For we hear that [there are] some walking among you disorderly, not working at all, but busybodies.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Now such we enjoin and exhort in [the] Lord Jesus Christ, that working quietly they eat their own bread.
Paul has just named the problem in the church at Thessalonica. Some believers had stopped working. They lived off others and meddled in everyone else's affairs. Now he turns from talking about them to talking to them. His remedy is short: quiet work and bread you have earned yourself.
The trouble did not start in laziness but in a wrong idea about the Lord's return that had been pressed on the church.
Verse 6 of this third chapter and the verses that follow make it clear. The mistaken ideas about the coming of the Lord, urged on the Thessalonians, had already borne evil fruit. It is always the way that bad company corrupts good habits. Some among them had become fanatical in their thinking. They were under the impression that the day of Christ was upon them, and they gave up their ordinary jobs. Having done this, they began to expect support from others.
Commentators differ on which idea did the damage. One writer traces it not to love for the Lord's appearing, but to fear that the day of judgment had already begun.
In my judgment it was not too much enthusiasm about the Lord's coming that made any of them neglect their daily duty. It may rather have been alarm about the day of the Lord, as if it had already begun. That fear made some unwilling to do honest work, and set them gossiping about their fears. The disorderly are not described as wicked people, but are still spoken of as brothers.
The Greek word behind "quietly" is not silence. It describes the person who leaves other people's business alone.
The word hesuchia expresses the general idea of "quietness," not "silence" as in the older translation. See also 2 Thessalonians 3:12, where it stands in contrast to interfering in other people's matters.
The command reaches past the symptom to its cause. And it comes with pleading, not only with authority.
But here too faith works by love; the truth builds up instead of destroying or scattering. Discipline has its measure, since the end is restoration. The meddling, and its cause, idleness, must both go. The name of the Lord was incompatible with both; but the apostle pleads as well as commands. So even what nature itself might teach is bound up with our Lord and Saviour. It is a question of God's kingdom, not of mere morality, as if we were only men, and grace and truth did not exist in Christ.
Paul does not simply say "please." He speaks under a name that carries weight.
Where it is "the Lord Jesus Christ," we have authority — as for instance, 2 Thessalonians 3:12, "Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work and eat their own bread."
Scripture is full of calls to give generously to those in real need. What it refuses is the idle person who lives on what others earned.
Eating other people's bread in idleness was no part of Christian teaching, which commanded the opposite. The Word is full of calls to be generous and brotherly toward those in real need (Galatians 6:6; Ephesians 4:28; 1 John 3:17; 3 John 8). But eating the bread of others in idleness the Word plainly forbids. Those who had been doing the opposite were now to aim at eating their own bread. They could learn from the apostle, who worked night and day at his trade so as not to burden the saints.
Paul never cures the problem by taking their hope away. He leaves the expectation in place and adds the workbench to it.
This very posture of waiting for the Son from heaven had produced a certain evil. The Thessalonian saints were neglecting their present handiwork. The apostle does not try to change their posture at all. He urges them to hold it together with diligence and watchfulness, so that while their eye was gazing, their hand might be working (2 Thessalonians 3).
The verse aims at the idle, but the surrounding instruction touches the generous too. Misplaced kindness keeps the disorder alive.
The folly of their hearers keeps foolish talkers going. Bread eaten without cost must find someone ready to pay the cost. Here indeed a false generosity might do harm to many more than those who indulged in it. How little we think of the various ways in which we may become "partakers of other men's sins!"
- Cause. A wrong idea about the day of the Lord unsettled minds. Unsettled minds quit their jobs and started running other people's lives.
- Command. The correction comes in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is real authority, joined with pleading, because the aim is recovery, not removal.
- Quietness. The word means quietness, the opposite of interfering. The meddling and the idleness behind it must both go.
- Own bread. Scripture is full of calls to meet genuine need. It forbids living on what others earned instead of working. A false generosity makes you a partner in the fault.
- Result. Hope is never the enemy of labour: the eye gazes upward while the hand keeps working.