“good news about your faith and love” – 1 Thessalonians 3:6 CSB
“in all our distress and affliction, we were encouraged about you through your faith.” – 1 Thessalonians 3:7 CSB
Faith – to believe in the Good News about Jesus Christ and to become a follower
· “It is by grace that you have been saved because you have faith,” – Ephesians 2:8
· “believers in heart and mind,” – Acts 4:32
· “It is God’s power to save everyone who is a believer,” – Romans 1:16
· “the world is hearing that you have faith” – Romans 1:8
Faith: See, Agree, Act
“The key word that brings into focus the feature of their life which is at risk is the word in verses 2 and 5 sometimes translated ‘faith’, but also meaning ‘faithfulness’ or ‘loyalty’ or ‘allegiance’. All these meanings seem to be operating simultaneously. What Paul is afraid of is compromise, of them abandoning their firm hold on the gospel, their unswerving loyalty to their new-found king.
‘Faith’ is, for Paul, partly about our personal trust in God and the gospel; partly about our belief in the central gospel events (the death and resurrection of Jesus); and partly about our continuing faithfulness to the God who has revealed himself in these events and in the gospel message about them. And it is this central, if complex, quality that is likely to be under attack, particularly of course when the church is being persecuted. ‘Can you really’, whisper the voices inside your head, and perhaps the voices of friends or family, ‘can you really trust a God who lets such things happen? Can you really believe the strange events about Jesus? Can you really go on with your devotion and loyalty to this God, this king, when it would be so much easier to bow the knee once more to the pagan idols, and to Caesar himself?’
Paul knows that they will hear these voices. He knows that behind such whispers there lurks ‘the tempter’, testing them and perhaps undermining their faith. He doesn’t know how they will respond. He can’t bear the thought that all his work in Thessalonica might be destroyed, that he would go back one day and find the church disappeared, with its members looking back on their brief encounter with him like people emerging from a strange, powerful, but short-lived infatuation. So he sends Timothy not just to find out how they are, but to give them strength by his presence and teaching. The sufferings they are enduring are not a strange thing that mean God is no longer reliable. They are precisely what one ought to expect if one is following Jesus.
This is hard teaching, of course, both for those who are enduring persecution, as many Christians in the world still are, and for those who are not, or not so obviously. But the fact that suffering is inevitable for those who try to be loyal to Jesus was built in to the gospel from the beginning, and versions of Christianity which manage to avoid it are thereby called into question. Do we or do we not follow a crucified Lord?” – Wright, T. (2004). Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians (pp. 109–110). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
What do we learn?
1. God gives faith.
2. God-given faith brings strength for victory over affliction.
3. God designed the Church to strengthen the faith of the believers.
What should we do?
1. Read 1 Thessalonians 3, pray, and write one truth from it.
2. Identify where your faith could be strengthened. Share this.
3. Pray for each other. Encourage each other. Strengthen our shared faith.