For ye know yourselves how ye ought to imitate us, because we have not walked disorderly among you;
Paul has just told the Thessalonians to keep away from any brother who walks out of step. He backs that command with the way he lived among them, which raises a plain question for every Christian: what gives anyone the right to correct others?
(The ESV says "idle." Older translations say "disorderly," and the commentators quoted here use that older word.)
The word Paul uses is not first about laziness. It is about position — about keeping rank:
Someone who walks disorderly, or "out of rank," as the word implies, and who does not listen to the warnings given to him, is now to be withdrawn from.
In Thessalonica that broken rank meant men had dropped their ordinary jobs. Empty hours then bred something worse:
Leisure from work is time for mischief, and occupation with the affairs of others without a duty is itself mischief.
The idleness had a root. These believers held on to the truth of the Lord's coming, so the enemy attacked from another angle:
If the enemy could not rob these saints of the truth of the Lord's coming, it seems he tried to trick them into misusing that truth. He led some of them to give up their daily work, claiming the Lord was about to come.
Paul does not just give orders. He can call them to follow him because he was himself following someone else:
Even when he calls the saints to show their disapproval of disorder, the apostle pleads with the hearts and consciences of all. How wonderfully he can urge them to follow, knowing that he himself was following the Master! This is a far truer "imitation of Christ" than the monk's version so popular in the Christian world.
He also had a right he chose not to use, and that choice gave his example its force:
The Lord's servants had left them a very important example of orderly conduct, and the saints were to follow them in it. They did not depend on others for their support, but worked night and day with labour and hardship. What an example indeed! Preaching the Word of God took a great deal of time, yet they also worked with their hands to keep themselves. If this was true of the Lord's servants, who were in Thessalonica for such a short time, how shameful for those who lived there permanently to sponge off others for their support! It would have been perfectly right for Paul and his fellow workers to be supported by those they taught the Word, but they did not use that right, so that they might be a more effective and striking example.
His self-denial did the correcting before he spoke a word of rebuke:
He set a pattern of unselfish grace at great cost to himself... He could point to his own daily ways among them at the start of the gospel. They were the witness of a self-denial which by itself rebuked the disorderly brothers in the strongest yet most gracious way. Those men were working neither day nor night, and were not ashamed to eat the bread of anyone who would supply them for nothing.
The word behind "imitate" means to mimic, and the man who told them to work with their hands could hold up his own hands as proof:
They forget that the one who urged this ambition — to work with your own hands — could hold out his hands and say, "these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me." "These hands" were probably worn and calloused from making tents... And in the Second Epistle, chapter 3, verses 7 and 9, we read: "You know yourselves how you ought to imitate (mimic) us... We give ourselves as an example to you, so that you would imitate (mimic) us."
The same test falls on anyone who teaches others:
It is extremely dangerous, morally, for a man to teach in public what he does not live in private — dangerous for himself, very damaging to the testimony, and harmful to the people he deals with.
- Rank — "Disorderly" means out of rank. In Thessalonica it meant dropped work, and the empty hours produced busybodies.
- Root — The disorder grew out of a true teaching misused. Some made the Lord's coming an excuse to quit their daily work.
- Backing — Paul's command carried weight because he had already obeyed it in front of them. He asked them to follow him only as he followed his Master.
- Cost — He had every right to their support, and refused it. He worked night and day, so that the example itself would rebuke the idlers.
- Imitation — The call is to copy a life, not just admire it. So what a teacher lives in private must match what he says in public.
nor have we eaten bread from any one without cost; but in toil and hardship working night and day not to be chargeable to any one of you
Paul reminds the Thessalonians how he lived among them: he paid for his food and worked night and day. Why did a preacher with a real right to support refuse it, and what did his working hands teach the church?
The words behind "toil and labor" are not gentle ones. One study of the Greek explains what the second one carries:
μόχθος (from μογέω, "to labour, be in distress") occurs three times in the New Testament. It has been judged to refer to the toil that is man's lot in this world of sin. It answers to "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread." Paul's twice using it of his own labours seems to confirm this. He had to work night and day on top of his apostolic work. 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8.
Paul gave up the support. He did not give up the right to it:
Yet the apostle is careful to claim the worker's right. He speaks as he worked, in total self-surrender: "It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate" (verse 9). It is one thing to claim the right the Lord gives to His service. It is quite another to claim it where people might misread or misuse it. So here, as at Corinth, he lets it go — a right he carefully explains that God gave, and one worth holding on to, for the givers as well as the receivers.
Why then did he take on the extra burden? One writer gives two reasons, and adds that Paul did accept support at other times:
On the one hand, this devoted servant would not claim his rights, for fear he should be misunderstood. On the other hand, he saw the state of some of his converts. They had only just been brought out of the deepest darkness. They needed an object lesson in him, showing how to earn an honest living... At the same time, we must not forget that there were times when he did receive, and he fully recognised that to be the divine order. "I robbed other churches," he wrote to the Corinthians, "by accepting support from them in order to serve you."
Some at Thessalonica had simply stopped working. Others have done the same since, and dressed it up as holiness:
A strange group of fanatics, in the earlier and the later days of Christendom, treated giving up work as the path to perfection. They claimed to be men of prayer above others... Their boast was that they neither sowed nor reaped. But they could not escape the charge that they liked the barn, and liked it well filled. The germ of this selfishness showed itself among the Thessalonian saints. But the apostle at once discouraged it and dealt it a heavy blow. He could point to his own work with his hands.
Another writer traces the trouble to the enemy, who turned the hope of the Lord's coming into an excuse:
He had "the right," as a servant of the Lord, to receive material help (1 Cor. 9:7-14). But for their good he gave up the right. He worked in toil and hardship night and day to meet his own needs. So his life became an example for all, and a rebuke to those who would not work. Apparently, if the enemy could not rob these saints of the truth of the Lord's coming, he tried to trick them into misusing it. He led some to give up their daily work, on the plea that the Lord was coming at once.
Paul's trade was not a lower kind of life, cut off from his walk with Christ:
The outer life matches the inner. The power and grace of Christ are not only in the affections of the heart. They also flow out in love to God, through outward ways that carry God's stamp and the fragrance of Christ... This must show itself. It gives a fresh colour to the ordinary things of this life, so that they become in truth the most extraordinary.
- The right — God gave Paul a real claim to support from those he taught. Nothing here cancels it.
- The refusal — He gave it up so no one could misread him, and so new believers could watch him earn an honest living.
- The toil — His word for labour means hardship: sweat-of-the-face work, carried on top of his preaching.
- The example — His working hands answered everyone who dressed up idleness as holiness.
- The bread — He paid for his own bread, and his daily trade became the most extraordinary of ordinary things.