, in any part of his writings, like a design to establish his own reputation, or to make use of his ascendancy over his Christian friends to answer any secular purposes of his own. On the contrary, in this and in his other epistles, he discovers a most generous, disinterested regard for their welfare, expressly disclaiming any authority over their consciences, and appealing to them, that he had chosen to maintain himself by the labour of his own hands, rather than prove burdensome to the churches, or give the least colour of suspicion, that, under zeal for the gospel, and concern for their improvement, he was carrying on any private sinister view.

The discovery of so excellent a temper must be allowed to carry with it a strong presumptive argument in favour of the doctrines he taught…. And, indeed, whoever reads St. Paul’s epistles with attention, and enters into the spirit with which they were written, will discern such intrinsic characters of their genuineness, and the divine authority of the doctrines they contain, as will, perhaps, produce in him a stronger conviction, than all the external evidence with which they are attended.” These remarks are exceedingly well grounded and highly important; and to no other Epistle can they apply with greater force than the present most excellent production of the inspired Apostle. The last two chapters, in particular, as Dr.

Clarke justly observes, “are certainly among the most important, and the most sublime in the New Testament. The general judgment, the resurrection of the body, and the states of the quick and the dead, the unrighteous and the just, are described, concisely indeed, but they are exhibited in the most striking and affecting points of view.” —Bagster. for that important and awful event. This erroneous expectation they grounded partly on a misconstruction of some expressions in his former Epistle, and of what he had spoken when with them; but it was supported also by some person, or persons, making a claim to inspiration, and claiming to have a revelation upon the subject, and, as some suppose, also by a forged Epistle.

As soon as this state of the Thessalonians was made known to St. Paul, he wrote this second Epistle to correct such a misapprehension, and rescue them from an error, which, if appearing to rest on the authority of an Apostle, must have a very injurious tendency, and be ultimately ruinous to the cause of Christianity. —B.