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WorkPaul the Apostle

Epistles to the Thessalonians

One of the earliest surviving Christian letters, comforting a church that grieved members who had died before the Lord's return, and a disputed sequel.

by Paul the Apostle12 passages held

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Original title
Πρὸς Θεσσαλονικεῖς Α΄ · Πρὸς Θεσσαλονικεῖς Β΄
First published
(aged 46)
Original language
Greek

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Overview

One of the earliest surviving pieces of Christian writing is a short letter that Paul, with his co-workers Silvanus and Timothy, sent around 50 from Corinth to the congregation he had recently founded in Thessalonica, the chief city of Macedonia. This page holds it together with a second letter to the same church in Paul's name. Paul had been forced to leave Thessalonica early; from Athens he sent Timothy back, and Timothy returned with good news and one fear. Some members had died, and the rest grieved as if their dead would miss the Lord's return. First Thessalonians answers that the dead in Christ will rise first and the living will be caught up with them, that the day will come like a thief in the night, at a time no one knows, and that meanwhile the believers should live quietly and work with their own hands. Second Thessalonians meets the opposite problem: people claiming, even by a letter supposedly from Paul, that the day of the Lord had already come. It answers that a rebellion must come first and a man of lawlessness be revealed, who for now is held back by a restraining power the letter does not name. It also rules that whoever will not work shall not eat, a sentence Lenin later made a Soviet slogan. The tradition receives this second letter as Paul's, written soon after the first. Many scholars think a follower wrote it in his name after his death, perhaps between 80 and 115: its wording copies the first letter closely, yet it expects a sequence of signs before the end where the first expects a sudden coming, and its style is stiffer and more formal. Others defend Paul's authorship. The text given here is the King James Version (1611), translated from the Greek, with the verse numbers removed and the chapters kept.

Key concepts

What is 'the day of the Lord' in these letters?

The day when the Lord comes back to judge and to gather his people. In these letters it means the return of Christ 'with all his saints', who will come down from heaven with a shout and the trumpet of God. Paul refuses to give a date: it comes 'as a thief in the night', so the point of the teaching is how to live meanwhile, not when to expect it.

Why does Paul call the dead 'asleep'?

Because for him death is not the end of the story: those 'which are asleep' will be woken. The word comforts without denying that they have died, which is why Paul can tell mourners to grieve 'not, even as others which have no hope'. It also explains his order of events: the sleepers are raised first, then joined by those still alive.

Who is 'the man of sin' in Second Thessalonians?

A figure who must appear before the day of the Lord: a rebel who sets himself up in God's temple and claims to be God. The letter says a 'mystery of iniquity' is already at work but held back for now, and that when the man is revealed the Lord will destroy him 'with the brightness of his coming'. Its point is practical: the end has not yet come.

What does 'sanctification' mean in First Thessalonians?

Being made holy, that is, set apart for God, and Paul makes it concrete at once: 'this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication'. Holiness here is not an inner feeling but a way of living in the body, each person learning to govern their own desire with honour, unlike those who do not know God.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Grief and the Lord's return

Members of a new church had died before the Lord came back: had they missed everything? Paul answers the mourners, and tells the living how to wait for a day no one can date.

The Thessalonians grieved as if their dead were shut out of the coming they had been promised. Paul tells them to sorrow, but not as those who have no hope: at the trumpet of God the dead in Christ will rise first, and the living will be caught up with them, so that neither goes ahead of the other. The date is not given. The day comes like a thief in the night, just as people say 'peace and safety', and so the children of the day stay awake and sober.

  • hope
  • consolation
  • afterlife
  • resurrection
  • eschatology
  • vigilance
  • salvation

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Waiting without idling

If the end may come at any moment, why keep working, and whom should one believe about its date? Both letters pull a church back from excitement into ordinary, tested life.

The first letter already asks the believers to live quietly, mind their own business and work with their own hands. The second meets a sharper problem: some are shaken by claims, even a letter passed off as Paul's, that the day of the Lord has already come. It answers that a falling away must come first and a man of sin be revealed, now held back by something it leaves unnamed. Meanwhile the idle busybodies get a blunt rule: whoever will not work shall not eat.

  • work
  • self-reliance
  • ethical conduct
  • good works
  • deception
  • discernment
  • divine justice
  • steadfastness

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A young church under pressure

What does an apostle owe a congregation he was forced to leave after a few weeks? Much of the first letter is Paul's answer, written with open affection.

The Thessalonians had turned from idols to the living God and paid for it with their neighbours' hostility. Paul reminds them how he behaved: gentle as a nurse with her children, working night and day so as to burden no one. Unable to bear not knowing how they fared, he sent Timothy back, and calls them his hope, joy and crown. What he asks in return is short: holiness in the body, love for one another, and to pray without ceasing and give thanks in everything.

  • persecution
  • perseverance
  • love
  • faith
  • care
  • community
  • prayer
  • holiness
  • integrity
  • religious conflict
  • divine faithfulness
  • charity
  • grace
  • truth
  • self-control

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Within this work

passages held
12
distinct concepts
34
by passages held, corpus-wide
#808

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “community” and “hope”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 2 concepts, joined by 1 pairing. 15 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
communityhope3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 51 Epistles to the Thessalonians (Πρὸς Θεσσαλονικεῖς Α΄ · Πρὸς Θεσσαλονικεῖς Β΄) you are here EN
  2. 53 Epistle to the Galatians (Πρὸς Γαλάτας)

    A letter of controversy, written in haste to churches he feared to lose. It holds his fullest account of his early years as an apostle and of his clash with Peter, and states in compressed form the case Romans later sets out at length.

     EN
  3. 55 Epistles to the Corinthians (Πρὸς Κορινθίους Α΄ · Πρὸς Κορινθίους Β΄)

    Not one letter but a correspondence: two of at least four letters Paul wrote to Corinth, the second possibly several joined together. They record his longest struggle with a single congregation he had founded.

     EN
  4. 57 Epistle to the Romans (Πρὸς Ῥωμαίους)

    The longest and most systematic of his letters, and the one later theology was built on: for a church he had not founded, it works out at length the argument about faith and the law that Galatians had made in anger.

     EN
  5. 62 Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians (Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους · Πρὸς Κολοσσαεῖς)

    The two letters on this shelf closest to each other in wording, and with Second Thessalonians the three whose authorship is disputed. They carry Paul's thought toward a teaching about the universal church.

     EN
  6. 62 Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon (Πρὸς Φιλιππησίους · Πρὸς Φιλήμονα)

    Prison letters, one to the congregation that supported him with money and one to a single household. Philemon is the only one of Paul's undisputed letters written chiefly to one person.

     EN
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