so that we ourselves make our boast in you in the assemblies of God for your endurance and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations, which ye are sustaining;
Paul tells other churches about the believers in Thessalonica. He does not boast about their size or their comfort. He boasts because they were under attack and had not broken. Two things stand out: what he singles out for praise, and what he leaves out.
Paul names their steadfastness and faith as the things worth telling other churches about. Other translations render that word "endurance" or "patience", as the writers quoted here do. One writer shows what this praise measures.
The very high praise of verse 3 was not mere flattery. Paul was impressed with how the Thessalonians were getting on, and he held them up to others as an example. In the first letter he had no need to speak about them (1 Thess. 1:8), but here there was a need. They had endurance and faith for, and in, persecutions and tribulations. He later wrote to the Colossians, wanting them strengthened for all endurance and patience (Col. 1:11). Here Paul equates the right handling of difficulty with living, praiseworthy Christianity. It isn't numerical growth. It isn't material prosperity. What Paul boasts in and publicises is Christ-like moral qualities shown in a time of difficulty.
The pressure was not a sign that something had gone wrong. It was what happens to a church where faith and love keep growing.
A church where faith was growing and love abounding would not, in that day or this, escape the attacks of Satan. So we learn they were going through persecutions and tribulations. Yet God allowed these trials to test their faith, for the proving of faith "works endurance" (James 1:3). With the Thessalonian believers, Satan's efforts did only one thing. They drew out their faith in Christ, their love for one another, and their endurance in trial. Such qualities stirred the apostle's thankfulness to God and let him boast about them in other churches.
In the first letter Paul praised their patience of hope. Here that phrase is gone. One writer explains why.
The patience of hope, which he mentioned in the first Epistle, is left out. The false teachers and alarmists had dimmed their hope. They wanted the Thessalonians to believe they were heading into all the tribulations of the day of the Lord. The persecutions and tribulations they endured disturbed them deeply. The suggestion was that these were the judgments of the day of the Lord. They looked more at what was happening to them than at the Lord.
The praise is genuine, and yet hope had slipped. Another writer names the danger in that.
To that degree decline had set in. We must not miss this. It is a healthy warning for our own souls, and a danger always present, even though the coming of the Lord is so much nearer now... Satan would use persecution and at the same time inject his favourite poison, discouragement. He wants to persuade saints to settle down in the world and become absorbed in it enough to lose all distinctive testimony.
Paul reads their tribulations as evidence of where they stood.
On the occasion of their sufferings for the gospel, he recognises their good standing in Christ, and finds in their tribulations evidence that they were really in the Christian position.
Verse 5 goes on to speak of being counted worthy of the kingdom. That word is easy to misread.
This worthiness, here or in Matthew, does not refer to standing before God; for the ground of forgiveness of sins and of acceptance with God is grace alone, never merit of any kind (Eph. 2:8). The point is not relationship but discipleship. And this must be pressed home: suffering for Christ's sake is a leading mark of a true follower of our Lord. To dodge the cross is to forfeit the title of a worthy witness for the Lord Jesus in the world. And the opposite is just as true. Patient courage under fiery trials for the name of Christ proclaims the unwavering loyalty that marks someone worthy of the devotion he professes to his Master.
Most readers will not face what Thessalonica faced. The trial takes another shape, but it calls for the same response.
In this country we may not have to face active persecution, but we shall still have tribulation. In a day of confusion and scattering among the people of God, the trials we meet come more often from the flesh showing itself in various forms inside the circle of God's people than from opposition outside. God allows such trials to produce endurance. Sadly, we too often miss the lesson God would teach us. We resent the trial instead, and repay evil for evil, insult for insult.
- Attack — a church where faith grows and love abounds becomes a target. The pressure showed health, not failure.
- Proving — God allowed the attacks to test their faith. The test drew out faith, love and endurance.
- Boasting — Paul told other churches about Christ-like qualities under difficulty, not size or prosperity. That is his measure of a thriving church.
- Missing — Paul drops "patience of hope." They were watching what was happening to them instead of watching for the Lord.
- Worthy — their suffering showed they were truly Christ's. Worthiness here is about discipleship, not about acceptance with God, which rests on grace alone.
a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that ye should be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for the sake of which ye also suffer;
Enemies hunted and harassed the believers in Thessalonica, and outsiders took that as proof God had left them. Paul reads it the other way: their patient endurance is a visible sign of God's righteous judgment, and of the kingdom they suffer for.
Their suffering pointed forward. It showed where they stood with God, and how He would deal with those who attacked them.
The persecutions the Thessalonians endured proved that they were "considered worthy of the kingdom of God." God's judgment would bring this into the open. It would also show what the persecutors had done.
Their pagan neighbours read the same suffering the opposite way.
God, whatever people might be, was righteous. Their pagan friends might point to their sufferings as proof that the gods were rightly angry — the gods whose altars they had left and whose worship they condemned. They might also taunt them that their God did nothing to help them. The apostle drew a very different conclusion, and he set it before them. Their sufferings proved that they were God's people. Rest would be their portion, along with Paul and God's other people then on earth, when God's judgment from heaven overtakes the godless in the world.
Does endurance buy a place in the kingdom? The answer separates two very different things.
This worthiness, here and in Matthew, is not about standing before God. Forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God rest on grace alone, never on merit of any kind (Eph. 2:8). The point is not relationship but discipleship. And suffering for Christ's sake is a prime mark of a true follower of our Lord. To shirk the cross is to forfeit the title of a worthy witness in the world for the Lord Jesus. And in the same way, to show patient endurance under fiery trials for the name of Christ is to proclaim the unswerving loyalty which marks one worthy of the devotion he professes to his Master.
If nothing is merited, why is the word "righteous" used at all? Because God is acknowledging what He Himself has worked.
He does not mean or say that suffering, any more than working, could give any title to acceptance from the Righteous God. Someone like Paul could never say such a thing. It was grace (as he says again to the Philippians) that gave them even to suffer for Christ's sake. But grace had righteous title to count them worthy. And to acknowledge what grace had produced in them was itself righteousness.
Bearing wrong patiently takes faith. And the pressure is doing something in them.
To bear wrongful suffering patiently takes faith in a righteous God. He will not always let evil go unchecked, but will judge at the proper time. God allows this persecution against His people now for their own good. It is a training that molds character. It produces in them a true submission to authority as subjects of the King, and so makes them "worthy of the kingdom of God." How thankful we ought to be for this wise way in which God secures for us the greatest good.
The "kingdom of God" here is not a vague word for heaven. Writers connect it to Christ's coming reign on earth — the reign they suffer for.
"The kingdom" implies Christ's coming to reign over the earth. In 1 Thess. 2:12 the apostle speaks of God calling to this, as an encouragement to walking worthily of God; and 2 Thess. 1 shows that the enemy used their persecutions and troubles to claim the day of the Lord had already come. Even before he clears away this delusion, the apostle treats their troubles the other way round. They are a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, "that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering."
The verse looks ahead to a reversal that has not yet happened, and that shapes what a Christian expects now.
Let us, dear fellow-Christians, clearly grasp that the kingdom of God must suffer. "Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." Soon the tables will be turned. The troubled shall rest, and the troublers be punished. God's kingdom shall triumph; man's shall perish. In the near future our calling is glory. Our present calling is to suffer in true and hearty sympathy with His kingdom and its rejected heavenly King — and may our God count us worthy of it.
- Token — Their suffering was not a sign of God's displeasure. It was proof that they were His people, and that judgment will fall the other way.
- Grace — Worthiness here is never merit; forgiveness and acceptance are by grace alone. The issue is discipleship, not relationship.
- Righteous — Grace gave them their suffering. Grace also has righteous title to own what it produced in them.
- Training — God permits the pressure as a school, forming subjects fit for the King they will live under.
- Reversal — The kingdom they suffer for is Christ's coming reign. When He appears, the troubled will rest and their persecutors will face judgment.