I am reminded of something i heard Tim Keller say once about John Stott's commentary's:
"You read stott and he is so clear and concise and logical--you think--that must be exactly what Paul was thinking when he wrote it."
"You read stott and he is so clear and concise and logical--you think--that must be exactly what Paul was thinking when he wrote it."
Here he is commenting on the idea in 1 Thess that the gospel comes to us with both words and power from Spirit.
we must not acquiesce in the contemporary disenchantment with words. Words matter. They are the building blocks of sentences by which we communicate with one another. And the gospel has a specific content. That is why it must be articulated, verbalized. Of course it can and must be dramatized too. For images are sometimes more powerful than words. Yet images also have to be interpreted by words. So in all our evangelism, whether in public preaching or in private witnessing, we need to take trouble with our choice of words.
...also with power.
Words by themselves are seldom enough, even in secular discourse. Because they may be misunderstood or disregarded, they need somehow to be enforced. This is even more the case in Christian communication, since blind eyes and hard hearts do not appreciate the gospel. So words spoken in human weakness need to be confirmed with divine power. The reference is probably not to external miracles which are normally designated by the plural word ‘powers’ (*dynameis*), but to the internal operation of the Holy Spirit. It is only by his power that the Word can penetrate people’s mind, heart, conscience and will. Paul wrote the same thing to the Corinthian church (1 Cor.2:1-5), and it is from Corinth that he is writing to the Thessalonians. We must never divorce what God has married, namely his Word and his Spirit. The Word of God is the Spirit’s sword (Eph.6:17). The Spirit without the Word is weaponless; the Word without the Spirit is powerless.
