Paul's Message of Hope for the Thessalonians--A Gospel Grounded in Eschatology, Election, and Redemptive History

“Paul” — Attributed to Rembrandt

Hope for the Future

For Paul, hope is directly related to the eschatological expectation associated with the person and work of Jesus Christ. We have hope for the future because of Christ’s resurrection and in light of his promise of his return following his ascension (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). Paul is not speaking of a passive resignation to accept those trials and troubles which God may allow to come into our lives (as in certain forms of ancient stoicism which can function as a sort of practical atheism).[1] Rather, the hope of which Paul speaks is that all those things which God has promised to his people in Jesus Christ will, at some point, become a wonderful reality. As Gene Green points out,

The Christians’ hope was bound up with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, an event that is mentioned frequently in these letters (1:10; 2:19; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23; 2 Thess. 1:7–10; 2:1; and cf. 1 Thess. 5:8). The hope they held was not some vague expectation about a better future but rather solid confidence rooted in the expectation of Christ’s coming. This was the strong foundation that gave the Thessalonians the power to endure and persevere in the face of the tremendous hostility leveled against them.[2]

Such hope enables Christians to endure and remain steadfast knowing that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). The life of Jesus in which the agony of Calvary leads to the glory of Easter is also exemplary for Christians as well. Suffering precedes glory. We know that we are not left on our own to suffer from the ambiguities of life as would a pagan or an atheist, who have no such hope and whose gods (if there are any) are weak, capricious, and arbitrary. As Christians, we may not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future. Christ’s work of redemption is the basis of our hope for the future regardless of our present circumstances. Although new Christians, Paul gives thanks to God that the Thessalonians embraced this hope as fruit of their faith in Jesus. As is clear from the beginning of the letter, Paul is an eschatological thinker and has taught the Thessalonians that our Lord’s return is the “blessed hope” (cf. Titus 2:13).

Paul the Predestinarian

Since Paul is not merely commending the Thessalonians for doing so well, (“way to go!” “nice job!”) but encouraging them to continue on in faith and manifest these virtues, Paul takes the opportunity to remind them of the source of the faith now evident in their labors in faith, hope, and love. God’s electing love is the basis of their call to faith in Jesus through the preaching of the gospel. In verses 4-5a, he writes, “for we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.”

Based upon statements such as this found in an early Pauline letter, and in light of more comprehensive statements he will make in later texts like Romans 8:28-39 and Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul is unashamedly a predestinarian. The tangible proof that God has chosen us to be his people is that Jews and Gentiles have come to believe that Jesus is the Christ and that his merits alone can save sinful people from the wrath to come.

As Calvin put it, “Christ, then, is the mirror wherein we must, and without self-deception may, contemplate our own election.”[3] The practical syllogism comes to mind; “how do you know whether or not you are numbered among the elect? The follow-up question is “do you believe in Jesus?” If you do, it is because God has chosen you in Christ.

Redeemed and Conformed

For reasons not made known to us, God chooses to redeem a multitude of sinners (both Jew and Gentiles) so vast they cannot be counted (cf. Revelation 7:9) and then conform them to the image of Christ. Paul is clear in the passages just cited that God chooses to save his people based solely upon his mercy and his sovereign purpose. In Ephesians 1:13-14, for example, Paul speaks of God’s purpose (εὐδοκία), the mystery of his will (μυστήριον), and his council (βουλή). In Romans 8:28, Paul tells us that calling is based upon God’s purpose (πρόθεσις), and that such calling does not depend upon anything we have done, but on God’s sovereign will– “As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Romans 9:9-13). Paul connects election to the preaching of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit who produces full conviction (faith in the certainty of God’s promise). The end (election unto salvation) is connected to the means through which it is accomplished (the preaching of the gospel).

Loved by God

According to Jeffrey Weima, Paul’s comments contain additional echoes from the Old Testament,

Paul addresses his readers with the striking phrase “loved by God.” As with the noun “church” . . . here too we have an instance of language originally applied to Israel (e.g., Deut. 32:15; 33:12; Ps. 60:5; 108:6; Isa. 44:2; Jer. 11:15; 12:7; Sir. 45:1; Bar. 3:37) being reapplied to the Christian church. Especially in this context where the emphasis is on God’s election (“because we know, brothers loved by God, your election”), there can be little doubt that Paul’s application of terms originally reserved for Israel to the predominantly Gentile congregation of Thessalonica is not coincidental, but rather stems from his conviction that the church, consisting of both Jewish and Gentile Christians, now constitutes the renewed Israel of God.[4]

The mystery hidden in the Old Testament now revealed in the New, is that in Jesus Christ, God will save a multitude of Gentiles (Revelation 7:9) in additional to elect Jews (Romans 9:6). He does this through the person and work of Jesus Christ through whom the love of God is displayed for all to see, and in which God’s purposes in election are realized.

The Gospel Was Foretold

For Paul, the coming of Jesus Christ is the great event foretold in the Old Testament and therefore, “according to the Scripture” (Romans 1:17; 3:28; Galatians 3:6 ff; 4:21 ff; 1 Corinthians 10:1-10; Romans 15:4, 1 Corinthians 9:10, 2 Timothy 3:16).[5] All those who presently believe in Jesus have been chosen by God in eternity past. This is true of the Thessalonians, who heard the gospel preached to them by the first missionaries, because the Holy Spirit prevented Paul from going into Asia and instead directed him to cross the Aegean Sea and preach to Gentiles in Macedonia. God sent Paul to Thessalonica, who then preached Christ to them, their faith being the fruit of God’s election of sinners unto salvation.

Frank Theilman notes yet another Old Testament echo in 1 Thessalonians 1:5-6–one pointing to the new covenant and the promise of the Holy Spirit now present in Jesus Christ.

With the coming of Jesus Christ, the era of the restoration of God’s people by the sanctifying presence of God’s Spirit had arrived . . . . From Paul’s perspective, then, something earthshaking had occurred when the Thessalonians believed and experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in their midst (1 Thess 1:5-6). The eschatological era predicted by the prophets [Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel] had come, and a new covenant had been established with God’s people. In the process of so much radical change, another shocking event had taken place: Gentiles had turned from idols to the God of Israel and had joined the eschatological people of God.[6]

The on-going success of Paul’s Gentile mission is nothing less than God fulling the promises of a new covenant and the restoration of Israel as foretold by Israel’s prophets. This change in perspective regarding God’s dealing with the Gentiles in relationship to national Israel (at least from a Jewish point of view) may go a long way towards explaining the violent reaction on the part of the Jews throughout Macedonia to Paul’s preaching of Christ crucified. How can Gentiles claim that God’s messianic promises belong to them, not Israel? Paul’s use of such Old Testament echoes is also a strong argument in favor of one people of God, Israel in the Old Testament and the church as the renewed Israel in the New Testament.

Israel’s Restoration in the Gentile Mission

Let us not miss the loud echo from Israel’s restoration as taught by the prophets. “Uncircumcised Gentiles who turn from idols to believe the gospel constitute the fulfillment of the biblical predictions of Israel’s restoration.” This is the theological underpinning of the entire Gentile mission. Paul spells this out in Ephesians 2:11-22:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

With the redemptive purposes of God hidden in the types and shadows of the Old Testament, now brought out into the open in the light of Jesus Christ, Paul connects the certainty of election to the fact that the gospel had been preached to the Gentile Thessalonians. Furthermore, Paul’s preaching was accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit, who gave the Thessalonians a deep conviction of the truth of the gospel message. The preaching of the gospel is the primary means by which God calls his people to faith.

If God chooses those whom he will save (his elect), he also chooses the means by which his elect will come to faith–the preaching of Christ and him crucified. In Paul’s theology, election is tied to calling, and calling is tied to the message of the gospel (Christ crucified). The gospel came to the Thessalonians, not simply with words but also in the power of the Holy Spirit, and was therefore accompanied by deep conviction that his message of Christ crucified and raised from the dead was true (1 Thessalonians 4:8). The gospel of a crucified and risen Savior was the message which brought both Jew and Gentile to faith. This makes it obvious that all proper Christian mission and evangelism should be grounded in the gospel, and will fail to the degree to which it is not.

Taken from Season Two of the Blessed Hope Podcast Entitled “When the Lord Jesus Is Revealed from Heaven With His Mighty Angels.”

Season Two/Episode Three: "The Church as the Renewed Israel” (1 Thess 1:1-8)

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[1] Morris, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, 42.

[2] Green, The Letters to the Thessalonians, 91.

[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 3.24.5.

[4] Weima, “1-2 Thessalonians,” 871.

[5] Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans., John Richard de Witt (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1975), 44-90, especially 51.

[6] Thielman, Paul and the Law, 77-78.

[7] Thielman, Paul and the Law, 79.