Commentary in Simple English on 2 Thessalonians

Chapter 3

Verses 1-3 Pray for us!

Paul and his friends had been Christians for some years. They have done wonderful work for Christ. But now they ask the new Christians in Salonika to pray for them. It will do the Christians in Salonika good in any case to pray for other people. It will help them still more when they see that God answers their prayers. Even if we are new Christians, we too should pray for people who were Christians before we were. They do need our prayers, at least as much as we need their prayers.

'Finally' here does not mean that the letter is nearly finished. It just marks the start of a new part of the letter.

Notice what Paul asks the Christians to pray for in verse 1. He does not ask anything for himself. He calls the Good News 'the word about the Lord'. And he asks the Christians in Salonika to pray that the Good News will 'run' or spread quickly and be honoured. There is a picture here. A man runs a race - he wins the race and he receives great honour.

Then in verse 2 he asks them to pray that God will help him to escape from bad men. This may mean those Jews at Corinth who did not believe in Jesus. If you look at Acts 18:9-11, you will see that God had given Paul a special promise at Corinth. Then Paul says: 'Not everyone is faithful. Faithful is the Lord', and so we go on to verse 3. Men do change. God never changes. He is faithful. And so we move on from prayer for Paul and his friends to read about what a faithful God will do for the Christian. A big building needs to have a strong 'foundation' under it in the ground. And a Christian needs a strong 'foundation'. That is God's Word. Jesus taught us that (Matt 7: 24-27). Then Christians have an enemy, 'the evil one'. That is the devil who would like to attack us. So God is like a soldier who looks out for the enemy. He 'protects' or 'guards' us (Php 4:7). Proverbs 4:23 really says: 'Set a double guard on your heart.'

Verses 4 and 5 'We are sure'

We may think about these verses as the last part of what Paul said in verses 1-3. But the word 'command' in verse 4 also comes in verses 6 and 10. It is a soldier's word. It was used in the army for an order, which was passed along the line from one soldier to another. These verses may belong with verses 6-15.

So Paul says that he feels quite sure that the Christians in Salonika will do what he has said. In verse 5 we have still another prayer. Perhaps here Paul thinks about the church as a ship. He prays that God will be the 'pilot' of the ship, and guide it safely into the harbour. In a harbour there is no danger from storms. There we find the love which God has for us. We love him in return. There too we see the patience which Christ had when he suffered for us. And he gives to us patience like his.

Verses 6-15 Warning against lazy Christians

When Paul wrote the first letter, he did not say much about people in the church who would not work. (See 1 The 4:11 and 12). Now it seems that this is a more serious problem at Salonika. And most of this chapter speaks about it.

Salonika was a seaport and roads went west, north and east from the city. It was a great centre of trade. There was work for people to do there. There is nothing in the letters to make us think that the Christians in Salonika were either very rich people or poor slaves. Paul does not warn them about the danger of being rich. They were people who had to work to live. So Paul worried when he heard that some of them chose not to work. Probably this was because they expected that Jesus would come again very soon. Then they found that they had no money to buy food. So they thought that the church should give them money or food. This was quite wrong. It is different, of course, if people cannot find any work to do. Then it would be right for the church to help them.

Paul speaks to the whole church in verses 6-10. Then verses 11-13 are for the 'lazy' people. And verses 14-15 are for those Christians who are not 'lazy'.

So in verse 6 we have a warning to keep away from anyone that is lazy and does not want to work. In verse 7 Paul tells the Christians in Salonika that they should do what the writers have done. Paul and his friends were not 'idle'. This is another word that the soldiers used. If a soldier was not in his right place on duty, he was 'idle'. The point is this. In an army it is not only the soldiers who have to obey orders. The officers too have to obey orders that higher officers give to them. Paul and his friends are leaders of the church. They are like officers in an army. So they had to obey God's orders, just as any other Christian had to obey God.

Verse 8 says that Paul did not have anything at Salonika except what he worked for and paid for with money he had earned. He does not only mean food. He does not want the people who would not work to point to him as an example. What we read in verse 9 is very important to us. Paul and his friends had the right to take money or food. They had the right to be paid for their work. So when other people followed them in the work of the church, these other people too had the right to be paid. Now Paul and his friends would not want the people in the church to say: 'When Paul was here he worked. We did not have to pay him at all. So why do we have to pay this man who leads the church now? Let us find someone who does not want to be paid!' This sort of thing can still happen today. So we must be careful, or there will be bad feelings in a church. A man has the right to be paid for the work which he does for Christ.

It has been said that if a man is idle, he tempts the devil to tempt him. It is not easy to be a rich Christian. It is not easy to use your time well in the service of Christ when you are rich. The poor man who has to work will probably make just as much time for Christ's service as the rich man does. A man's mind is a busy thing. If it is not at work doing good it will do evil. Work is a duty for a Christian. We want to earn more so that we can give more to God's work.

Then in verse 10 Paul says that when he was in Salonika he had given an order to the church. It was this: 'If a man will not work, he shall not eat.' Probably there were people in the church who were in real need. The church did help them. These were mostly older women whose husbands had died (Acts 6:1; 1Tim 5: 3-5). It is right for the church to help those in real need. But it seems that the people who would not work thought that the church should give them money to buy food. Perhaps these people who would not work thought that this made them better Christians than their friends who did work. We see from verse 11 that Paul had heard that there was a lack of order in the lives of these people. These idle Christians just walked around the city and talked. Perhaps they were 'busybodies' (1 Tim 5:13). They should instead be busy (1 Tim 5:13).

So verse 12 tells these people to talk less. They are to be quiet, as the writers had said in 1 Thessalonians 4: 11. We can see from that verse too that some of these people were traders: perhaps they had shops. Others worked with their hands. So these people were not to be tired of their work from day to day. The daily life of work puts the real Christian life within our reach. Work does not stop us from living the Christian life.

Verse 14 says again what verse 6 said. The Christians were to keep away from those who would not work. But the purpose of this was to make them feel shame. The church wanted to win them back to their place as brothers.

Verses 16-18 Final words

Peace is one of God's great gifts to a Christian. A Christian should know that he has peace with God. He should have peace in his own heart (Php 4: 7,9). We cannot always have peace with a world where so much is wrong. God is the Lord of peace who gives peace to us. Sadly, we sometimes lose this peace. This may be because of our sins. But God has many ways by which he can give us peace (2 Cor.13: 11). And there is no time in our lives when he will not give peace. Then this peace is not only to be in each one of us. There is to be peace among us in the church. Everything has gone badly wrong when there is no peace in the church (Jas 4: 1-3).

We can see from verse 17 that Paul had already written a number of other letters. It was usual in those days to have someone else write your letter out for you. Even people who could write quite well did this. Then they added a few lines like this at the end in their own writing. Some people think that Paul's eyes were not good, and that when he wrote, it was in big letters (1 Cor 16:21; Gal 6:11; Col 4:18).

So (verse 18) the letter ends with the prayer that the grace, the favour of our Lord Jesus Christ may be with us all. That means even those who would not work and who had wrong ideas! But then, the grace of Christ is the very thing to put these troubles right.