2 Thessalonians 3:1-5, The Basis for Successful Christian Living

There is a bit of paradox in the Christian life. We are commanded to obey God and rewarded if we do, yet understand that it is the Lord’s strengthening that enables us to obey. We are told to pray for what we need, yet told also that the Lord already knows what we need. Paul’s words to the Thessalonians embraces the paradoxical aspect of the Christian life.

^3:1 As to the rest, pray, brothers and sisters, for us, so that the word of the Lord might advance and be honored like it was by you, ² and that we might be rescued from wicked and evil people. For the faith is not honored by all. ³ And faithful is the Lord, who will strengthen you and guard you from evil. ⁴ And we are confident in the Lord about you that the things we commanded you, you are doing and will do. ⁵ Now may the Lord guide your hearts to the love of God and the endurance of Christ.

Paul has finished with the teaching about the last days and the coming of Christ, so what follows is supposedly minor matters, though with Paul, nothing is really minor.  He is still teaching and discipling his readers. And he begins his conclusory remarks with a request. Would they pray for him and his team. Pray two things: (1) that the message of the gospel might make significant progress, which is to say, that many will believe the gospel, “honor” it the way the Thessalonians did, receive it; (2) that God would protect them from those who oppose the progress of the gospel and persecute them, just as the Thessalonians are being persecuted. So, in essence, this is a pattern of prayer that the Thessalonians can adopt for themselves.

The God whom the Thessalonians are appealing to for Paul’s protection and for the advance of the gospel is the one who is “faithful,” and is able to strengthen believers in the midst of persecution and at the same time guard them from evil, and the evil one. That apparently does not always mean He stops the persecution, or even prevents it from harming believers. He did not prevent harm to Jesus, who endured the persecution unto death. But he was guarded from the evil and the evil one in that persecution.

Then Paul reminds the Thessalonians to keep the commands he gave them. But as he says this he also says that he has confidence in the Lord Jesus that they are keeping these commands and will keep them. So why charge them with these responsibilities? And here is the seeming paradox. We are commanded by the Lord to do certain things and yet it is because we are in him that we will do them. We keep the commands by His enablement. And in that regard Paul asks the Lord Jesus to guide or lead the hearts of his friends into the love of God and the endurance of Jesus.

There is ambiguity in the phrase “love of God.” Does it mean the love God has for us and others, in which case Paul is asking God to lead them into loving others? Or does it mean love for God, which is a powerful motivation for obeying His commands (John 14:15)? Either could fit here. When he says, on the other hand, the “endurance of Christ,” he most certainly means the kind of endurance Jesus had in the face of persecution.

Paul’s instructions kind of lead us to this paradoxical standpoint: Pray like it all depends on God; work like it all depends on you. Can we do both at the same time?