1 Thessalonians: 1:1b.The church is a community which lives in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We notice in passing the unselfconscious way in which Paul brackets ‘God the Father’ and ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’, as being together the source of the church’s life. Later (in verse 10) he will call Jesus the ‘Son’ of God. Already within twenty years of the death and resurrection of Jesus the coupling of the Father and the Son as equal is the universal faith of the church. This simple fact is enough to undermine the teaching of those who claim that the New Testament nowhere attributes deity to Jesus. --John Stott, because 1 Thess was written 50 or 51 AD, twenty years after Christ died & rose in 33AD

Word & Spirit

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."

Here he is commenting on the idea in 1 Thess that the gospel comes to us with both words and power from Spirit.

...with words
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.

The Gospel & The Church

It was natural for Paul to move on in his mind from God’s church to God’s gospel because he could not think of either without the other. It is by the gospel that the church exists and by the church that the gospel spreads.

Each depends on the other.

Each serves the other.

What is the Church?

Paul's delineation of the church in 1 Thess

1.) It is a community beloved and chosen by God in a past eternity,

2.) a community rooted in God and drawing its life from him,

3.) a community exhibiting this life of God in
a faith which works,
a love which labours and

a hope which endures.
4.) it is a community which receives and transmits the gospel.

What stands out of Paul’s vision of the church is its God-centredness. He does not think of it as a human institution, but as the divine society. No wonder he could be confident in its stability!

--Stott

it is the gospel which shapes the church, just as it is the church which spreads the gospel.

it is the gospel which shapes the church, just as it is the church which spreads the gospel. This seems to me to be the underlying theme of the Thessalonian letters.

--john stott

Background on Thessalonica,

When Paul and his companions visited Thessalonica in 49 or 50 AD, it was already a well established city with a long history. It had been founded in the fourth century BC by Cassander, one of Alexander the Great’s army officers. He named it after his wife, Thessalonica, who was Alexander’s half-sister. It occupied a strategic position, for it boasted a good natural harbour at the head of the Thermaic Gulf, and it was situated on the *Via Egnatia* which was the main route between Rome and the East. Thessalonica became the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. Lightfoot described it as ‘the key to the whole of Macedonia’, and added that ‘it narrowly escaped being made the capital of the world’. Today as Thessaloniki it is the second most important city of Greece.

more here

Faith, Love, Hope

So comprehensive is the vision conjured up by "your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ" that John Calvin did not exaggerate when he called it ‘a brief definition of true Christianity’. --John Stott

pastoral wisdom--from Stott--again-- dude is so good

1 Thessalonians 1:4 says:
For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that He has chosen you----

very good stuff in Stott's commentary on this text:

To whatever denomination or tradition we may belong, the doctrine of election causes us difficulties and questions. To be sure, it is a truth which runs through Scripture, beginning with the call of Abraham (Gn. 12:1ff.) and later his choice of Israel ‘out of all nations’ to be his ‘treasured possession...a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Ex.19:5-6). This vocabulary is deliberately transferred in the New Testament to the Christian community (E.g. 1 Pet.2:5, 9-10). Moreover, the topic of election is nearly always introduced for a practical purpose, in order to foster assurance (not presumption), holiness (not moral apathy), humility (not pride) and witness (not lazy selfishness). But still no explanation of God’s election is given except God’s love. This is clear in Deuteronomy: ‘The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you...’ (Dt.7:7-8; cf.4:37). Similarly in 1 Thessalonians 1:4 Paul unites the love of God and the election of God (As in 2 Thess.2:13 and Eph.1:4). That is, he chose us because he loves us, and he loves us because he loves us. He does not love us because we are loveable, but only because he is love. And with that mystery we must rest content.
But before we leave this subject, we need to note the assertion made by Paul, Silas and Timothy that they *know* their brothers and sisters in Thessalonica to have been loved and chosen by God. God’s election, however, is essentially a secret known to him alone (2 Tim.2:19). So how could the missionaries possibly dare to claim that they knew it? They tell us. They give two bases for their knowledge, the first in the following verse (5), relating to their evangelism, and the second in the previous verse (3), relating to the Thessalonians’ holiness. Both were evidences of the activities of the Holy Spirit, first in the missionaries (giving power to their preaching) and secondly in the converts (producing in them faith, love and hope), and therefore of the election of the Thessalonians. This shows that the doctrine of election, far from making evangelism unnecessary, makes it indispensable. For it is only through the preaching and receiving of the gospel that God’s secret purpose comes to be revealed and known. --John Stott