Love & Work
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Cheesesteaks, the Liberty Bell, Rocky Balboa, the Eagles, the Phillies, the 76ers, Cream Cheese.
Can you guess what we’re going to be studying this morning? You’ve guessed it. We’re going to talk about philadelphia.
Philadelphia, but not the city in Pennsylvania. However, the city of Philadelphia can help us out a little.
Philadelphia is known as “the city of…brotherly love.” That’s helpful because the Greek word philadelphia/φιλαδελφία means “brotherly love.”
The word philadelphia/φιλαδελφία is found here in 1 Thessalonians 4:9
9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
The ESV gives some clarity; let’s put that up here
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another,
Brotherly love, love for one another, love of the brethren, love of the brothers and sisters. This is philadelphia.
Love as You Have Been Taught by God
Love as You Have Been Taught by God
This philadelphia came to the Thessalonians by God, by way of the gospel Paul shared with them.
Such love has been “taught by God” (a term—θεοδίδακτοι—found only here in the New Testament).
Taught by God
The love shared between the Thessalonians has been “taught by God,” specifically in the gospel itself, which is, above all, the demonstration of the true nature of God’s self-giving love.
God’s love toward us teaches us to love others. We’ve been reconciled to God through Jesus’ death on the cross, and as such we have been drawn into a relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
By the gospel, we have been taught what love is in the truest sense. And the gospel motivates us to love one another. The gospel is the power and the motivation to love.
Christians must show love to one another; love is, according to the Bible, an indispensable consequence of having received the gospel.
Paul reminds his readers of this central imperative—Christians being people who love—in every single one of the letters he wrote. To the Romans (Rom. 13:9-10), both letters to the Corinthians (1 Cor 13; 2 Cor 2:8), to the Galatians (Gal 5:22), to the Ephesians (Eph. 5:2), to the Philippians (Phil 2:2), to the Colossians (Col 3:14), both letters to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 4, 2 Thess 3:5), both letters to Timothy (1 Tim 1:5, 2 Tim 2:22), to Titus (Tit 2:2), and Philemon (Phlm 9).
In fact, after loving God, the second most important commandment is to love one another and our neighbors. This is foundational to the people of God.
18 “ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This one another in verse 9 signals the kind of love Christians are to have.
It’s philadelphia, that is, brotherly love, love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
It’s a family love.
In the same way you love your own family, you are to love your family in Christ.
In fact, from what the Bible tells us, our relationships with and love for one another is deeper and stronger than even our own family.
Relationally, I’m closer to you than I am to some people with the last name Case or Lorimor or Thompson or Miller.
My family names don’t compete with the name of Jesus.
Our love for our fellow Christians is second only to our love for God.
Paul says to the Thessalonians, “We don’t need to write to you,” about the topic of love. They were doing a good job of loving one another.
In fact, they are renown for their love. They love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia.
[MAP]
Their love went beyond their city. It extended out from them. It moved beyond the walls of their fellowship to their brothers and sisters who were gathered elsewhere.
The new church in Philippi, the new church in Berea, and whatever other Christians there were along the way were recipients of the Thessalonians’ love.
They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, they will know we are Christians by our love.
We are called to love Christ’s Church, not just our local gathering. We love our brothers and sisters locally and our brothers and sisters around the world.
We have family—brothers and sisters in Christ—in Haiti, Mexico, several African countries (Ghana, Togo, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia), Thailand, Jordan, Japan.
Our church has family in those places, brothers and sisters to whom we have sent missionaries and money, supplies and resources.
We pray for them. We serve them. We support them with resources and money, and Lord willing, perhaps we can visit them in person to encourage them and minister to them.
Word of our love and support and prayers for them has reached them. They love us and we love them.
This is how God designed the church to function. We’re not an island; we are one small part of the whole.
This brotherly love is a continuous action. The beginning of verse 10 highlights this:
10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more,
The verb do is a present, active, indicative. You DO love all of God’s family.
It’s ongoing. It’s continuous. It’s happening and it will continue to happen. That’s the point.
The love that Christians have for one another is a shadow of the love that God has for us. His love never fails, it never gives up.
It’s the covenant love that “Never-Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.” Our love toward one another is a picture of that. We have been God-taught to love in the same way He loves us.
>With the call to love set for us as the foundation, Paul starts one long, run-on sentence. The second half of verse 10 through verse 12 is one sentence in Greek.
What he says in verses 10-12 spring from the foundational truth of loving one another.
Paul and Silas and Timothy are URGING the Thessalonians (and us) to behave in four certain ways. They’re urging four ethical responses from the church motivated by love.
This is immensely practical and applicable in our lives today.
Let’s look at each response in turn.
10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more,
Christians are Urged to Love More and More
Christians are Urged to Love More and More
The new Christians in Thessalonica were already doing a great job at loving one another and even loving those in the surrounding areas.
What’s needed, however, is more. More love. Grounded in the love of God, Christians’ love must continue to grow without limits.
“Growing in love, abounding in love, loving more and more, includes practicing love more consistently, more widely, at greater cost, and through the specific behaviors described in verses 11-12.” - Jon A. Weatherly
In other words, “keep it up; get better and better at it.”
“Evangelism is a calling, but not the first calling. Building congregations is a calling, but not the first calling. A Christian’s first call is to return to the first commandment to love God, to the love of the family of God, and then to love one’s neighbors as oneself.” - Francis Schaeffer
Our love for our fellow Christians may grow in a number of directions.
It grows in breadth as it reaches out to embrace more and more of our fellow Christians.
Expand your circle. Invite someone to lunch you’ve never shared a meal with. Have a new family over to your home. Find that church member on the fringe and strike up a friendship with them. Love should reach out.
Love grows in depth as it enters more deeply into the hurts and the joys of others.
If you see someone hurting or depressed, sit with them. Cry with them. Comfort them.
Be with your brothers in sisters in times of joy and celebrate with them: go to that wedding, take a gift to the baby shower, pull up to that adoption party.
Love grows in length as it learns to become more patient when offended and when it forgives more heartily and readily.
Don’t be the easily offended person; love easily and be easy to love. Forgive quickly. Love is patient, love is kind, it is not easily angered…
Someone has said: “Brotherly love is the very token by which we have a right to a place in the church.”
Love, increasing in measure, growing all the more, is the mark of a true Christian.
It’s not a one-time love or a one-dimensional love.
It’s a growing love.
An abounding love.
A love which loves more and more and more and more.
Paul continues:
11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you,
Lead a Quiet Life (Out of Love)
Lead a Quiet Life (Out of Love)
In a Roman society that prizes honor and glory, the church in Thessalonica is to set their ambition instead on a quiet life.
Paul presents a paradox here.
What he writes is something like “make it your ambition to have no ambition,” or “strive eagerly to be still.” He wants the Thessalonians to wholeheartedly and energetically pursue a quiet life.
We would do well to do just that. This is an instruction for each one of us.
According to Michael Holmes, a quiet life evokes the image of a withdrawal from the public arena; a withdrawal from the noise, antagonism, and strife of public matters. All this in favor of a quiet, more contemplative setting.
When I read this, I equated it, in part to living here versus living in “the city.” My blood pressure goes up 30 points when I’m driving in that traffic or wading through crowds of people or trying to shop among the masses.
I’d much rather have a one-minute drive to the office than a 30-minute stop-and-go, roadrage-inducing crawl to parking lot.
Give me a friendly conversation in Food Fair than a 20-minute wait in line with impatient and rude city folk.
A quiet life projects a quite confidence in the God we serve. Instead of striving to make a name for ourselves, instead of an ambition to become greater and greater in society, Paul is calling these believers to lead a different kind of life.
A quiet life. A life of calm in a world of chaos. A faithful life in a frantic culture.
A life that doesn’t draw attention to ourselves but to the grace of God in Christ.
A life where I am content with who I am in Christ, where I don’t have to make myself out to be something I’m not—that’s this kind of quite life.
Lead a quite life, church, out of love for God and for one another.
11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you,
Mind Your Own Business (Out of Love)
Mind Your Own Business (Out of Love)
This sounds like something Mom used to say to my nosey sister and me. I didn’t realize it was a direct quote from the Bible. You should mind your own business, Paul says.
Another way to phrase it: attend to your own concerns.
This suggests a withdrawal from public matters to devote time to one’s own private interests, to give attention to that for which one is best suited.
In the context of philadelphia (brotherly love), Paul is advising the Thessalonians to avoid as much as possible the strife, the social pressures, the tumult of the public arena, and to focus instead on the needs and the building up of the congregation.
Listen to that again.
To avoid as much as possible the strife, the social pressures, the tumult (the uproar, the hubbub, the racket) of the public arena.
Doesn’t that sound like good advice? What good has ever come from your participating in the pandemonium that is social media or in the local gossip at the cafe (I could say ‘beauty shop’, but the cafe is where it’s at)?
What good has ever come from that? Tell me.
What good does it do your soul? What benefit is it for your Christian witness?
Paul writes in his second letter to the Thessalonians that some among them are not busy; they are just busybodies (2 Thess. 3:11).
That is not an area of public life with which we should want to fit in nicely.
Are we known for our hot takes on social media more than we are known for our love for one another?
Are we known for voicing our political opinions more than we are known as heralds of the gospel?
“They will know we are Christian by our political jabs against those with whom we disagree?”
No, that’s not it...
“They will know we are Christians by our unrelenting desire to comment on every single social media post?”
No, that doesn’t sound right.
“They will know we are Christians by our LOVE.”
We should listen when God speaks; and He does speak through His Word.
This one phrase—mind your own business—really got me this week. Like my father’s big Air Force ring to the back of the head used to get my attention, I felt the correction and conviction of the Holy Spirit here.
Christians, mind your own business, out of love for God and love for one another.
11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you,
Work Diligently (Out of Love)
Work Diligently (Out of Love)
This is the fourth and final admonition connected to “urge” in verse 10.
Paul anticipates a problem with laziness. “Busybody, lazibones, busybody, lazibones”—neither are good options, neither is a good look for the church.
At the end of this letter, Paul writes: 1 Thess 5:14 “And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive.
This instruction to work with one’s hands implies that the Thessalonian church includes a lot of physical laborers. Paul himself was a tentmaker.
The Roman population tended to demean manual labor, something meant for only the lower class at that time.
There’s dignity to all honest human labor, as Paul the tentmaker and Jesus the carpenter show.
So Paul might be reinstating its importance, but the primary reference to working with your hands is to emphasize the diligence of work.
Work hard without meddling in other’s business or complaining.
View work as an extension of your faith. Your walk with Christ doesn’t take a pause when you exit this building. Let your faith inform your work.
The Christian faith is a practical faith.
It goes far beyond what happens in a church building for an hour or two on Sunday morning.
It’s meant to color every corner of your life Monday through Saturday, too.
Our faith goes to work with us. Our faith goes to school with us.
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it as to the LORD.” Work diligently out of love for God and for one another.
Why is Paul urging these things? Why should we worry our pretty little heads over this stuff? Loving more and more, leading quiet lives, minding our own business, working diligently?
Why bother? We do all this…
12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
SO THAT our daily life, that is, our daily walk (how we behave, how we operate, how we follow Christ day to day)—SO THAT we would:
Win the Respect of Outsiders
The public witness of the church hangs in the balance. How we live, how we walk is noticed. People are watching. There are lost people, unbelievers who pay attention to how we live.
Nonbelievers will observe the hard work and the good lives of the Christians and will learn to respect them.
Our proper conduct serves as a testimony to Christ.
Col 4:5 “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.”
The Word of God preached and proclaimed by Christians and the changed lives of those within the church has an unmistakable impact on the lives of those outside the family of God.
Why do we bother with all this?
SO THAT our daily life, that is, our daily walk (how we behave, how we operate, how we follow Christ day to day)—SO THAT we would:
2. Not be Dependent On Anybody
Whenever possible, Paul wants believers to earn their own living. Believers should provide for themselves so they aren’t a burden to other believers.
This does not apply to those who are unable to work because of legitimate illness, injury, or honest unemployment.
Christians are to provide for fellow Christians in legitimate need.
Love does not take advantage of Christian generosity, but works hard in order to contribute to meeting needs.
Lazy, non-working, unproductive, and inconsiderate Christians who depend on others to meet their needs will be doing little to meet the needs of others.
God’s Word seeks to correct this kind of lifestyle.
Love each other genuinely, do your work diligently, and live your life purposely.
All of this is motivated by love for God and for one another.
Love is the central tenet of Christianity. God is love and Jesus has shown us what love looks like. Love that tells the truth, sacrificial love, costly love.
How can we, His people, be anything less than loving?
All our lives spring from our love for God and love for others.
And they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes, they will know we are Christians by our love.