CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
1 Thessalonians 1:9. What manner of entering in.—In Acts 17 we have an account of how the Jews instigated men ever ready for a brawl to bring a charge of high treason—the most likely way of giving the quietus to the disturbers of ancient traditions, Paul and Silas. To serve the living and true God.—The Thessalonians had not been delivered from the bondage of fear that they might lead lives irresponsible. “Get a new master,” then “be a new man.”
1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for His Son.—The compound word for wait is only found here in the New Testament. The idea may be compared with our Lord’s figure of the bondservants waiting with lights and ready for service on their Lord’s return (Luke 12:35-40). Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.—R.V. “delivereth.” The wrath to come “revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Romans 1:18) is the penalty threatened against sin persisted in.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10
Conversion and its Evidence.
A good work cannot be hid. Sooner or later it will manifest itself and become the general topic of a wide region. The successful worker meets with the fruit of his labours at times and places unexpected. Wherever the apostles went, the reputation of the newly founded Church had preceded them, and the varied features of the great change that had passed over the Thessalonians were eagerly discussed. We have here a description of conversion and its evidence.
I. The conversion of the Thessalonians.—“For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). You have watched a vessel lying at anchor in a tidal river with her bowsprit pointing seaward. After a brief interval you have observed the force of the incoming tide swing the vessel completely round, so that her head points in an exactly opposite direction. Not less apparent was the change among the Thessalonians when the flood-tide of gospel blessing entered the city. Conversion is a turning about—a change from sin to holiness, from unbelief to faith, from darkness to light, from Satan to God.
1. They turned from idols.—For generations the majority of the members of this Church, with their forefathers, had been idolaters, “walking as other Gentiles walked in the vanity of their mind,” etc. (Ephesians 4:17-18; Ephesians 2:12). Any creature, real or imaginary, invested with divine properties is an idol. An angel, a saint, wealth, an idea, or any object to which we ascribe the omnipotence that belongs to God, becomes to us an idol—a false deity. An idol is also the true God falsely conceived. The Pantheist, mistaking the effect for the cause, regards the vast fabric of created things as God, and Nature, with her grand, silent motions, is the object of his idolatry. The sensualist, reluctant to believe in punishment for sin, exalts the boundlessness of divine mercy, and ignores the other perfections, without which there could be no true God. Idolatry is a sin against which the most faithful warnings have been uttered in all ages, and on account of which the most terrible judgments have been inflicted, yet it is the worship to which man is most prone.
2. They turned to God.—The one God whom Paul preached as “the God that made the world and all things therein”; the living God, having life in Himself, and “giving to all life and breath and all things”; the true God, having in Himself the truth and substance of essential deity, in extreme contrast with an “idol, which is nothing in the world.” With shame and confusion of face as they thought of the past, with penitential sorrow, with confidence and hope, they turned to God from idols.
II. The evidence of their conversion.—Seen:
1. In the object of their service. They “serve the living and true God,” serve Him in faithful obedience to every command, serve Him in the face of opposition and persecution—with every faculty of soul, body, and estate—in life, in suffering, in death. This is a free, loving service. The idolater is enslaved by his own passions and the iron bands of custom. His worship is mechanical, without heart and without intelligence. The service acceptable to God is the full, spontaneous, pure outflow of a loving and believing heart. It is an ennobling service. Man becomes like what he worships; and as the object of his worship is often the creation of his own depraved mind, he is debased to the level of his own gross, polluted ideas. Idolatry is the corrupt human heart feeding upon and propagating its own ever-growing corruptions. The service of God lifts man to the loftiest moral pinnacle and transfigures him with the resplendent qualities of the Being he adores and serves. It is a rewardable service. It brings rest to the world-troubled spirit, fills with abiding happiness in the present life, and provides endless felicity in the future—results idolatry can never produce.
2. Seen in the subject of their hope.—“And to wait for His Son” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).
(1) Their hope was fixed on Christ as a Saviour. “Even Jesus, who delivereth us from the coming wrath.” Terrible will be the revelation of that wrath to the impenitent and unbelieving. As soon as one wave of vengeance breaks another will follow, and behind that another and another interminably, so that it will ever be the wrath to come! From this Jesus delivers even now.
(2) Their hope was fixed on Christ as risen. “Whom He raised from the dead.” They waited for and trusted in no dead Saviour, but One who, by His resurrection from the dead, was powerfully declared to be indeed the Son of God.
(3) Their hope was fixed on Christ as coming again. “To wait for His Son from heaven.” There is a confusing variety of opinions as to the character of Christ’s second advent; as to the certainty of it nothing is more plainly revealed. The exact period of the second coming is veiled in obscurity and uncertainty; but it is an evidence of conversion to be ever waiting for and preparing for that coming as if there were a perpetual possibility of an immediate manifestation. The uncertainty of the time has its use in fostering a spirit of earnest and reverential inquiry, of watchfulness, of hope, of fidelity.
Lessons.—
1. Conversion is a radical change.
2. Conversion is a change conscious to the individual and evident to others.
3. The gospel is the divinely appointed agency in conversion.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Thessalonians 1:9-10. The Change effected by the Gospel—
I.
In religious belief.
II.
In corresponding conduct.
III.
In the hope cherished.—
1. Of the second coming of Christ.
2. Proved by His resurrection from the dead.
3. The object of His second coming to deliver from wrath.
4. The spirit of earnest but patient waiting induced.
1 Thessalonians 1:10. The Christian waiting for his Deliverer—
I. Implies a firm belief in Christ’s second coming.
II. Habitually endeavouring to be prepared for His second coming.
III. Earnestly desiring it.
IV. Patiently waiting for it.—Bradley.
The Wrath to come.
I. It is divine wrath.
II. Unmingled wrath.—Judgment without mercy; justice without the least mixture of goodness.
III. Provoked wrath.
IV. Accumulated wrath.—A wrath we have inflamed and increased by every act of sin we have committed.
V. Future wrath.—The wrath to come; lasting as the holiness of the Being who inflicts and the guilt of the sinners who endure it.
VI. Deliverance from wrath.—
1. Undeserved.
2. Complete.
3. Eternal.—Ibid.