1 Thessalonians 4:2

4:1-8 To abide in the faith of the gospel is not enough, we must abound in the work of faith. The rule according to which all ought to walk and act, is the commandments given by the Lord Jesus Christ. Sanctification, in the renewal of their souls under the influences of the Holy Spirit, and attention to appointed duties, constituted the will of God respecting them. In aspiring after this renewal of the soul unto holiness, strict restraint must be put upon the appetites and senses of the body, and on the thoughts and inclinations of the will, which lead to wrong uses of them. The Lord calls none into his family to live unholy lives, but that they may be taught and enabled to walk before him in holiness. Some make light of the precepts of holiness, because they hear them from men; but they are God's commands, and to break them is to despise God.

1 Thessalonians 4:2 . Παραγγελίας , commandments ) Paul uses this word at this very early time, when writing to the Thessalonians, whose piety took it in the right spirit, as did also the piety of Timothy, to whom he gives his commands with the greatest sternness. The same word occurs, 1 Thessalonians 4:11 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:4 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:6 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:10 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:12 . In addressing other churches subsequently, when his authority was established, he uses it very seldom.

1 Thessalonians 4:2 . Almost a parenthesis, as Bahnsen points out in his study of 1–12 ( Zeitschrift f. wiss. Theol. , 1904, 332–358). The injunctions ( παραγγελίαι in semimilitary sense, as 1 Timothy 1:18 ) relate to chastity ( 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 ) and charity, ( 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 ), with a postscript against excitement and idleness (11, 12).— παραγγ . for the cognate use of this term ( cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:8 ) in the inscriptions of Dionysopolis ( παραγγέλλω πᾶσιν μὴ καταφρονεῖν τοῦ θεοῦ ) cf. Exp. Ti. , x. 159.— διὰ κ . τ . λ ., the change from the ἐν of 1 Thessalonians 4:1 does not mean that the Thessalonians before their conversion got such injunctions from Paul on the authority of Christ, while afterwards they simply needed to be reminded of the obligations of their union ( ἐν ) with the Lord. No strict difference can be drawn between both phrases ( cf. Heitmüller’s Im Namen Jesu , 71 f.), though the διά lays rather more stress on the authority. For Jesus to command διά the apostles seems to us more natural than to say that the apostles issue commands διὰ τοῦ Κυρίου , but the sense is really the same. The apostles give their orders on the authority of their commission and revelations from the Lord whom they interpret to His followers ( cf. Romans 15:30 ; Romans 12:2 ). But this interpretation must have appealed to the sayings of Jesus which formed part of the παράδοσις ( cf. Weizsäcker’s Apostolic Age , i. 97, 120, ii. 39).

Verse 2. - For ye know ; appealing to their memory in confirmation of what he had said. What commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus ; or, through the Lord Jesus ; that is, not merely by his authority, but by means of him, so that these commandments did not proceed from Paul, but from the Lord Jesus himself. We have here, and indeed in this chapter throughout, an assertion of the inspiration of the apostle: the commandments which he gave to the Thessalonians were the commandments of the Lord Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 4:2

(2) For ye know. —He calls on the Thessalonians’ memory to support his statement, “ye received;” at the same time awakening their interest to catch the special point next to come, by laying stress on “w hat commandments.” By the Lord Jesus.—Not as if the Lord were the person who took the commandments from St. Paul to the Thessalonians, but the person by means of whose inspiration St. Paul was enabled to give such commandments.

2. by the Lord Jesus—by His authority and direction, not by our own. He uses the strong term, "commandments," in writing to this Church not long founded, knowing that they would take it in a right spirit, and feeling it desirable that they should understand he spake with divine authority. He seldom uses the term in writing subsequently, when his authority was established, to other churches. 1Co 7:10; 11:17; and 1Ti 1:5 (1Th 4:18, where the subject accounts for the strong expression) are the exceptions. "The Lord" marks His paramount authority, requiring implicit obedience.

This explains what he said before; what they had received of him about their walking he here calls commandments, not so much his own as the Lord’s, as the word itself imports here used, and is expressed in the text. By the Lord Jesus: though the apostle had authority, yet it was but derivative from Christ; and therefore not to walk as the apostle had commanded would be disobedience to Christ himself. And he minds them of what they knew, that their knowledge might be exemplified in practice; for as faith, so knowledge, is dead which doth not influence the life; and they knew that he commanded them not in his own name, but in the name of Christ.

For ye know what commandments - It was but a short time since Paul was with them, and they could not but recollect the rules of living which he had laid down. By the Lord Jesus - By the authority of the Lord Jesus. Some of those rules, or commandments, the apostle refers to, probably, in the following verses.

2 . For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord jesus ] Lit., charges … through the Lord Jesus ; similarly in 1 Thessalonians 4:11 , “as we charged you,” and in 2 Thessalonians 3:4 , &c. The Greek word signifies an announcement , then a command or advice publicly delivered . In 1 Timothy 1:5 ; 1 Timothy 1:18 the whole practical teaching of Christianity is called a “charge.” Here the Apostle is referring to particular items of conduct as matter of so many “charges.” These charges were given “ through the Lord Jesus,” since His name and authority were used to support them (comp. 2 Thessalonians 3:6 , “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”); while they were given “ in the Lord Jesus” ( 1 Thessalonians 4:1 ), as they appealed to the Christian standing of the readers and their conscious relationship to Christ, Whose coming in glory they expected. The Apostle is “writing no new commandment;” he recalls to his readers’ remembrance what he had so often urged upon them (see note on ch. 1 Thessalonians 1:5 ). It is on one prominent subject of those well-remembered charges that he has now to dwell:—