BibleWare/BibWare.bin/bibtrans/weymouth.exe/1TH.WNT

Text File | 1993-06-07 | 12KB | 235 lines

1:1 Paul, /1 Silas, and Timothy: To the Church /2 of the
 Thessalonians which is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus
 Christ. May grace and peace be granted to you.
1:2 We continually give thanks to God because of you all, while
 we make mention of you in our prayers.
1:3 For we never fail to remember your works of faith and
 labours of love and your persistent and unwavering hope in our
 Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father;
1:4 knowing as we do, brethren, that you are beloved by God and
 that He has chosen you.
1:5 The Good News that we brought you did not come to you in
 words only, but also with power and with the Holy Spirit and
 with much certainty, for you know the sort of men we became
 among you, as examples for your sakes.
1:6 And you followed the pattern set you by us and by the
 Master, after you had received the Message amid severe
 persecution, and yet with the joy which the Holy Spirit gives,
1:7 so that you became a pattern to all the believers throughout
 Macedonia and /3 Greece.
1:8 For it was not only from you that the Master's Message /4
 sounded forth throughout Macedonia and /3 Greece; but
 everywhere your faith in God has become known, so that it is
 unnecessary for us to say anything about it.
1:9 For when /5 others speak of us they report the reception we
 had from you, and how you turned from your idols to God, to be
 bondservants of the

/1 true and ever-living God,
1:10 and to await the return from Heaven of His Son, whom He
 raised from among the dead--even Jesus, our Deliverer from
 God's coming anger.
2:1 For you yourselves, brethren, know that our visit to you /2
 did not fail of its purpose.
2:2 But, as you will remember, after we had already met with
 suffering and outrage at Philippi, we summoned up boldness, by
 the help of our God, to tell you God's Good News amid much
 opposition.
2:3 For our /3 preaching was not grounded on a delusion, nor
 prompted by mingled motives, nor was there fraud in it.
2:4 But as God tested and approved us before entrusting us with
 His Good News, so in what we say we are seeking not to please
 men but to please God, who tests and approves our motives.
2:5 For, as you are well aware, we have never used the language
 of flattery nor have we found pretexts for enriching
 ourselves--God is our witness;
2:6 nor did we seek glory either from you or from any other mere
 men, although we might have stood on our dignity as Christ's
 Apostles.
2:7 On the contrary, in our relations to you /4 we showed
 ourselves as gentle as a mother is when she tenderly nurses her
 own children.
2:8 Seeing that we were thus drawn affectionately towards you,
 it would have been a joy to us to have imparted to you not only
 God's Good News, but to have given our very /5 lives also,
 because you had become very dear to us.
2:9 /6 For /7 you remember, brethren, our labour and toil: how,
 working night and day so as not to become a burden to any one
 of you, we came and proclaimed among you God's Good News.
2:10 You yourselves are witnesses--and God is witness--how holy
 and upright and blameless our dealings with you believers were.

2:11 For you know that we acted towards every one of you as a
 father does towards his own children, encouraging and cheering
 you,
2:12 and imploring you to live lives worthy of fellowship with
 God who is inviting you to share His own Kingship and glory.
2:13 And for this further reason we render unceasing thanks to
 God, that when you received God's Message from our lips, it was
 as no mere message from men that you embraced it, but as--what
 it really is--God's Message, which also does its work /1 in the
 hearts of you who believe.
2:14 For you, brethren, followed the example of the Churches of
 God in Christ Jesus which are in Judaea; seeing that you
 endured the same ill-treatment at the hands of your countrymen,
 as they did at the hands of the Jews.
2:15 Those Jewish persecutors killed both the Lord Jesus and the
 Prophets, and drove us out of their midst. They are displeasing
 to God, and are the enemies of all mankind;
2:16 for they still try to prevent our preaching to the Gentiles
 so that they may find salvation. They thus continually fill up
 the measure of their own sins, and God's anger in its severest
 form has overtaken them.
2:17 But we, brethren, having been for a short time separated
 from you in bodily presence, though not in heart, endeavoured
 all the more earnestly, with intense longing, to see you face
 to face.
2:18 On this account we wanted to come to you--at least I Paul
 wanted again and again to do so--but Satan hindered us.
2:19 For what is our hope or joy, or the crown of which we
 boast? Is it not you yourselves in the presence of our Lord
 Jesus at His Coming?
2:20 Yes, you are our glory and our joy.
3:1 So when we could endure it no longer, we decided to remain
 behind in Athens alone;
3:2 and sent Timothy our brother and /2 God's minister in the
 service of Christ's Good News, that he might help you
 spiritually and encourage you in your faith;
3:3 that none of you might be unnerved by your present trials:
 for you yourselves know that they are our appointed lot.
3:4 For even when we were with you, we forewarned you, saying,
 "We are soon to suffer affliction;" and this actually happened,
 as you well know.
3:5 For this reason I also, when I could no longer endure the
 uncertainty, sent to know the condition of your faith, lest
 perchance the Tempter might have tempted you and our labour
 have been lost.

3:6 But now that Timothy has recently come back to us from you,
 and has brought us the happy tidings of your faith and love,
 and has told us how you still cherish a constant and
 affectionate recollection of us, and are longing to see us as
 we also long to see you--
3:7 for this reason in our distress and trouble we have been
 comforted about you, brethren, by your faith.
3:8 For now life is for us life indeed, since you are standing
 fast in the Lord.
3:9 For what thanksgiving on your behalf can we possibly offer
 to God in return for all the joy which fills our souls before
 our God for you,
3:10 while night and day, with intense earnestness, we pray that
 we may see your faces, and may bring to perfection whatever may
 be still lacking in your faith?
3:11 But may our God and Father Himself--and our Lord
 Jesus--guide us on our way to you;
3:12 and as for you, may the Lord teach you to love one another
 and all men, with a growing and a glowing love, resembling our
 love for you.
3:13 Thus He will build up your characters, so that you will be
 faultlessly holy in the presence of our God and Father at the
 Coming of our Lord Jesus with all His /1 holy ones.
4:1 /2 Moreover, brethren, as you learnt from our lips the lives
 which you ought to live, and do live, so as to please God, we
 beg and exhort you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live them
 more and more truly.
4:2 For you know the commands which we laid upon you by the
 authority of the Lord Jesus.
4:3 For this is God's will--your purity of life, that you
 abstain from fornication;
4:4 that each man among you shall know how to procure a /3 wife
 who shall be his own in purity and honour;

4:5 that you be not overmastered by lustful cravings, like the
 Gentiles who have no knowledge of God;
4:6 and /1 that in this matter there be no encroaching on the
 rights of a brother Christian and no overreaching him. For the
 Lord is an avenger in all such cases, as we have already taught
 you and solemnly warned you.
4:7 God has not called us to an unclean life, but to one of
 purity.
4:8 Therefore /2 a defiant spirit in such a case provokes not
 man but God, who puts His Holy Spirit into your hearts.
4:9 But on the subject of love for the brotherhood it is
 unnecessary for me to write to you, for you yourselves have
 been taught by God to love one another;
4:10 and indeed you do love all the brethren throughout
 Macedonia. And we exhort you to do so more and more,
4:11 and to vie with one another in eagernes