It is the Word that makes Christians, sustains Christians, and sends Christians back into the world to love their neighbors.
There are mothers who feed you, fathers who form you, and words that do things to you. Paul gives us all three in this passage and they belong together. The apostles bring the Gospel to Thessalonica. They nurture the congregation with it, exhort the congregation through it, and then, Paul rejoices in something that makes every preacher stand up and cheer. The Thessalonians have received their preaching for what it truly is: The Word of God, which is at work in you who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13). That is a sermon which will preach this week, a sermon about the Word that works. It is the Word that makes Christians, sustains Christians, and sends Christians back into the world to love their neighbors.
1 Thessalonians is early Paul, and we see Paul regularly defending his apostolic ministry and its integrity at the time. Paul and his traveling companions have suffered and been shamefully treated (Greek hubrizō – they have suffered outrages, likely referring to violence against their persons, assault, and battery) at Philippi. Yet, they speak the Gospel boldly in Thessalonica. They are determined not to flatter their hearers, fish for applause, or dress up their preaching to fill their pockets. No sophistry here. They have no secret agenda to exploit the congregation. Their charge comes from God who tests their hearts. The apostles speak to please God, not people.
Preacher, that distinction cuts in both directions, so listen yourself today. The preacher cannot make the Gospel a sales pitch, softening it until it attracts customers or sharpening it up just to win a fight. The listener, meanwhile, cannot assume the preacher’s task is to confirm whatever they already want to believe (Paul’s aware of that when he warns young Timothy about itching ears at 2 Timothy 4:3!). But God’s Word comes with its own authority. God’s Word exposes our appetite for praise and our talent for self-justification. God’s Word points up our habit of going transactional with our religion, “do ut des,” I give and He gives, I scratch your back and you scratch mine, one hand washes the other, quid pro quo, I give God a little devotion and He gives me the life I think I deserve, and it is even stevens in the universe of my own making.
Paul knows how easily a religious office can become a way to serve yourself. He explicitly denies the apostles have come with greed concealed beneath their words. He even admits it. He could have made demands as an apostle of Christ (1 Thessalonians 2:6). Instead, he and his companions labor night and day so they will not burden the congregation (2:9). Their conduct gives their preaching a bodily shape even as they embody Christ in Christian service. Paul & Co. do more than merely talk about the love of God, they live it as well, delivering the goods among the people they are proclaiming to.
He says it is like a mother who feeds you. What a surprising image coming from Paul, no? “We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (2:7). Apostles, God’s ambassadors, look like a mother with a child at her breast. The picture is intimate, tender, and totally not triumphant. Notice, a nursing mother does not feed a baby to collect a fee. No wage is involved in this. Mom gives baby what the child cannot provide for herself. Mom’s work involves her own body, her own time, and her own exhaustion. The child lives by receiving.
The Word arrives through actual human voices, accompanied by meals, labor, patience, and care.
What an image of apostolic ministry, and it is also a picture of the shape of the Gospel. It is body-shaped. The apostles share not only God’s Gospel but their own selves, because the Thessalonians have become dear to them. They give the Word and they give themselves in service. The Word arrives through actual human voices, accompanied by meals, labor, patience, and care. Do not be afraid to pause over the milk, too, preacher. Peter calls Christians to long for pure spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:2). Hebrews speaks of milk as nourishment for those who are not yet ready for solid food (Hebrews 5:12-14). A baby grows because someone feeds her.
And what does the Gospel feed us? Christ Himself. The Word announces the crucified Jesus, the Son of God who gives Himself for sinners. And this is not aloof and distant, not a doctrine in the abstract or benevolence from far away. Jesus is the Lord drawn nigh. He takes our flesh, bears our sins, sheds His blood, dies, and rises bodily from the grave. The Lord who feeds His Church has first given Himself for her, in a body, body-shaped again with this Gospel. The apostle’s maternal tenderness serves this greater gift: Through their preaching, Christ feeds His people with the promise of forgiveness and life.
The passage then introduces a second image. Paul reminds the Thessalonians how he treated them individually, like a father with his children, exhorting, encouraging, and charging them to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls them into His own Kingdom and glory (2:11-12). Mother and father, it is not a contradiction, but rather a counterpoint. The mother nourishes. The father exhorts. One image emphasizes the helplessness of the child receiving life. The other underscores the life that grows and is called and shaped for service. Both belong to pastoral care. A child needs to be fed, and a child needs to be taught. The Gospel comforts sinners with Christ’s gifts, and it forms them for lives of faith and love.
I encourage you to be careful, with the phrase “walk worthy” (2:12). You can easily write and deliver a sermon about trying harder, measuring up to the King’s standard. Paul’s sentence gives the direction of the calling. God calls them into His Kingdom and glory. The exhortation grows out of that call. God gives the Kingdom. The called begin to walk in the life that belongs to it. Their works matter because their neighbor’s matter. Do not get this mixed up! Our works never earn or purchase our place in the Kingdom, and our failures cannot cancel the promise of the King who calls them.
This is the proper work of the Law. It exposes sin, names the good God desires for our life together, and shows us where our love of neighbor has grown cold or turned inward. Do not dilute that demand. Rather, recognize and draw to the surface for your hearers how much we need Christ to fulfill that demand for us and to give us His Spirit, so the life of the baptized can take shape in actual service (a bodily shape in fact). The fatherly exhortation is no substitute for the mother’s nourishment. It belongs to the same ministry of the Word.
The fatherly exhortation is no substitute for the mother’s nourishment. It belongs to the same ministry of the Word.
But the passage reaches its center in 2:13. Paul gives thanks that the Thessalonians received the apostles’ message not as a human word, but as what it really is, the Word of God, which is also at work in you who believe. This is where to aim the sermon this week. The Word Paul preached was spoken by human mouths, in a particular city, to particular people, but its authority and power did not originate in the apostles. God was speaking through them, and God was at work through what they spoke.
God’s Word does things. It kills and makes alive. It exposes the sinner and delivers the forgiveness Christ won for sinners. It creates faith in the promise it proclaims. Hebrews says the Word is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword (Hebrew 4:12). Paul says that in Baptism our old self was buried with Christ, so we might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-5). The Word does more than simply describe that death and resurrection. Joined to the water, the Word gives baptism its promise and works upon the baptized.
The Word is at work in your church service. It confronts sinners through the Law and raises them through the Gospel. In absolution, Christ’s forgiveness is spoken into the ears of guilty people, not as a pious wish but as His promise. In the Supper, the Word of Christ gives your hearers Jesus’ true body and blood, the body given into death and the blood shed for the forgiveness of sins. The living Lord continues to give Himself to His people.
The Word keeps working after the benediction. On Monday morning, the baptized return to their station in life: Mommies and daddies, children and siblings, husbands and wives, neighbors and citizens, employers and employees, teachers and students. God’s Word goes with them there. It teaches them to repent when they have wronged their neighbor, to forgive because Christ has forgiven them, to speak the truth, to carry burdens, to do honest work, to care for the vulnerable, and to serve people with actual bodies and actual needs. The Word feeds the Church and nourishes it to form Christians for service in the world.
Paul’s own ministry supplies the pattern, the model, the body-shaped grace in which we live and move and have our being in the work God gives us as His Church. Paul gave the Thessalonians the Gospel and Himself in service. Likewise, Christian witness has a voice and a body. We speak the promise of Christ and serve our neighbor whom Christ has placed before us. Such service does not replace the Word. It embodies the life the Word gives.
Hear this good news for yourself this week, preacher: God’s Word is at work among you. It is at work when it strips away your excuses and brings you to repentance. It is at work when it announces that the crucified and risen Christ has taken your sin and gives you His righteousness. It is at work when the water of baptism bears God’s promise, when absolution releases the guilty, and when Christ feeds His people with His body and blood. And it is at work when, having been fed, you return to your neighbor with hands ready to serve.
The Word is God’s work before it ever becomes ours. Christ has done the saving work in His death and resurrection. Christ gives the fruits of that work through His Word. The mother feeds, the father exhorts, and the apostolic Word does what God sends it to do. It brings sinners into the Kingdom and declares the glory of the God who calls them. Thanks be to God! The Word is still at work.
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on 1 Thessalonians 2:1-13.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching 1 Thessalonians 2:1-13.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
