For *ye*, brethren, have become imitators of the assemblies of God which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus; for *ye* also have suffered the same things of your own countrymen as also *they* of the Jews,
Paul tells the Thessalonians they had come to resemble believers far away in Judea. The likeness was not in teaching or style but in what they suffered.
The verse begins with "for." It points back to the word they had received. One writer shows what that word did in them, and where it placed them.
The word of God worked powerfully in these young believers. It led them to identify themselves wholeheartedly with the people of God. They became followers of the assemblies of God, which in Judea were in Christ Jesus. They did not only share with them the privileges in Christ Jesus; they also became their companions in suffering for Christ.
Paul calls them imitators, but the likeness did not come from copying. It came from one cause at work in both places, and it crossed every barrier of background.
The same spiritual cause produced similar effects... the Holy Spirit shapes the believer by the image of Christ, presented in God's word. That word is powerful not only to give souls new life from God, but also to clear, correct, instruct, reprove, discipline in every way, and cheer the believer on... A difference of race, or a completely different religious background, cannot hinder the power of grace and truth. The Thessalonians walked the same path of suffering and endurance as the Jewish assemblies in Christ Jesus. In Judea the flame of persecution burned fiercely against the companies that bore the name of the One they had crucified. It was no different for the Thessalonian believers from their own countrymen.
Paul does not just say "the churches in Judea." He adds "in Christ Jesus," and that phrase sets them apart from every synagogue in the land.
Paul also describes the assemblies in Judea as in Christ. This too was true of all of them; but it marked out the assemblies in Judea as different from any Jewish synagogue. They were assemblies of Christ, and in Christ. These are terms and truths that no Jew could ever have used, or even claimed to accept.
Believing put the Thessalonians into a family that already existed. Their suffering did not isolate them; it linked them.
Because their faith led them to obey, the Thessalonians found themselves connected with the churches of Judea. Those churches had gone before them in the same faith (there is one body). And like them, the Thessalonians were suffering persecution from people of their own nation.
One writer names what that bond cost them — and the company it gained them.
It took them out of their natural place in a world that had fallen away from God. It made them companions of those the world had rejected, though the world was not worthy of them.
In both places the blows came from their own people. One writer explains what makes such hatred so bitter.
No hatred is as bitter as hatred sharpened by a difference in religion, especially where the claim is exclusive and divine. The gospel brought this out in its strongest form. It first had to make its way where God had really given special privileges. Those privileges were right to keep at their full value, as long as He still owned the people He had given them to.
Naming the Judean churches leads Paul into the heaviest charge in the letter.
They had killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and they persecuted the apostles. They were not satisfied with this: they tried to stop the gospel they hated from reaching the Gentiles and saving them.
- Word. They received the gospel as God's own word, and it did its work in them.
- Likeness. One Spirit works through one word. So believers in Thessalonica came to resemble believers in Judea, though their race and religious background were entirely different.
- Belonging. Faith placed them among churches that had gone before them, for there is one body. It also moved them out of their natural place in the world.
- Cost. Shared suffering marked this family. In both places the blows came from their own people, because religious hatred is the most bitter of all.
- Exposure. The same hatred that linked them to Judea exposed those who tried to stop the gospel reaching the Gentiles.
who have both slain the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and have driven us out by persecution, and do not please God, and [are] against all men,
Paul comforts a young church that its own neighbours are hounding, and he points it to believers in Judea who suffered the same way. That comparison leads him into one of his sharpest charges — a list that reaches back through Israel's history and out to the whole human race.
The killing of Jesus was not a single crime standing on its own. One writer traces the line from the prophets to the cross, and shows that the cross did not end the pattern:
But the Jewish people made light of their privileges and threw them away. They killed the prophets who pressed their unfaithfulness and their falling away from God on their consciences. Their guilt reached its peak at a time when outward religion still looked orderly. Then the shameful rejection and death of their own Messiah exposed their real unbelief and hatred of God. But evil is never satisfied. Even the cross only sharpened their bitterness against those who witnessed to God's grace. They "drove us out."
God's older quarrel with the nation was about idolatry. This verse brings a new charge:
In the past God's great case against the Jews was their constant idolatry. The Old Testament prophets are full of it. The New Testament adds a still greater charge: they "killed the Lord Jesus." On top of that, they drove the Apostle out by persecution and, as far as they could, blocked the gospel from going out to the Gentiles. They refused to go through the door of salvation themselves, and as far as they could they stopped others from going through it.
The verse links the death of Jesus with the death of the prophets. One writer draws out what that says about human nature, and not only about one nation:
The death of Jesus was the peak of Israel's sin, but it was not a new kind of sin for them. In earlier times the mere report of His coming was enough to make that nation hate and murder all the prophets sent to them. What hatred this shows! They did not only murder Him when He appeared. Their bitterness ran so deep that they killed anyone who prophesied of His coming, even before they saw Him. Stephen charged this bloodthirsty spirit home on the council as the nation's crowning sin against the Lord. And him they murdered — the first martyr in the church. It may help us to remember that in Israel God was testing human nature itself. So in their conduct we see what the Gentiles would have done, if they had had the same chance.
Paul says they drove him out. One writer explains why the message itself made them so angry:
The preaching of grace drives those who hold the law into fury. Grace makes little of any earthly privilege, and insists that the Jew is as ruined as the Gentile. So the Jew's hatred of the gospel never dies... But grace goes further. It proclaims blessings in Christ beyond compare, it wipes out every distinction, and it brings the believer, Jew or Gentile alike, into a new place of heavenly relationship and everlasting favour. That they cannot bear.
Their own zeal did not settle the matter, and neither did the number of people who agreed with them. Where the ESV says they "oppose all mankind," older translations read "contrary to all men":
Certainly this was not pleasing to God, no matter how zealous for God they claimed to be. It was "contrary to all men," or "against all men," for it was against the proper interests of all mankind. Many might agree with them, but it was still to the actual harm of them all.
The same hostility shows up again and again:
It was religion that led the attack on Christ while He was here on earth. Later it was religion that persecuted His followers. Religion not only refused the gospel; it tried to stop it from flowing out to others.
The charge describes the present, not the end of the story. Writing about the promised new heavens and new earth, one commentator sets that future against this very phrase:
Jerusalem will be a rejoicing, instead of a heartache, as it is now. Her people will be a joy, instead of "contrary to all men" (1 Thess. 2:15) as they are now. Sorrow will depart and prosperity be established.
- Pattern — Killing Jesus was the peak, not the start. The same hatred had already killed the prophets who announced Him.
- Mirror — In Israel human nature itself was on trial. Their conduct shows what anyone else would have done with the same chance.
- Cause — Grace enrages those who trust in privilege. It puts Jew and Gentile on the same ground.
- Measure — Zeal did not please God, and wide agreement did not make it good for anyone. Opposing the gospel works against everyone's real interests.
- Reversal — The charge describes a present condition, not a permanent one. The same city is promised as a joy instead of a heartache.
forbidding us to speak to the nations that they may be saved, that they may fill up their sins always but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.
Paul has just listed a chain of opposition: killing the Lord Jesus and the prophets, driving out the preachers. Now he names the act that tops the list. They blocked the message from reaching people outside Israel. Two phrases carry the weight: filling up the measure of their sins, and wrath coming "at last" — older translations read "to the uttermost."
The offence is not only what they did against God. It is also what they refused to others. Commentators say that resenting God's kindness to outsiders draws down the final reckoning.
One of the sins that will draw out the last judgments on the Jews is not merely their deep ingratitude toward God. It is also their hatred of the grace He is showing to the poor Gentiles in their wretchedness and sin. Paul puts this strongly. They fill up the measure of their sins "by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved," and "wrath has come upon them at last!" They cannot bear that others should hear the gospel of grace. Their pride in the law led them to despise it for themselves.
The position is strange, and one writer presses it with questions.
Their intense sectarian hatred also shows in their forbidding the apostles to speak to Gentiles. We may ask, what did this have to do with them? They had themselves rejected Jesus as an impostor. If the Gentiles they despised received Him, why did they not gloat that Gentiles were falling for what they considered gross deception? Were they afraid, though they hated Christ, that this might not be deception after all? Were they really fighting their own badly troubled conscience?
The hostility had a cause. A message that levels everyone removes the standing that religious privilege had given.
The preaching of grace drives those who have the law into fury. Grace makes little of any earthly privileges at all. It insists on the ruin of the Jew as much as of the Gentile. So the Jew's hatred of the gospel never dies. It was bad enough to hear a message as far above the law, and as much deeper, as Christ is greater than Moses. But this message went further. It proclaimed matchless blessings in Christ that wipe out every distinction. It brings the believer, Jew or Gentile alike, into a new place of heavenly relationship and everlasting favour. That is intolerable.
Paul writes this while Jerusalem still stands. Commentators read the past tense as a verdict settled rather than a sentence carried out.
Wrath from God does rest in a special way on blinded and unrepentant Israel. Luke 21:23 speaks of it in connection with the siege of Jerusalem under Titus. In 1 Thessalonians 2:16 Paul speaks of wrath having come upon them to the uttermost. He wrote that twenty years or more before Jerusalem fell. He plainly meant that the wrath was not yet carried out, but that God had settled it beyond recall. That wrath, we believe, will reach its climax in the great tribulation.
"To the uttermost" also marks a change of degree from everything that went before.
"Wrath is come upon them to the uttermost" — upon the Jews. God had visited unbelieving Israel several times with partial punishments. But now they had rejected Christ and the gospel. So God subjects them to the full extent of His judgment. That judgment still continues, and will only be carried out in the future trouble of Jacob.
The verse is severe, but it is not the end of the story. Losing every claim opens the door to pure mercy.
The Jews were the objects of the promises, and the Gentiles the objects of pure mercy. Jesus came to fulfil the promises made to the fathers, and the Jews rejected Him. They also refused and rejected the mercy God revealed to the Gentiles. In this way they filled up the measure of their sins, so that the wrath of God "is come upon them to the uttermost." So they too, shut up in unbelief, become objects of pure mercy, like the Gentiles — even though by natural descent they had been heirs of the promises. This is what brings out the riches of the wisdom of God in a way that surprises our hearts.
The attitude described here is not tied to one nation. One writer links it to the older brother in the story of the lost son.
He may represent the Jew, of whom Paul wrote that they "displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved." But he also represents those self-righteous people who will not have the grace of God, and they are many.
- Cause. Grace levels everyone. It insists on the ruin of Jew and Gentile alike. That is what made the gospel unbearable to people who prized their privileges.
- Cup. Refusing grace for yourself was serious. Refusing it to others filled the measure. The last item in Paul's charge is blocking the message from reaching the nations.
- Conscience. They had already called Jesus an impostor, so why fight the message? One writer asks whether they were really fighting their own troubled conscience.
- Sentence. Paul wrote of wrath "at last" twenty years before Jerusalem fell. It was not yet carried out, but settled beyond recall — and no longer partial discipline. Its climax is still future.
- Surprise. Shut up in unbelief, Israel has no claim left but mercy — the same mercy the Gentiles received. That is where the riches of God's wisdom show.