At the start of 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul reminds his readers about his visit to Thessalonica. As I wrote before, Paul’s visit to Thessalonica is described in Acts 17 and it comes after his time in Philippi where, as he writes, he was ‘shamefully maltreated’.
Acts 16 describes how Paul and his companions arrived in Philippa, where they…
- met Lydia and others who were baptised,
- were thrown in prison after trouble was stirred up in the town
- worshipped through the night in prison leading to a miraculous escape
- baptised the jailer and his family
- left
After passing through a couple of other places, Paul and Silas arrived in Thessalonica. The opening verses of 1 Thessalonians 2 describe what Paul clearly thought were important aspects of the way he spoke and presented the gospel during his relatively short time there (perhaps less than a month) in three ways that are useful to think about in relation to how we share the gospel now.
They declared the gospel without deceit – they spoke the truth they knew about Jesus. Do you think the church as a whole, or CCC, or we as individuals always speak the truth about Jesus? Or are we sometimes tempted to tweak it a bit to make it a bit more palatable for other people (or so we think)?
Their motives were pure. Paul and Silas were working to share the gospel in order to please God (v.4) not to grow their own fame or status. What mixed motives might there be today for wanting to see people become followers of Jesus? To make our church bigger? To take the pressure off some of the jobs that need doing?! Of course, we’d love to see CCC grow and thrive, but not for its own sake. Rather, I hope we’d love to see more people knowing Jesus than do at the moment, because that’s the best thing for them.
They shared the gospel without trickery, in contrast to others around at the time who were known to trick people into becoming their followers. Maybe it’s easy to think of the kind of preachers who make unrealistic promises of health and wealth, but we need to make sure that we too are being open about what we’re doing. We are always sure to let people know that The Point, and the activities there, is run by a local church. What else might we need to do to make sure everything is open and ‘above board’?
It’s amazing that, as Paul says in verse 4, “we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel”. Paul’s ministry shows that he varied his approach according to his audience, but I hope that we, like Paul, are speaking and sharing the gospel primarily to please God.