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1: Paul - In this epistle St. Paul neither uses the
title of an apostle, nor any other, as writing to pious
and simple - hearted men, with the utmost familiarity.
There is a peculiar sweetness in this epistle, unmixed with
any sharpness or reproof: those evils which the apostles
afterward reproved having not yet crept into the church.
3: Remembering in the sight of God - That is, praising
him for it. Your work of faith - Your active, ever - working
faith. And labour of love - Love continually labouring for the
bodies or souls of men. They who do not thus labour, do not
love. Faith works, love labours, hope patiently suffers all
things.
4: Knowing your election - Which is through faith, by
these plain proofs.
5: With power - Piercing the very heart with a sense of
sin and deeply convincing you of your want of a Saviour from
guilt, misery, and eternal ruin. With the Holy Ghost - Bearing
an outward testimony, by miracles, to the truth of what we
preached, and you felt: also by his descent through laying on
of hands. With much assurance - Literally, with full assurance,
and much of it: the Spirit bearing witness by shedding the love
of God abroad in your hearts, which is the highest testimony
that can be given. And these signs, if not the miraculous
gifts, always attend the preaching of the gospel, unless it be
in vain: neither are the extraordinary operations of the Holy
Ghost ever wholly withheld, where the gospel is preached with
power, and men are alive to God. For your sake - Seeking your
advantage, not our own.
6: Though in much affliction, yet with much joy.
8: For from you the word sounded forth - (Thessalonica
being a city of great commerce.) Being echoed, as it were,
from you. And your conversion was divulged far beyond Macedonia
and Achaia. So that we need not speak anything - Concerning it.
9: For they themselves - The people wherever we come.
10: Whom he hath raised from the dead - In proof of his
future coming to judgment. Who delivereth us - He redeemed us
once; he delivers us continually; and will deliver all that
believe from the wrath, the eternal vengeance, which will then
come upon the ungodly.
