by Darrel Cline (darrelcline biblical-thinking.org)
Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 1 Study # 5 January 17, 2024 Broadlands, Louisiana (Download Audio)
I. The Introduction.
A. According to the general scholarship, this book was the second of Paul's letters, following Galatians, written about A.D. 51, though there is some debate because of a difference of opinion as to where the Galatian letter was sent.
B. In any case, the general thrust of the Thessalonian letters has to do with the "hope" that believers are to live under.
C. Paul's identification of himself, Silvanus, and Timothy and those who sent this letter to the Thessalonians.
D. Paul's identification of his readers.
1. The church.
a. The word so translated is "ekklesia", a compound word made of a prefix (ek) and the noun form of a verb (kaleo).
1) When the word was first formed, it meant "to call out from".
2) That original meaning has been maintained and has been translated by the KJV by the words "assembly" (in three texts), "church" (singular and plural forms in 109 texts) and "congregation" (in two texts).
a) In the Gospel of Matthew, the "church" is presented by Jesus as a future development (16:18) as well as a present, local, body of people to whom "disciplinary actions" were assigned when "a brother" sins against "you" (18:17).
b) Acts 5:11 is the first place in Luke's record of the progress of the Gospel that the word is applied to the "group" who had believed the message of the Gospel regarding the resurrection of the dead (4:4). It is the first use of "church" in the New Testament (outside of Matthew 16:18 that conforms to Jesus' use in that text as a "future reality").
c) In Acts 7:38 we have one of the two times the word is translated (in the KJV) with our word "congregation". The switch in our English words from "church" to "congregation" was likely caused because the use in 7:38 refers the group of people that Moses was leading in the wilderness and, because Matthew recorded that Jesus said "I willbuild My church" (as a future group in distinctionfrom the nation of Israel in the wilderness).
d) Hebrews 2:12 is the other text which also uses "congregation" (in the KJV), and it is in a translation there of an Old Testament passage that referred in its historical setting to those who had been summoned to worship.
e) In Luke's uses of "ekklesia" (when the translators use "assembly") in Acts 19:32, 19:39, and 19:41, he was referring to the crowd in Ephesus that was raising Cain over Paul and his message.
f) And in Hebrews 12:23 we have "the general assembly" and a second group called "the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven".
b. There is a definitive link between "the church" and its identity as a "called" group which is "called out of" the world, made of both Jew and Gentile (Romans 9:24).
1) In 1 Thessalonians Paul refers to this "calling" in three places by using the root verb ("kaleo").
a) In 2:12, he refers to God's "calling" of the Thessalonians "into His own kingdom and glory".
b) In 4:7, he says that God's "calling" is not for impurity, but in sanctification (indicating some "boundaries" built into God's "calling").
c) In 5:24, he claims that God's "calling" involves the "entire sanctification" of the spirit, soul, and body as something the "faithful God" will "bring to pass".
2) For Paul, this also involves the concept to which he refers in 1:4, namely the "election" of those in the "church".
