1 Thessalonians 3:11-13 - Increasing Love

11 Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, 12 and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, 13 so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Target Date: Sunday, 23 October 2022

Word Study/ Translation Notes:

Direct -κατευθύνω (katĕuthunō) – intensified form of “straighten” or guide.

Only used 3 times in NT.

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” - Luke 1:79

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. - 2 Thessalonians 3:5

Thoughts on the Passage:

A profoundly important social reason existed for him to do so. Paul had converted individuals and household units to the faith, but if 1 Corinthians is anything to go by, his converts came from varying social and economic strata within the community and therefore did not necessarily have a great deal in common, if anything at all (see Theissen, Social Setting, 69–119 for a study of the social stratification at Corinth and Meeks, First Urban Christians, 51–73 for a somewhat more general study). This meant that Paul and his fellow missionaries had to create a sense of shared identity and community where none had previously existed.

Primary Preaching Point:

When we are brought into Christ, we must learn HOW to love others.

Building Points:

To love, we must refrain from judging.

We do not love a “category” of people, but people themselves.

Sermon Text:

As we continue to look at this prayer Paul and Silas lifted to God on behalf of the Thessalonian church.

But we should always be careful not to lock the truth of Scripture into a single time, timeframe, or people.

Because the prayer he prays for the Thessalonian church is the very thing we need in the church in our day.

Obviously, some things are for that period of time:

When Paul prays that the Lord will direct his way back to the Thessalonians, that is for them alone.

As we get to verse 12, we find more universally applicable prayers for believers in all places and in all ages.

After all, reading the Bible is not just reading over someone else’s letters;

It is the record of God’s revelation that the Holy Spirit has preserved for us to live holy lives before God.

That is the point, after all.

He saves us to holiness.

He sanctifies us toward holiness.

All to the glory of the Triune God.

So in verse 12, Paul prays that the Lord would make you increase and about in love for one another and for all.

This morning, I would first like to fit this verse into context, and then to examine what he is saying here, finding applications for us all.

In looking at the context, we must begin with the first word in the verse “and”.

We see this conjunction and naturally assume this is the second item in his prayer:

The first that God would direct their path back to the church, and then, that God would increase their love.

And this would be entirely true.

But as we read that, we know this is not simply a record of Paul’s prayer list, with random requests written and prayer for as their minds came to them.

As they remembered them.

What is the connection between the first and second requests?

The connection is the word “and” that is not the most common word we find for the conjunction “and”.

In most times, we find the word “and” (kai in Greek) in the role of what linguists call a “coordinating conjunction”.

This means that one thing is added to another, building a list one item at a time.

But the word used here is not a coordinating conjunction; it is what is called an adversative conjunction (adversary – setting one up against another).

What that means is that the items are being compared to each other.

The most common adversative conjunction in English is the word “but”.

I was going to the store, but I had to get gasoline first.

Most of times this word (de in Greek) is translated, it is translated as “but”.

Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, 12 [but] may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you

In choosing this conjunction rather than the simple coordinating conjunction, Paul indicates a PRIORITY in his prayers.

Yes, he is praying that he and Silas will soon be reunited with this congregation they love;

BUT even more than that, their prayer is that the love of the Thessalonians for each other would grow.

“we are praying that God will bring us back to you soon,

BUT if He does not, you MUST love one another.”

“we long to see you,

BUT you must love one another all the more in our absence.”

The church can survive, as they have already seen, even if there were no further apostolic visit,

But no church can survive lacking love for one another.

The church of Jesus Christ has survived terrible times and persecutions, growing all the while,

But where the local church forgets how to love one another, it soon falls to dust.

Failing in love means failing in glorifying God.

The love, the unity, of the church was more important than any doctrine the apostles would share;

More important than any desire they had to be reunited;

More important than the longing of that church to see the apostles again.

And so he prays that the Lord MAKE their love to increase,

To CAUSE their love to increase.

At times, the Scripture tells us simply to “Love one another” (1 John 4:7),

But here his prayer is to the Lord Jesus Christ to CAUSE their love to increase and abound.

What does that mean in our lives and the lives of our brothers and sisters here?

Is he asking that God, through His Holy Spirit, would make their hearts tender, making them more loving toward each other?

Certainly, that is a possibility.

We rely on the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside.

Where once there was hate, competition, jealousy, gossip, even malice,

We pray that the Holy Spirit plow that under and sow in our hearts love, unity, togetherness, edification, and mutual prayers for each other.

We should all be continually praying for ourselves and each other that our love would grow, our forgiveness extended without measure, and that we would be found unified in Jesus Christ.

But there is another way the Holy Spirit MAKES our love for each other increase: by taking us through hardship.

Nothing will kindle our compassion in quite the same way as when we see those we love in need.

I don’t believe this will be a spoiler for our Wednesday evening studies in Job, but sometimes even the most spiritual and obedient encounter grievous difficulty.

And in that book, we find that Job’s so-called friends gathered around him very early on, but only so as to judge him and to discover the secret sin of his heart.

They made the tragic mistake of equating Job’s troubles with job’s sin.

And because they did so, they had precious little comfort to share, very little love to give.

Job and his friends were all asking the same question:

Why did this calamity fall on him?

But one of the answers to this question we find throughout the New Testament is this:

Why did this calamity befall these faithful people?

So the rest of God’s people could LOVE them in deed and in truth.

After a great famine had struck Jerusalem and the surrounding area in Paul’s time, he told the Corinthian church this:

Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, 2 that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. 3 For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, 4 begging us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the saints - 2 Corinthians 8:1-4

One of those churches in Macedonia? The Thessalonian church.

Their love for the saints in Jerusalem, whom they had never met, had its opportunity to be proven because of the hardship of that group of believers.

Even the hardships that Paul experienced gave the opportunity for the church to love him:

But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity. – Philippians 4:10

He rejoiced in the trials and need he faced BECAUSE it gave this church the opportunity to show their love and concern for him.

Far from being annoyed by the inconvenience of his situation, he gloried in the fact it gave God’s people an opportunity to PRACTICE love.

So God WILL CAUSE us to love one another.

He will create situations, trials, difficulties that we are NEVER meant to go through alone.

The hardships in your life could very well be the opportunity God is providing for the church to come around you and love.

I understand we are too proud, many of us, to reveal our needs.

We don’t want anyone to think we are, in any area of our life, inadequate.

It’s embarrassing to admit we are not great at everything we do.

Humbling to us to confess that we have made bad choices or mistakes, and now we are in a bind.

But for those who find yourself in that situation, give your brothers and sisters here in this congregation an opportunity to love you in deed and truth.

So, continuing on, we see his prayer is that the Lord would make their love INCREASE and ABOUND.

Those words, increase and abound, are very nearly synonyms, but not entirely.

The first word, increase, implies filling something up.

To fill a container, steadily increasing the amount inside it.

The second word, abound, implies excess, overflowing.

So that the love they had for each other would be continually running over as they sought to outdo each other in love and good works.

So what Paul is praying is that they would be filled by the Holy Spirit with love and opportunity, such that their love overflows to everyone else.

That God would continue pouring his love into them beyond what they could hold or control,

And that the love he gave would burst forth to everyone else it could.

That is the light of the gospel – the Love of God shed abroad in our hearts.

As Paul would later say in Romans 5:5:

God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

We should never overlook the fact that this faithful Thessalonian church was made up of different people from vastly different backgrounds.

Jew and Gentiles, slave and free, educated and uneducated, all called together into one, single congregation.

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. - Colossians 3:11

There were many animosities, jealousies, feuds, and even hatreds that had to be overcome through God’s love.

And it was his prayer that the Lord would continue to fill them until they thought they could love each other no more fervently.