3. On Paul & Thessalonians

Paul as a Writer:
We have little actual knowledge of what Paul preached; all we have of Paul are the letters that he wrote to various churches or individuals over a period of fifteen years inside of a whirlwind of travel and ministry, persecution and imprisonment.

There are many books written on the life of Paul, but those books hold little interest to us here. What we want to know is Paul as a writer, and thus our primary source material must be Paul’s letters with Luke’s account of Paul’s life in Acts as the context from which we understand these letters.

We must position Paul’s letters clearly. Paul communicated in three ways. The primary way Paul communicated was through preaching, thus he said, “My gospel which I preached to you.” A second way Paul communicated was through face to face conversation with many. And the third way was through occasional letters, usually written hurriedly and haphazardly.

We do not actually know anything that Paul preached, and we do not know any conversation Paul might have had with anyone. More than that, we are missing many of the letters Paul wrote, in-between the letters we do have.

We are caught, then, in-between Paul’s enormous claim that his gospel as he preached it was the true gospel of Christ and that the other disciples did not understand or teach that gospel. That’s one side; the other side of our difficulty is that we possess only a sketchy and incomplete account of what Paul meant by “my gospel.”

This is only the beginning of our troubles, however, in understanding what on earth Paul means by so many of the things that he claims. In fact, part of my purpose in these two pages is to set forth how it is that Paul’s writing presents a real difficulty for us as well as the question of finding our way through that mess into a knowledge of Paul’s gospel as God means it.

Paul is a flamboyant and expressive writer. He alternates between arguments driven by logic and rabbit trails of personal expression and interest down which he runs, often in-between his presentation of those rational arguments. Paul writes about Jesus a lot, but he writes about himself even more. If you were to write out every verse in which Paul mentions himself in some way, you would discover that Paul’s largest topic was himself.

That knowledge, that we must be involved personally with every truth of Christ, is of paramount importance to Paul’s gospel.

Paul suggests to the Corinthians that because of his appearance many write him off as inconsequential. In fact many who knew Paul were insinuating that Paul was fiery only in his letters, but not face to face.

And Paul is fiery in his letters and sometimes bitingly sarcastic. Galatians is the most emotional book in the New Testament, filled with sarcasm that borders on viciousness. He tells the Galatians, “I wish those Christian preachers of law would just castrate themselves.”

Just as Paul could be crude and offensive, so he is even more often expressive in the opposite way, that is, with superlatives beyond measure and flights of fantastical declarations that require any reasonable person to conclude that Paul was mad. And Paul does mention that many thought him so.

Humans “filled with all the fullness of God” seems to many to be an impossibility based on a whole ocean of impossibilities.

Paul does not do his own writing; rather, he likely paces back and forth across the room as he dictates his thoughts to someone else who is busy putting those thoughts into a coherent form on parchment. Paul’s secretary undoubtedly has to tell Paul to slow down and to repeat himself on a regular basis. We have no idea who those secretaries were or how many.

Paul has a very rapid mind, always connecting the dots, always thinking ahead of his present words, always assuming things not in evidence. There are times when Paul switches his thinking and the purpose of his statements without telling the reader he is doing so. I do the same thing. I am often thinking ahead and I just assume that the one listening knows what is in my own mind, even though they cannot know any such thing. We will see this problem in Romans 7, a passage that has served, not to cement God’s people into Paul’s gospel, but to throw them off of it almost entirely – because Paul does not make his transitions clear.

The most problematic book in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians. In it are wondrous expressions and critical parts of Paul’s gospel, and in it are things that we could easily surmise should not have been in the Bible at all, especially references to pagan Greek poets and philosophies.

You see, these letters are typically nothing more than one broken-up piece of an extensive conversation in which Paul is engaged with the brothers and sisters of these various churches. More than that, Paul flits from one such conversation to the next assuming that his readers at that church know exactly what he is talking about. Paul has no idea in his mind that people would be struggling over his haphazardness for two thousand years.

Only in Romans does Paul set himself to develop one argument only, and only Ephesians is written with no reference to ongoing conversations or to specific church issues.

Then, a second major problem is the writing of 1 Timothy just a few months after the writing of Ephesians. The content of the two letters seems to indicate to us that they were written by two different people, even though the writing style indicates one person. The thinking expressed in 1 Timothy sometimes seems to have little relationship with Paul’s gospel.

Paul is one of a rare group of human minds, those whose minds embrace both realism and idealism, merging the two kinds of thinking without ever realizing that all their readers are one or the other, but never both. John, on the other hand, was an idealist only, and Peter was a realist only. Only three others in the Bible shared this mental quality with Paul – Moses, David, and Elisha, four only among hundreds.

Another thing we must understand about Paul as a writer is that one’s own understanding grows only over time, as the meanings of things written or preached before continue to increase in the knowledge of the writer. Yet Paul’s ministry, that is, the fifteen years through which he wrote his letters, those years were filled with violence, long and tedious journeys, imprisonment, shipwreck, and more violence. Just consider a journey on foot across rugged Anatolia from Antioch in Syria to Greece, let alone being stoned and beaten along the way.

Paul has little time to reflect on many of the overwhelmingly glorious things that pour out of his mouth as he paces back and forth and as his words are written down by his secretary.

Paul is very specific in his letter to the Corinthians that he knows only a small part of what is contained inside the words that he wrote. And he tells the Galatians to consider even his own ideas as to whether they line up with his gospel or not. We can interpret Paul’s curse against himself to mean that when we find things Paul says that contradict his gospel, we are free to set those things aside. He tells the Corinthians that his ideas are not necessarily of the Devoted Spirit.

Yet inside this glorious mess that is Paul as a writer, we find Christ Jesus living inside of us and we find the unveiling of Christ through His Church!

Paul’s Letters to the Thessalonians
I find it of great value to place each book of the Bible with its writer into their story inside the human experience. We know Christ as we know Him personally in and as each one. More than that, the context out of which the New Testament writers wrote, affected what they said and why, enormously.

According to The Reese Chronological Bible, Paul wrote his two letters to the Thessalonians from Corinth during his second missionary journey. Only two other books of the New Testament had been written prior to this time. James was the first to write his short letter. It is possible, as well, that Mark had written down Peter’s account of the gospel prior to the letters to the Thessalonians.

These two letters are Paul’s first written words and show the nature of his heart-care over God’s people. They were written sometime during late AD 52 and early 53, during Paul’s second missionary journey.

Paul’s Second Missionary Journey – AD 50-54
•    Paul leaves Antioch with Silvanus (after a split with Barnabas). Also, this is just a few months after Paul’s opposition to Peter in Antioch.

•   Paul and Silvanus travel across the rugged Anatolian peninsula, visiting churches along the way, including the Galatians.

•    Paul meets Timothy and his mother and grandmother. Timothy accompanies them.

•           Paul and Silvanus are directed by the Spirit to cross into Macedonia. This is likely sometime in late 51, meaning that their journey thus far has been more than a year’s time.

•           Paul and Silvanus establish the Church in Philippi first. Then, after a stint in prison, they are sent on to Thessalonica.

•           Paul preaches in the synagogue at Thessalonica. Many Judeans believe, then many Greeks as well.

•           Paul is in Thessalonica, probably only several weeks before the unbelieving Judeans gang up and drive him out.

•           Paul goes on to Berea and then Athens, leaving Timothy behind in Thessalonica.

            Unsuccessful in Athens, Paul and Silvanus go on to Corinth. Here is his mind as he first came to the Corinthians. – I determined to know nothing among you, except Jesus Christ and Him having been crucified. And I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling (1 Corinthians 2:2-3).

•           At Corinth, Paul meets Aquila and Priscilla, newly come from Rome. He connects with them immediately. They will become among his most fruitful of friends in establishing churches inside the power of his gospel, both here at Corinth and later at Ephesus.

•           Paul spends a year and a half in Corinth in AD 52-53.

•           For some reason, it is the believers in Jesus in the city of Thessalonica that weigh the most heavily on Paul’s heart. He sends Timothy, probably more than once, as his emissary to them.

•           Paul writes his first letter to the Thessalonians in late 52.

•           Unsatisfied still, and especially after hearing things that trouble him, Paul writes his second letter to the Thessalonians in early 53.

•    Paul will visit the Thessalonians possibly only twice more. First, in the fall of 57 he spends a few months, writing 2 Corinthians from there before going on to Corinth. Then, Luke records that they are at Philippi on their return from the third missionary journey, in the spring of AD 58. It is possible that they visit Thessalonica as well.

First Thessalonians – AD 52
There are few books in the Bible that come close to First Thessalonians in showing the tender regard that Christians hold for one another, by the nature of the Jesus who lives inside of us, as Paul expresses here. This is an essential point, because the explanations of what the gospel means found in the letters of the apostles begins with a church that “abounds in love towards one another more and more.”

Paul is beginning with the whole purpose and goal of the Christian life, and that is loving one another as the Church in the same way that Jesus loves us. And Paul sets himself as the example to all, of the value and treasure that our fellow believers in Jesus are to us. Apart from such care for one another, there is no Christian message. – You are my glory and my joy.

Paul has no central argument in this letter; he is simply speaking encouragement into the Thessalonians in every way that he can. More than that, you will find in the JSV that much of the negativity of the Calvinist translations is lifted, and Paul’s true heart is made clear. That doesn’t mean there are not consequences for not responding to God in all faith; it means that the goodness of God is pre-eminent.

Second Thessalonians – AD 53
According to The Reese Chronological Bible, Paul wrote his second letter to the Thessalonians from Corinth in early AD 53.

Paul had heard reports, possibly from Timothy, of things being said in Thessalonica that did not sit right with him. Even though he had written to them only a few months earlier, he writes this second letter to address those concerns as well as to re-affirm his love and regard for the brethren in Thessalonica.

At the same time, reports had come of further instances of persecution and abuse against the Thessalonian Church. Paul is anxious to establish them in the faith that their pain is working for the sake of the Kingdom.

Paul begins this letter by expressing encouragement and admiration to the Thessalonians again, but acknowledges their suffering and assures them that justice will come.

Then Paul writes what has been a poorly translated and greatly misunderstood passage on the deliverance wrought by Christ in our lives. He contrasts the workings of the evil one with the workings of Christ in us that cause all that is not Christ to vanish away.

While this passage in 2 Thessalonians 2 does correspond with “the old man” in Romans 6 and the spirit that works against Christ in 1 John, that is, the spirit of anti-Christ, these things have no direct relationship with the “beast” of Revelation 13, nor any fictitious and un-biblical “Antichrist.”

Then, Paul continues with even further encouragement, ensuring all Christians that it is the Lord Jesus alone who establishes us inside of Himself. Paul includes a few more admonitions of good conduct towards one another before finishing this short letter.

Gospel Word
(Coming Soon)