Deeper Reflection
PAUL THANKED GOD FOR THE THESSALONIANS’ “Labour of love” after their “work of faith” (v.3). Elsewhere, Paul talks about “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6), thus linking faith and love. The Thessalonians expressed their love in “hard, strenuous and exhausting labour”³⁶. True love is far from being simply an emotion, it seeks the best for the other and labours for the other’s benefit.³⁷ The Thessalonians’ “labour of love” “refers to any kind of self-sacrificing labour the believers engaged in as they served those both inside and outside the community”³⁸. Let this “labour of love” be found first in our marriage and family, and then flow out into the church and the world. The Thessalonians lived as a people of hope in the God of hope (cf. Rom 15:13). Their hope was marked by perseverance, endurance and steadfastness (v.3). Perseverance, endurance and steadfastness is possible when our hope is in a person – “in our Lord Jesus Christ” (v.3). And this presupposes a growing relationship with Christ as “Lord” in our lives and seeing Him as “Lord” sitting on the throne, ruling supremely over all things. And this hope is solid confidence rooted in the expectation of Christ’s coming, the goal and end of history. For Paul, perseverance is produced through suffering, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope (Rom 5:3-4). “Character produces hope” means that hope is character.

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³⁶ Gene L. Green, 90 ³⁷ Gene L. Green, 90 ³⁸ Gene L. Green, 90