1 Thessalonians 2:17-20 - Godly Love

17 But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, 18 because we wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered us. 19 For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? 20 For you are our glory and joy.

Target Date: Sunday, 31 July 2022

Word Study/ Translation Notes:

Torn away – ἀπορφανίζω (apŏrphanizō) – to tear someone away from someone else; to orphan

ἀπορφανίζεσθαι was frequently used either of children who had been orphaned or of parents bereaved of their children. Since the passive form of the participle would require Paul to be portraying himself as an orphaned child, it seems better to understand the participle in a metaphorical sense as referring to the sudden and violent loss of the Thessalonians

Recalls the parental images earlier in this chapter:

But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. – 2:7

we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, 12 so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God - 2:11-12

In person/ face - πρόσωπον (prŏsōpŏn) – face, countenance

Thoughts on the Passage:

This forced separation from the Thessalonians seems to be what God used to cause Paul and Silas to write to the church, thus beginning the New Testament Scriptures.

Everything in this paragraph is heightened:

We were torn away – we were orphaned of you.

For a short time – two elements indicating the briefness of the time, either of which would stand alone and be translated “short time”.

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time - 1 Corinthians 7:5

I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. – 2 Corinthians 7:8

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour - Galatians 2:5

For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever - Philemon 15

They did not try – they endeavored.

They endeavored with GREAT passion.

“The more” – this is a radical intensifier that really doesn’t translate in its feeling – MORE SUPERABUNDANTLY

Many commentators read this section almost dryly, approaching the point that Paul was simply making platitudes to the church or expressing some feelings in a dramatic manner.

But the argument of the letter is the ways these apostles tried to overcome their separation from the Thessalonians.

This is a picture of real love, expressed not in flowery language, but in raw language.

I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. – 2 Corinthians 12:15

Sermon Text:

What does love look like?

I would suggest to you that our text for today gives us an example that is rare in our world today.

This world that mistakes lust or utility for love.

This world that selfishly redefines everything about love into a testimony of what it does for YOU to be loved.

Why YOU should be loved.

And what to do if YOU aren’t getting the love you think you deserve.

It is a tragedy that even in our churches, men are afraid to tell other men they love them because the pagans around us have hung some sexual meaning in every utterance of the word “love”.

Something goes off in our minds if we tell someone we love them like a sniggering boy going “Ooooo”!

Our entertainments, our movies, songs, and videos, have programmed us to equate love with only two things:

Sexual desire

Or the parent/ child/ family relationship.

When was the last time you saw in any movie or tv show the word “love” used un-comedically outside those two motives?

And what we have lost is the ability, in many cases, to even experience love that does not fit into those two categories.

The camaraderie of men working together in a common cause, a cause that draws us closely together, scares us rather than draws us.

Lost, it seems, are the days where men can love one another deeply without fearing they are somehow effeminate.

Without somehow deep inside questioning their own motives.

The world will mock this kind of love;

It will hate and mischaracterize it as similar to their own perverted version of “love”.

Because the world mocks what it cannot comprehend or control:

John speaks of Jesus Christ in the preface to his gospel account:

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. – John 1:5

And because those in darkness did not know Him, they do not understand us.

This I command you, that you love one another. 18 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. – John 15:17-18

But just because the world mocks it, that must no longer deter us from loving one another.

Now, I have used the word “men” in this context purposely because I think we men are currently more afflicted by this “love-phobia” than women, but you sisters are not immune.

Many are those of either sex who will avoid relationships with those of the same sex that draw them in deeply.

We fear attraction to someone, attraction that is non-sexual, primarily because we have seen so few examples of that kind of love.

In the movies, any kind of attraction becomes sexual attraction.

But not so in the plan and Spirit of God:

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. 20 But you did not learn Christ in this way, - Ephesians 4:17-20

Many in the world will tell you they know what “love” is, but I tell you on the authority of Scripture that they truly have no concept.

Even those who read the Bible and admire the love that is found on every page cannot bring themselves to it;

For them it is an ideal: unachievable but desired.

All the love they have ever known, from their parents to their partners, is only the shadow of a memory of a time long past when their first parents were in unbroken relationship with God.

The love they feel remains like a final ember, but acts as a beacon to draw them to the love of God through Jesus Christ.

It is the part inside them that confirms the truth of the gospel EVEN IF they reject it because they love their sin more.

They think they know everything about love because their love is small enough to be contained inside their selfishness and lust.

When the love of God is greater than any imagination of any person:

It is pure; it is selfless.

And it come to us ONLY through the Spirit of God.

God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. - Romans 5:5

God’s love can be carried only in God’s vessels He has prepared with God’s Spirit.

And THAT, beloved, is what our text is about today.

Not the copy of a copy of a memory about what love FELT like.

But the real, actual love of God poured into us right now through His Spirit.

Paul and Silas begin this paragraph with the phrase But since we were torn away from you…

Now you may read that and recall the history we have discussed many times before,

How, when Paul and Silas began to teach the Gentiles about Jesus Christ in Thessalonica, the Jews hired rabble from the marketplace to cause a riot against them.

This, in turn, caused the Roman magistrate to expel them from the city.

By anyone’s definition, they were torn away from that young church.

But the word he uses here is more than that.

In fact most of the adjectives and verbs in this paragraph have almost untranslatable depths of meaning.

The word he uses here, “torn”, has at its base a heart-rending word: orphaned.

He is saying “We were orphaned of you.”

As much as the church might have mourned the loss of these evangelists and teachers, separated forcibly from them,

That was nothing compared to the anguish these spiritual parents had, being separated from their children.

This picture is infused into every sentence of this letter.

Look back up to 2:7:

But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.

And 2:11-12:

we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, 12 so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God

They could feel no other way about these believers.

It is the picture of a mother being restrained while evil men take her son away.

With all the anguish and fear and uncertainty in both their lives.

The parent unable to care for the child.

The child removed from the parent’s loving protection.

Some might see the eloquence of Paul and Silas in their extravagant language in this paragraph, but I see something different.

The language here is not extravagant; it is RAW.

It is the cry of a father to the wind that his son has been carried away from him.

A cry until he is hoarse with grief, when no more tears can come.

A translation will almost always be dry, academic.

But this isn’t just Paul and Silas telling the Thessalonians they were sorry they had to go so quickly;

They are describing the anguish of their hearts in being ripped from them.

This is the same heartbreaking, raw language we hear when a parent has lost a young child to death.

When they are trying to describe how they feel,

Grasping for WHY they feel the mourning and loss so deeply.

It is the echo of love when they are separated.

my beloved had … gone! My heart went out to him as he spoke. I searched for him but I did not find him; I called him but he did not answer me. – Song of Songs 5:6

A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; And she refused to be comforted, Because they were no more.” – Matthew 2:18

But after giving this picture to the Thessalonians, they follow it immediately with for a short time.

Here again, the word choice is extreme.

They could have said something like “for a little while” – literally “for an hour”.

Or they could have said “for a short time”.

There are examples of both of these phrase choices in other letters by Paul.

But here, the shortness of the time is intensified: for a shortened hour.

It really doesn’t translate well, but a near equivalent might be closer to “in half a moment”.

It is like they were recalling this painful memory and became concerned that the Thessalonians would be brought to despair at the recollection,

So they quickly added the assurance – only for a moment, though.

We will see this idea again later on in this letter – that separation, even separation by death, is not a permanent condition for believers.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. – 4:13-14

Incidentally, many people take this to mean their “loved-ones”, as in family, who they will be looking to be reunited with on the Day of the Lord.

Such is the love-sickness and love-weakness of our age.

Because nothing in this passage assumes the concern of the church was limited to their immediate biological family.

In fact, the verbiage argues that their primary concern was for those in the church they loved who had died before they saw the Parousia of Christ.

There was real love for the brethren that their primary concern was for those who had already passed from this life.

And the shortness of the time, compared to our eternity with Christ, Paul represents as a nap.

Then they add another qualifier:

But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person not in heart…

Perhaps our greatest fear when we are separated is that we shall be forgotten.

The unfounded fear that a child who is lost in a store will be left by her parents.

Or the fear by a GI that each letter from his sweetheart might be a “Dear John” letter.

The fear of a girl whose boyfriend is going off to the university that he will find someone else.

But for these separated children, Paul and Silas wanted to make sure they knew how loved they were:

In face not in heart…

Only our face was taken away, not our love.

But the love, the concern, the affection of someone we love dearly can only carry us so far.

That is why he speaks at the end of this verse their great desire to see the Thessalonian church “face to face”.

From the very beginning of this letter, these apostles have proclaimed their constant concern, love, prayers, thanksgiving to God, and desire for these believers.

Their heart was never far from these young believers.

I think that is as far as we will go today into this passage.

We shall leave the next part to when we meet together next Sunday, God-willing.

I hope you have seen the greatness and the other-worldliness of this love.

It is love that is foreign to this fallen world, but has come to us through Jesus Christ and the calling of God.

The people around us who argue most loudly against God, against His church, against His followers, have, I would contend, never encountered THIS kind of love before.

Love that embraces them so much that they see past their sin into the grace and mercy of God.

It is absolutely foreign to them, but then it was foreign to us before we were in Christ.

And even those of us who are in Christ may find, day-by-day, that we must be brought repeatedly to God’s love because we are still not mature in it.

The world may try to counterfeit this love:

Sometimes twisting and perverting it.

Sometimes degrading it to something merely physical or sexual.

Often confusing love of the person with willful blindness to their sin.

And always making this counterfeit selfish, self-centered, looking only for what I need.

The problem with counterfeits is they are worthless.

They may fool some people into giving something valuable in exchange for the trifle.

But these fallen forms of love will always fail in the end because they are based on only a hope, a wish, or a dream.

Only that love that is founded and based in God Himself is reliable enough to stand.

O church, let us get beyond our fear of love;

Our fear of committing to each other all we can.

Our fear of sharing each others’ lives.

Our fear of spending too much of ourselves that might bring to little return:

Let us loudly declare with Paul to each other:

I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. – 2 Corinthians 12:15