Being conned is a sickening experience. I don’t know whether it’s ever happened to you. As well as the financial loss, or whatever it is, there’s the feeling — that’s entirely unwarranted — of stupidity. You think to yourself, well, how did I fall for it? And it leaves you feeling almost guilty that someone was devious enough to have cheated you. Just this last week, the Royal United Services Institute said that credit card, identity, and cyber fraud are the most prevalent crimes now in the United Kingdom, costing on average £190 billion every year.
The Thessalonian Christians were beginning to feel that they had been conned. They were getting buyer’s remorse for signing up to the Christian faith. And so Paul has been reassuring the Thessalonians that they made a genuine response to his authentic ministry that brought them the genuine gospel. Chapter 1 of 1 Thessalonians has been focused on the response that the Thessalonians made. Paul has reminded them and reassured them that they responded with faith, love, and hope, and that they have been suffering for their faith, serving God. They’ve been transformed in the way they lived their lives, and they’ve been waiting for Jesus to come back and rescue them. But having looked at the Thessalonians’ response and reassured them that that is genuine, in chapter 2 Paul turns to his own ministry. Was the ministry they responded to the genuine article or not?
And it’s not hard, reading between the lines in that Bible reading that Tamara just read, to piece together what Paul is being accused of by his opponents in Thessalonica. Remember the background to the letter from Acts chapter 17: Paul spent just three Sabbaths in Thessalonica before there was a riot and he had to flee the city under cover of darkness, and he’s not been seen or heard from since. And you can hear what people would have been saying to the Thessalonian Christians: ‘You’ve been conned. Paul was just another itinerant teacher who fleeced his audience. Own up — how much did you pay him in admission fees to his lectures? He just used you. You gave him a platform, and all it’s done is bolster his reputation as a rhetorician, as a speaker. It’s given him a platform for his next book publication, but that’s all that’s happened. And the minute it became clear to Paul that people had seen right through him, he fled, and he’s not coming back. You’ve been had.’
You can see how that kind of narrative, being drip-fed to the Thessalonian Christians, could make them question the whole thing. And you can see why Paul has to respond. He doesn’t particularly care what people think of him — his reputation doesn’t bother him — but if this is left uncorrected, the Thessalonians could abandon Jesus altogether. On the other hand, if Paul can answer these charges and show them that the ministry they responded to is real, then they will come out of the whole experience more confident in Jesus than ever before.
So Paul replies to these charges, and he gives two contrasts in this reading: his attitude — what he was not like, and then what instead he was like. Two pairs of contrasts, and then two pictures of his love and commitment to the Thessalonian Christians. And once he’s taken us through those two contrasts and those two pictures, we will be pretty clear that Paul actually is for real.
Contrast 1: Not popularity, but suffering
So here’s the first contrast. Paul was not motivated by popularity. Verse 4: ‘We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.’ Or verse 6: ‘We were not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asserted our authority.’ The easiest thing in the world for Paul would have been to make subtle adjustments to his message to make it into something that would make people like him. It’s not hard as a public speaker to know what you would have to say to make people love you for saying it. It’s really not hard. And it would have been very easy for Paul to do that. But he resisted it. He didn’t do it. Verse 3: ‘The appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you.’ He was not motivated by popularity.
Instead, he was willing to suffer. Here’s the first half of verse 2: ‘We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi.’ Remember — arrested, stripped, beaten in public, locked up in the very poor quality public jail, until God rescued them at midnight miraculously. But that treatment, for a Roman citizen like Paul, was absolutely shameful. So as he arrived in Thessalonica, he knew what would happen if he brought the same message there that had just caused all that trouble in Philippi. So what did he do when he arrived in Thessalonica, having had that experience before? The answer is the second half of verse 2: ‘With the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition.’ He shared the same gospel that makes him unpopular and that leads him to suffer. And if he were a people-pleaser, as he is accused of being, he would never have repeated what it was that got him thrown out of Philippi. But he’s not motivated by popularity. Instead, he’s willing to be unpopular. He’s willing to suffer.
So there’s one contrast. Here’s the second one. He’s not motivated by profit. Let’s go back to that imaginary question they might have asked: how much did he make off you in ticket sales? Go on, tell us how much money you all handed over to Paul between you. Well, Paul answers that question for us in verse 9: ‘Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship. We worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.’ He didn’t take a penny. Instead, he held down two jobs at the same time — he preached the gospel and he did manual work with his hands — so that he didn’t require the Thessalonians to pay him a penny for his services. He could just do this for them for free. And this means he can say in verse 5: ‘You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed. God is our witness.’ And all of this selflessness, this doing it for free, is a matter of public record. Verse 5: ‘God is our witness.’ And then all the way through he repeats this phrase where he says ‘you know’ or ‘you saw.’ Verse 1: ‘You know, brothers and sisters.’ Verse 5: ‘You know.’ Verse 9: ‘Surely you remember.’ Verse 10: ‘You are witnesses.’ And then verse 11: ‘For you know that we dealt with each of you.’ Paul is not motivated by profit, and everybody, if they’re honest, knows that, because everything was transparent for all to see.
Contrast 2: Not profit, but a steward
Not motivated by profit — instead, he’s a steward. This comes at the beginning of verse 4: ‘On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.’ He’s been entrusted by God with the gospel, to preserve it faithfully and then to pass it on as God has directed.
For example — you might like to compare — maybe you don’t manage a holiday every year; maybe if you do have a holiday it’s always in the United Kingdom. Maybe you would normally go abroad, fortunate if you get to do that, but maybe this year you can’t because of Covid. So what you’re going to do is the cheapest option possible, which is to swap houses for a week with a friend in another part of the country. You’re living in their house for a week, and you think, ‘Well, that bedroom upstairs would look lovely if I went down to Homebase and bought a nice tin of fuchsia paint — it would brighten the place up considerably; it’s a little bit drab at the moment. That grass outside in the back garden doesn’t look like they cut it quite as frequently as grass deserves to be cut, so I think we’ll get some paving slabs, we’ll dig up the grass, we’ll lay some sand and some cement, and we’ll pave their back garden — it’ll be easier for them to look after.’ And you do those jobs. ‘Actually, we’ve just done up this house considerably; it’s probably gone up in value. I think we should put it on the market and see if we can sell it and realise a nice profit for them — they’ll be so lovingly surprised; they’d never expect to get such a generous amount of money from a buyer, but it’s in such good condition now we’ve done it up that they’re in for a lovely surprise. I think we’ll put it on the market.’
You can’t do that. It’s not your house. You’ve borrowed it for a week in trust, and you have to use it in the way that’s been expected. If the condition of borrowing it was ‘if you could clean the bathrooms and mow the lawn and trim the hedges while you’re there, you can have it for nothing’ — well, that’s what you do. That’s the deal. That’s what they’ve said. It’s their house and you are their guests. Well, Paul knows that the gospel is not his — it’s God’s. He’s entrusted with it. He’s a steward, and he must do with it as God directs.
So there’s the second contrast. Take those two contrasts together: it’s clear Paul is not in this for himself. He’s faithfully passed on the real gospel at great cost to himself, for the Thessalonians’ benefit and out of faithfulness to God.
Paul, like a mother
Two contrasts, and then two pictures of his love for the Thessalonians. Firstly, Paul is like a mother. Verse 7: ‘Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well. Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship. We worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.’ Like a mother, he says, and he draws out a number of aspects of being a good mother in his loving and tender care for the Thessalonians. Like a mother would care for her children, he’s shared his life with them — it’s not just a message, the gospel clinically handed over and delivered; it’s the sharing of his very life. And he’s toiled — here’s the phrase that will resonate with some of you — night and day. And you know, those of you who have been mothers or who are mothers, that it’s not a job that stops at seven o’clock in the evening and then starts again at five past nine when you’ve had time to make yourself a coffee. It’s a night-and-day job of hard work. And in all of those ways, Paul’s ministry amongst the Thessalonians resembles that of a loving mother with her children.
Indeed, he says specifically that it’s like a nursing mother. A picture we get in some of the other places in the New Testament is of the gospel as spiritual milk. And as Paul has fed and nourished these Christians with the milk of the gospel, he hasn’t just handed it over like a delivery driver offering a professional delivery service — instead, he’s nourished these Thessalonian Christians like a nursing mother. He’s loved them, he’s shared his life with them, he’s worked and toiled. There’s the first picture of his love for them.
Paul, like a father
And then the second is that he’s like a father. Verses 10 to 12: ‘You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among you who believe. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.’ What Paul sets out here is what fathers should be — it goes so much better than any of us have ever known from our human fathers, and better than any of us have ever managed to be as fathers. And ultimately it’s drawn from the kind of father that God is. Paul has been an example for them of blameless living, and he’s been a constant presence by their side while he was with them, encouraging and urging them to live lives worthy of the gospel.
So Paul’s — the charges against Paul are answered. To the opponents, Paul is a profiteer who doesn’t love them, who has just used them for his own benefit. But what is quite clear from what Paul says is that he’s not in it for popularity or for profit. Instead, he’s suffered as a steward, and he’s loved them as a nourishing mother and as an encouraging father.
So the Thessalonians are suitably reassured. But how does this help us today? Well, certainly this is a model for all of us in any form of Christian ministry — whether you’re a vicar or the leader of a church, whether you lead a home group regularly or on occasion, whether you help with the children’s work, whether you sometimes study the Bible one-to-one with other people. We see here Paul’s heart in ministry: his suffering stewardship, his nourishing motherhood, and his encouraging fatherhood. And these are the shape and pattern for all of us, no matter what form of Christian ministry we are engaged in. And this is a very humbling passage to read as we realise just how far short all of us in ministry today fall.
But that’s not why this passage is here. The Thessalonians were being tempted to reject the gospel because those who taught them were accused of profiteering, crowd-pleasing, and running away. So Paul shows them that his methods, his motives, and his message were all good.
Not conned
And so I would encourage us to think of all those who have told us the gospel — the Christian good news — over the years. It might include your parents; it might include church ministers, church leaders of one kind or another; it could perhaps include some of your school teachers, members of your family, some of your friends, other people who have shared the good news of Jesus with you. Now, all of those people are human. They’re all sinful, they all have feet of clay, and they’re all flawed — so none of them will be a perfect model by any means. But are there at least some of them who did so in spite of opposition and at cost to themselves, who, far from fleecing you, gave things up so that you and others could hear about Jesus? Then call those folk to mind whenever you’re being tempted to give it all up as a sham. Remember them at that point.
Let me tell you about a couple of people who have influenced me over the years. I think of one of my school teachers who had a very stable job teaching in a boarding school — gave it up, with the home that came with it and a very good and dependable salary — so that he could spend a few months each year travelling to various European and Eastern European countries to teach and equip pastors there to plant and lead churches. Or I think of the youth leaders when I went on summer camps. At the time I was a teenager, and then I was a kind of junior helper when I was an undergraduate student. When you’re a teenager or an undergraduate, you don’t understand the value of time — not at all. And I only now realise what a big sacrifice it was for those leaders to give up probably one and a half to two weeks of their annual leave each year to give time so that teenagers could hear the good news about Jesus in the context of a fun and enjoyable holiday. And I realised — you know, back then when you have sort of boundless youth at the age of 17 — but now I see it was not only a sacrifice of time, it was a sacrifice of energy and of comfort: sleeping on a mattress in a sleeping bag in the maths classroom.
So have a think — who are those people for you, who told you the gospel and who did so at cost to themselves?
Another good thing that you could do, if it helps you to have some other examples, is to read good missionary biographies. Some of the missionary biographies in print are sort of desperately misty-eyed, telling of these heroes who could do no wrong. But there are also many good ones that include all the gritty details of their lives and the things that they did to share the good news with others. So I could particularly recommend this one, for example — looks like it’s a mirror image for you — Hudson Taylor’s biography by Roger Steer. Here you go. You can buy it from — ten of those for just £3.99 — and given it’s got a good 350 pages of very easy-to-read writing, that’s pretty good value for £3.99. It’s just over a penny a page. Fantastic story of Hudson Taylor, who in 1853, when there were very few if any Chinese Christians, went to China at the age of 21. He travelled there by sea; the voyage took him five months and was so perilous that the ship he was on nearly didn’t make it. And he arrived in China with no idea where his money or other support would come from. But God was faithful, and as a result all kinds of good things were achieved — but with much suffering and hardship on the way.
And even if you can’t think of a single example from your own past and background of people who have shared the good news with you in this way, why not read the book of Acts? You could start with chapters 16 and 17 — Paul’s visits to Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. Here are people who did exactly as Paul describes. Here and elsewhere in Acts you can read of Stephen, who was stoned for his testimony; of Peter, who spent some time on death row; and of Paul, who was imprisoned and shipwrecked. These folk in the book of Acts did not tell people of Jesus because of what they stood to gain — far from it.
Or of course the ultimate example is the Lord Jesus: the Jesus who washed his disciples’ feet, who built his kingdom by dying for his subjects, carrying the sin and the anger of God against every one of his people on his own shoulders.
It’s easy to wonder at times if we’ve been had — is the whole Christian faith a big con, a big power play to keep those who peddle its message in a job that otherwise they wouldn’t have? Is that all it is — giving a few important people a living and a reputation? When you’re inclined to think that way, think again. Yes, there are some charlatans — of course there are. But there are also many selfless, loving, and faithful people who have suffered as stewards, who have shunned popularity and profit. And the most notable of them all is the Lord Jesus himself, who gave his life that we might live.