But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. (8) So affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us. (9) For you remember, brethren, our labor and toil, for laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, we preached the gospel of God.…….(13) For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

The letter to the Thessalonians was written by the apostle Paul. In our text Paul continues to spell out some of the reasons he knew God chose Thessalonians for salvation. They pleased God through embracing doctrine which leads to spiritual health. They pleased God through moral integrity and how they lived their regenerated lives. They turned to God from idols (an idol is anything that usurps the rightful place of God in our lives) and waited for Jesus to return in certain hope. The gospel is not a message of how Jesus can help us succeed in life but rather how He can rescue us from the wrath to come. God gives salvation from His judgment to all who believe in Jesus.

The Thessalonians did not just add Jesus as a new idol. They trashed their idols and turned to the living God alone – a clear decisive break from the old way of life. In the fullest sense the gospel is truth and of God, not a device of man. Paul was not motivated by impure motives or greed. Paul as rabbi was entitled to claim financial support from the church as those who preach the gospel should live by the gospel. In all things Paul was a servant to whom he preached and kept back no part of himself but financially supported himself in his daily toil as a tent maker, his toil by night as preacher.

Paul was God’s choice – entrusted with the gospel which as a servant of Christ he has to give to a lost world. He looked on the Thessalonian believers as his own children in faith. In our verses Paul reminded them of his affection for them and his labor on their behalf – that In faith, in Christ, they were born again. This truth led them to take a stand for Christ. Those who were Jewish by birth had to turn from loved ones, turn from friends and endure persecution. Those from heathen backgrounds suffered at the hands of heathen relatives, former friends just as Christian Jews in Judea suffered at the hands of Jewish friends and relatives.