1 Thessalonians 2:13-16, Suffering Persecution

Anyone can be persecuted. It isn’t a uniquely Christian experience. But Christians will experience persecution, because Christians are shouting to the world that their lives have been reconciled to God, which implies that the lives of unbelievers have not been so reconciled. And unbelievers will hate this, will feel challenged by this, and will want to ignore it, or else fight back against it. Paul is helping the Thessalonians see clearly the context for their being persecuted.

^2:13 And because of this also we thank God continuously that when you received the word of message from us, God’s word, you didn’t accept a word from men but as it is truly, a word from God, who is working in you who believe. ¹⁴ For you became imitators, brothers and sisters, of the churches of God in Christ Jesus who are in Judea, because you suffered the same persecution from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, ¹⁵ who killed the Lord, Jesus, and the prophets, and persecuted us, and are not pleasing to God, and are opposed to all humanity, ¹⁶ restraining us from speaking to the Gentiles in order that they might be saved, so as to always fill up to the full their sins. And His wrath has always reached them.

Paul and Silas and Timothy are once again thankful that the Thessalonians had been called to God’s kingdom and glory (v. 12) and the means of calling was through the message Paul and the team preached to them. It was a message that truly wasn’t just a human message but was from God, and God was at work in the Thessalonians to enable them to receive the message. As Luke, in the Acts puts it, God opened their hearts to believe (Acts 16:14).

But it was adherence to this divine message that led to their being persecuted. And the persecution came from their own countrymen. The account in Acts of this persecution reads as follows:

^{Acts 17:4} And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. ⁵ But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. ⁶ And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, ⁷ and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” ⁸ And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. ⁹ And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

Jews and Gentiles in Thessalonica embraced the gospel, but Jews who did not stirred up opposition to Paul and the believers with the charge that these Christians were “acting against the decrees of Caesar” by calling Jesus Lord and King, when Caesar demanded to be called Lord. What seems odd about this is that the Jews would have or should have acknowledged only Yahweh as God, but they are so antithetic to the gospel that they act as if they only acknowledge Caesar as Lord.

Paul encourages the Thessalonians by noting that this is the same kind of persecution the church in Judea experienced, that is, from their own countrymen, who were, of course, all Jewish. Jews, who knew the true God, were attacking other Jews, who had embraced Jesus as the God the Son. Jewish opposition was at the heart of both persecutions.

Paul wants the Thessalonians to understand that the Jewish opposition was, at heart, rebellion against God and mankind. It was they who killed the Lord Jesus, or, as we know from the Gospels, orchestrated his execution by Rome. It was the Jews, not all of them, of course, but those who were in leadership, who killed prophets God sent them throughout their history, and who persecuted the apostles of Jesus. They sought to prevent the preaching of the gospel to Gentiles. They didn’t want Gentiles saved.

Historically, the Jews had often come to the max in their rebellion against God and He had punished them for it. They had ultimately been exiled from the land because of the fullness of their sin. And now they were on a trajectory to do the same thing (and, of course, some thirty years later, Rome came and crushed Israel and caused the exile of many from the land). God’s wrath would settle things in time. The persecutors of the Thessalonians would receive justice.