1 Thessalonians 2:1–13

For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict. 3 For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. 11 For you know how, like a father with his children, 12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

13 And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

Last weekend we focused in on verse 13. We saw that “the word of God,” namely, the message of the gospel, is not only that which the Thessalonians heard and received to become followers of Jesus, but it was also “at work” in them for day-in, day-out Christian living. Then we looked elsewhere in the New Testament and found it confirmed: The gospel is not only the message that nonbelievers hear and receive to become believers, but also what energizes, motivates, shapes, and empowers the everyday life of believers—and should be central in everything.

Now this weekend we turn from that central and all-embracing reality to the rest of the passage in verses 1–12. And here’s our particular interest this weekend: What might it look like for Bethlehem—for us together as a church, as a community that embraces Jesus and his gospel—to approach these Twin Cities like the apostle Paul approached the city of Thessalonica? Obviously our contexts are different. But if we mind the differences, are there transferable principles that can guide our living among and missional engagement with these Twin Cities? Put another way, what will it mean for Bethlehem to not merely be in this metro but be for these Twin Cities?

Not Only the Gospel

Before we dive into the three-point outline, let’s return to verse 8, which I think is the most important verse in the passage. This is where we closed last time as a little teaser of what was to come this weekend. Paul writes, “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”

Did you catch that? We just read through one of the more peculiar phrases in the whole Bible. Paul says, “We were ready to share with you [here it is…] not only the gospel.” Excuse me? Not only the gospel? What do you mean, Paul—“not only the gospel”? Were you not here for the sermon last weekend? Is the gospel not enough? Does it need to be added to in some way? Why was it not adequate for you to merely share the gospel with the Thessalonians—what a tremendous thing to share!—and then move on to another town? Why were you “ready”—or better yet, “well-pleased” or even “delighted” (NIV)—to share more than merely the gospel, and then draw our eyes to it here in verse 8?

But Also Our Own Selves

If Paul’s going to flag our attention with such an audacious phrase, “not only the gospel”—and does that not sound borderline blasphemous when you first hear it?—we might as well pay careful attention to what else it is that Paul is sharing if he’s sharing not only the gospel. Verse 8 again, “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.”

So Paul says the extra, additional, and what is more than mere gospel-sharing is “sharing our own selves.” That phrase will be our focus this weekend—what does Paul mean by it (“sharing our own selves”) and what might it mean for us as a church in these Twin Cities? As important as last weekend’s message was, and as essential as it is to share the gospel again and again both with each other and with the unbelieving in the Twin Cities, this passage presses us to say that it’s inadequate if there’s not more that characterizes our church. The offshoot of this text is that there is more to living out our mission statement in our own metro than communicating the gospel in word. Don’t get Paul wrong—sharing the gospel is absolutely essential and may not be compromised in trueness, clarity, or boldness (that’s verses 1–6). But there’s more.

Mere articulation of the gospel story won’t do, whether cold-turkey evangelism on the street corner or door to door, or barking at sinners from a loudspeaker, or sending out a mass-mailer, or leaving tracts in bathrooms, or airing television commercials, or even in a one-on-one conversation. Paul is talking here about something more than mere gospel communication. What he calls it is “sharing our own selves.”

Here’s a quick example on television commercials. Have you seen the new Mormon ads airing in the Twin Cities? What if we Christians borrowed the idea and did the same? What if we produced a really sleek, hip commercial that told the gospel story about Jesus, the Son of God, coming and dying for us and rising again, and that by faith alone you could be joined to him and receive every spiritual blessing in this life and every possible blessing in the life to come? That’s sharing the gospel—and it’s of infinite importance. But is that enough? You know what the apostle Paul would say when he saw the commercial? “Inadequate! Insufficient! Not enough! At best, it’s a start. But there’s more to gospel advance than mere communication—not less, but more.” 2There’s more to our mission in the metro than merely sharing the gospel. Don’t get me wrong: There is never less to our mission than sharing the gospel. But Paul is pressing us in 1 Thessalonians 2:8 to see that there’s more—there’s the sharing of our own selves.

Understanding “Sharing Our Own Selves”

So the main thing that we have left to do in this sermon is trace out what Paul means by the phrase “sharing our own selves” and then apply it to our 21^st-century, Twin-Cities context. I said earlier that verse 8 is the most important verse in this passage—that’s because it’s the hinge of the entire passage. Sharing the gospel is the theme of verses 1–6, while sharing our own selves sums up verses 7–12. Verses 1–6 emphasizes the importance of true, clear, bold gospel-sharing, while verses 7–12 put flesh on what it meant for Paul to “share his own self.” So here’s how we’ll proceed: 1) sharing the gospel (vv. 1–6), 2) sharing our own selves (vv. 7–12), and 3) ideas for application for Bethlehem for the Twin Cities. Or you could put it this way: 1) avoiding what kills the sharing of our own selves (vv. 1–6), 2) what is the sharing of our own selves (vv. 7–12), and finally 3) how can we share our own selves (ideas of application)?

1. Sharing the Gospel (vv. 1–6)

Verses 1–6 are cast mainly in negative terms because of the context. Remember, Paul is here defending his ministry in the face of the smear campaign his enemies are running in Thessalonica. Paul brought the gospel to Thessalonica, many Gentiles received his message and began following Jesus, unconverted Jews soon began to persecute these preemie Christians, and it seemed best to everyone to have Paul move on to the next town to quell the riot. So we have a fledgling community of believers, who are not only being persecuted, but also told lies about their father in the faith—that he wasn’t a true preacher, but a charlatan, who didn’t really care about them, otherwise, he wouldn’t have left town so quickly.

So Paul writes 1 Thessalonians, in part, to correct the rumors. In chapter 1, he’s focusing on the Thessalonians and their conversion experience, and trying to give them assurance that their conversion was true and that the gospel is real. Then in chapter 2, Paul moves to defending the genuineness of his own ministry. He has said in 1:5, “You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.” He continues that line in 2:1–12.

So in this context, Paul casts these verses in negative terms, saying in response to the smear campaign what he was not (then in vv. 7–12 he says was he did so). And with these negatives, we learn to avoid what kills the sharing of the gospel, and with it the sharing of our own selves. With that in mind, let’s read verses 1–6:

For [going back to verse 5] you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you [“reception” in v. 9 is the same as “coming” here] was not in vain. 2 But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi [Acts 16], as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict [namely, the conflict with the unconverted Jews, Acts 17]. 3 For [and here come the negatives…] our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.

We don’t have time to wade very far in here, so here’s my summary of these six verses for our purposes: The bold, true, pure, clear, honest, God-pleasing, unflattering, selfless sharing of the gospel is absolutely essential. We cannot play fast and loose with gospel-sharing. Compromised gospel-sharing will destroy our mission, no matter how admirably we share our own selves with the unbelieving. Without the bold, true, pure, clear, honest, God-pleasing, unflattering, selfless sharing of the gospel message, all our self-sharing is just Minnesota nice.

2. Sharing our own selves (vv. 7–12)

So let’s go to verses 7–12 to find out what Paul means by the phrase “sharing our own selves.” Look again at verses 7–12:

But [watch how the passage turns here to the positive] we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. 11 For you know how, like a father with his children, 12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. 

Okay, so what we’ve after here in particular is what Paul means by the phrase “sharing our own selves.” I think there are three parts to it in this passage. First is the nursing mother image in verse 7. Second is the father image in verses 9–12. And last is Paul’s special love for them at the end of verse 8.

a. Like a nursing mother (v. 7)

For Paul, sharing his own self was somehow mother-like—“like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.” The associations here are not only gentleness[1] and intense care, but also intimacy. Depth of relationship in the offing. He sums it up in the first part of verse 8 as “being affectionately desirous of you.”

b. Like a father (vv. 9–12)

Then Paul takes up the father image in verses 9–12. Note the irreducibly life-on-life context here. They are seeing Paul’s life—as he would say to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:18, he is living among them, living in relationship with them. And he does whatever it takes not to burden them (v. 9) and also while living among them he models for them Christian conduct in holiness, righteousness, and blamelessness (v. 10).

Don’t miss how personal this fatherly care is. He says he exhorted “each one of you,” not just the group at large. So he knows them personally. Robert Coleman writes, “The only way that a father can properly raise a family is to be with it.” And because he knows them, he doesn’t exhort like a slavemaster, or like a judge, or like a king, but he exhorts like a father—a father who knows his children and manifestly loves them and desires the best for them. It’s a strong but warm challenge, from someone who knows you can do it and clearly has your best in mind. That’s the sense of verses 11–12.

While the mothering image is more gentle and caring, and this fathering image is stronger and more challenging, the overwhelming sense that pervades the two is depth and closeness of relationship. Paul personally knows the Thessalonians. He has shared his own self with them in relationship, not merely in communicating to them a message. There’s no way around it: whatever sharing his own self means, it does not mean anything less than personal relationship with these people. But there’s one more phrase we need to pick up under this heading: his special love for them at the end of verse 8.

c. Paul’s special love for the people (end of verse 8)

We haven’t mentioned this last line yet. Paul says in verse 8 he was not just “ready” but “delighted” to share his own self, here it is, “because you had become very dear to us.” This is the deepest he goes in this passage. This statement is the bottom of his defense. He loves them. The reason he’s willing to not only share the message of the gospel with them but also share his own self with them in personal, deep, involved, time-consuming relationship is that he loves these people. This is moving enough, but there’s a connection here with chapter 1 that may even have us take this one step further.

Let me give you a more literal rendering of the last part of verse 8 (“because you had become very dear to us”) to see the connection to chapter 1. Here’s my literal translation: “because you had become loved to us.” Now we haven’t spent time in chapter 1, so it won’t jump out at us, but when the Thessalonians are reading the letter from the beginning, they likely will see that connection here to chapter 1, verse 4, where Paul writes, “We know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you.” This is the same word “loved” that Paul will use in 2:8, just a few sentence later. And what’s the nature of God’s love for the Thessalonians in 1:4? It’s not love based on the lovability of the Thessalonians, but God’s electing love. God didn’t love the Thessalonians because they won him over with their smarts or looks, but because he himself chose from his fullness to love them.

Now take that to 2:8 and let’s ask the question whether Paul might have this in mind. This is for your consideration; you don’t have to go with it. Why did Paul love the Thessalonians? Was it because they were so lovable? Was his love for them based on how cool they were, or what great personalities they had, or how funny they were, or how much shared experience they had together? I don’t think so. It seems that Paul’s love for them began before he knew them. His love for them brought him to Thessalonica. He decided to love them in deciding to come to Thessalonica and share not only the gospel but also his own self. Paul chose them, in this sense. He elected to love them, even before he knew them, and to share his own self in relationship with them.

So whether you go with me on the electing nature of Paul’s love or not, based on the connection between 1:4 and 2:8, we can still together sum up what it means for Paul to share his own self. He gives of himself in personal relationships with the Thessalonians. He is gentle and caring and loving like a mother with a nursing child. And he is strong and warm and intentional and encouraging like a father. And in addition to that, or maybe analogous to that, he’s taken up a kind of unconditional love, a love not based on the lovability of the Thessalonians but flowing from his fullness in being loved by God. Sharing his own self means giving of his time and energy and preferences in a loving relationship with individual Thessalonians. And in this context, that defends the genuineness of his ministry. Commentator Gordon Fee writes, “In the end it is this personal dimension of his relationship with the Thessalonians that separates him so thoroughly from the charlatans, who cared nothing for their hearers as people.”

So here then is our summary of verse 8 that is transferable from Paul to Bethlehem and from Thessalonica to the Twin Cities: Flowing from God’s love for us in Jesus, our love the Cities comes not only through sharing the gospel with boldness and clarity and without distortion but also in personal relationships of depth and love. And let’s close with a few ideas for application.

3. Ideas for Application

Admittedly, these do not fall out of the text. What I’m doing now is providing some ideas for application based on experience and other texts and learning from other Christians engaged with nonbelievers, extrapolating from the transferable principles. This can be risky. I don’t want to short-circuit other applications of what’s transferable here, but I don’t want us to be paralyzed about going forward. So here’s a shot at something.

There is one key assumption we’re making here: that we already are and are increasingly becoming a people not hesitant, and not only willing, but delighted to share not only the gospel but our own selves with these Twin Cities. May God work this kind of electing love into our hearts as a people, that we would love the people of the Twin Cities and genuinely be affectionately desirous of them. And that not merely see this metro as an inconvenience to us on our way to heaven and the sin of the people as a danger to our sheltered children, but as people who need Jesus. There’s more to say here that we don’t have time for, but we’re assuming here a certain orientation on the Cities that encourages us to love unbelieving people, and not shy away, and share both the gospel and our own selves with them, and not merely try to avoid them and fear that their sin might get on us. So here’s some simple ideas for us to help get us moving in the right direction.

a. Begin where we are.

We won’t love the people of the Cities we don’t know, if we don’t love the people of the Cities we do know. Let’s ask God to give us love—not based on lovability but flowing from our fullness in us being loved by God—for unbelieving neighbors and coworkers and extended family already in our lives. And maybe there’s some affinity group you’re a part of. You could also consider affinity groups you would be eager to join (taking intentional steps to have access to new relationships). But that can be down the road. Start with where you are.[2]

b. Focus on a few and pray for them.

Of the people already in our lives, let’s ask God for a few specific people to pray towards regularly and take intentional steps toward. It doesn’t need to be twenty people or even ten. It might just be one, maybe three. Think of gospel advance in terms of specific people. Robert Coleman writes, “One cannot transform a world except as individuals in the world as transformed.” Yes, let’s pray for the transformation of Minneapolis and St. Paul and the whole metro in general, but in particular let’s pray for a few specific friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family who are in our lives and toward whom we can take real-live gospel-sharing and self-sharing steps.

c. Be with them.

It’s going to take more than one initiation, more than one interaction, more than one afternoon. We’re talking many. And this takes time but especially intentionality. Two suggestions for creating avenues for sharing ourselves:

1. “Killing two birds with one stone.” Be intentional about strategically drawing others into your life when running errands, or working on the house, or going for exercise, or watching TV (in defense of TV, you can watch with others; you don’t typically use a computer together with someone). Bring along others when doing things we already do.
2. Invite them into your home. Show hospitality. Church-planting guru Steve Childers, who preached here in April, taught my seminary evangelism class, and I’ll never forget one particular moment in that class. Steve asked us, “You know what will be the key to evangelism in the 21^st century, don’t you?” You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Steve waited. We were about to burst. And when we when couldn’t take it anymore, he said, “Hospitality.” Increasingly in our post-Christian culture, inviting nonbelieving friends into our homes, where we can share our own selves with them, will be the place where unbelievers get to hear the Christian gospel and see it lived out.

d. Stay with them.

Again, sharing our own selves takes time. Don’t think in terms of minutes and hours but weeks, months, and years. We want not only for nonbelievers to come to know Jesus but also to grow to maturity and want to pursue others just as we have pursued them.

I learned from Campus Outreach the saying “Think big, start small, go deep.” Thinking big includes the global pursuit of worshipers from every tribe, tongue, and nation, but it also includes longing for and praying toward the spread of gospel in the Twin Cities. Starting small means identifying a specific few where you already are (or where you could be). And going deep means being with them and staying with them, in other words, sharing our own selves.

But as simple as that sounds, it will not be easy and it will not be without great failures. Failures in our love. Failures in initiating. Failures to share the gospel with clarity and boldness. Failures to share our own selves because of selfishness. So the fifth and final point is crucial, not just tacked on at the end—and with it we end up where we were last weekend in verse 13. Here’s where we close.

e. Draw daily strength from Jesus and the gospel.

As we saw last week, it’s the gospel that is “at work” in us believers, energizing us for loving the people of these Cities and sharing with them not only the gospel but also our own selves. And it’s also the gospel and the atoning blood of Jesus where we must go in all our many failures to speak boldly and to selflessly share our own selves. And Jesus’ death on the cross for us not only covers our failures but also is “at work” in us to make us bolder in speech and more self-giving in relationships.

How so? It’s in the gospel that we see the one who perfectly shared himself. Not only did he speak every word with appropriate boldness, but he approached every relationship with fitting depth and self-sharing. He could silence the proud Pharisees with a word, and be gentle enough to be loved by children. He never compromised his message to win friends, and never compromised love in living out his message.

From all eternity, Jesus has been the ultimate self-sharing person, in perfect relationship with his heavenly Father. And as good as it was, he didn’t selfishly “grasp” it; he didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped, as Philippians 2:6 says, but he emptied himself of divine privilege. Jesus willingly put aside comfort to take on our humanity, and live among us sinners, and relate to us, and share his own self with us.

On earth, Jesus was amazingly self-sharing. He conquered selfishness, and fear, and man-pleasing, and impatience, and human-glory-seeking. The one who sat in the temple among the teachers, listening and asking questions and amazing them with his understanding and answers, to his parent’s astonishment (Luke 2:46–48)—he knows how to both pursue truth and pursue people. He invited the little children to come to him. He built deep and lasting and time-consuming relationships with his 12 disciples, and many others who followed him. And he especially poured himself out in deep relationship to three, to Peter and James and John.

He shared his life with the annoying and inconvenient. He was happy to let the needs of people ruin his busy schedule. Then he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He perfectly shared his own self—the culminating, paradigmatic sharing of oneself in dying in our place for our rebellious breach of relationship with his Father.

This is the gospel message that Paul shared with the Thessalonians and confirmed in the sharing of his own self—the gospel that Jesus perfectly shared his life, all the way to death, that we might live.

In Jesus, we grow in cultivating our relationships with others. The way we will see real and lasting change is daily re-appropriating what Jesus has done for us. We will never truly grow in sharing our own selves with others until we see how he shared his own self for us at the cross.

So my prayer for us at Bethlehem is that we would become a church more ready to share our own selves with these Twin Cities—both in bold, clear gospel articulation and in rich, loving relationships—because we are being increasingly and deeply shaped by the Jesus who so perfectly shared his own self with us.

[1] “Gentle” in verse 7 could be a scribal error in place of “infants”—an image signifying innocence.  I don’t see the change as substantive either way. It’s clear from verses 1–6 that Paul was infant-like in his innocence among them, and it’s clear from the rest of verse 7 that in being mother-like he would be gentle.

[2] Some may object that Paul was a missionary and came intentionally to Thessalonica; he didn’t start where he was. But for most of our people this will not be the case. God willing, some here will be missionaries like Paul and go to a new place to meet all new people to share the gospel and their own selves. But the bulk of us will remain in the Twin Cities, and for us the best place to start is where we are.