1 Thessalonians 5:16

5:16-22 We are to rejoice in creature-comforts, as if we rejoiced not, and must not expect to live many years, and rejoice in them all; but if we do rejoice in God, we may do that evermore. A truly religious life is a life of constant joy. And we should rejoice more, if we prayed more. Prayer will help forward all lawful business, and every good work. If we pray without ceasing, we shall not want matter for thanksgiving in every thing. We shall see cause to give thanks for sparing and preventing, for common and uncommon, past and present, temporal and spiritual mercies. Not only for prosperous and pleasing, but also for afflicting providences, for chastisements and corrections; for God designs all for our good, though we at present see not how they tend to it. Quench not the Spirit. Christians are said to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. He worketh as fire, by enlightening, enlivening, and purifying the souls of men. As fire is put out by taking away fuel, and as it is quenched by pouring water, or putting a great deal of earth upon it; so we must be careful not to quench the Holy Spirit, by indulging carnal lusts and affections, minding only earthly things. Believers often hinder their growth in grace, by not giving themselves up to the spiritual affections raised in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. By prophesyings, here understand the preaching of the word, the interpreting and applying the Scriptures.

We must not despise preaching, though it is plain, and we are told no more than what we knew before. We must search the Scriptures. And proving all things must be to hold fast that which is good. We should abstain from sin, and whatever looks like sin, leads to it, and borders upon it. He who is not shy of the appearances of sin, who shuns not the occasions of it, and who avoids not the temptations and approaches to it, will not long keep from doing sin.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 . Rejoice evermore — In your present privileges and future hopes. See note on Romans 14:17 ; Php 4:4 ; 1 Peter 1:6 . Pray without ceasing — In order to maintain and improve this holy joy, be always in a spirit of prayer, that is, retain a continual sense of your spiritual wants, and of your dependance on God, through Christ, for the supply of those wants, and let your desires for that supply be frequently offered up to God in faith: let your heart aspire after him, and long for a further acquaintance with him, conformity to him, and enjoyment of him; and be constant in the use of private and fervent prayer at all proper seasons, joining also at all opportunities with your family, Christian friends, and the congregations of God’s people, in social and public addresses to the throne of grace. In every thing give thanks — Remembering, not only your dependance on God, but your obligation to him for all things, temporal and spiritual, and being persuaded that you never can be in such circumstances of affliction, but that you have much greater cause for thankfulness than complaint. This is Christian perfection: further than this we cannot go, and we need not stop short of it. Our Lord has purchased joy as well as righteousness for us. It is the very design of the gospel, that, being saved from guilt, we should be happy in the love of Christ. Prayer may be said to be the breath of our spiritual life. He that lives cannot possibly cease breathing.

So much as we really enjoy of the presence of God, so much prayer and praise do we offer up without ceasing; else our rejoicing is but delusion. Thanksgiving is inseparable from true prayer. It is almost essentially connected with it. He that always prays, is ever giving praise; whether in ease or pain, both for prosperity and the greatest adversity. He blesses God for all things, looks on them as coming from him, and receives them only for his sake; not choosing nor refusing, liking nor disliking any thing, but only as it is agreeable or disagreeable to his perfect will. For this — That you should thus rejoice, pray, give thanks; is the will of God in Christ Jesus — Always holy, just, and good, and always pointing at our salvation.

1 Thessalonians 5:16 . To comment adequately upon these diamond drops (16–18) would be to outline a history of the Christian experience in its higher levels. π . χαίρετε , cf. Epict., i. 16 (“Had we understanding, ought we to do anything but sing hymns and bless the Deity and tell of His benefits?… What else can I do, a lame old man, than sing hymns to God?… I exhort you to join in this same song.”) There is a thread of connection with the foregoing counsel. The unswerving aim of being good and doing good to all men, is bound up with that faith in God’s unfailing goodness to men which enables the Christian cheerfully to accept the disappointments and sufferings of social life. This faith can only be held by prayer, i.e. , a constant reference of all life’s course to God, and such prayer must be more than mere resignation; it implies a spirit of unfailing gratitude to God, instead of any suspicious or rebellious attitude.

Verse 16. - Rejoice evermore ; or, rejoice always (R.V.). Joy is that feeling of delight which arises from the possession of present good, or from the anticipation of future happiness; and in both respects the believer has abundant reason for constant joy. He possesses the blessedness of forgiveness and the sure prospect of eternal life, and he has the consciousness that all things work together for good to them that love God ( Romans 8:28 ). God wishes his people to be happy, and does not suffer them to be indifferent to their own peace. He commands them to rejoice, yea, to rejoice evermore. "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice" ( Philippians 4:4 ). 1 Thessalonians 5:16

16, 17. In order to "rejoice evermore," we must "pray without ceasing" (1Th 5:17). He who is wont to thank God for all things as happening for the best, will have continuous joy [Theophylact]. Eph 6:18; Php 4:4, 6, "Rejoice in the Lord … by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving"; Ro 14:17, "in the Holy Ghost"; Ro 12:12, "in hope"; Ac 5:41, "in being counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name"; Jas 1:2, in falling "into divers temptations."

(16) Rejoice evermore. —The remaining commands are more simply spiritual, and hardly form part of the same paragraph as 1Thessalonians 5:12-15 , which related to discipline; though from 1Thessalonians 5:19 et seq. we see that St. Paul was still addressing the Church in its corporate capacity, not only the individual members. The Christian who remains in sadness and depression really breaks a commandment: in some direction or other he mistrusts God—His power, providence, forgiveness. The command is specially good for a persecuted Church like that of Thessalonica ( Matthew 5:10-12 ).

1 Thessalonians CONTINUAL PRAYER AND ITS EFFECTS 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 . The peculiarity and the stringency of these three precepts is the unbroken continuity which they require. To rejoice, to pray, to give thanks, are easy when circumstances favour, as a taper burns steadily in a windless night; but to do these things always is as difficult as for the taper’s flame to keep upright when all the winds are eddying round it. ‘Evermore’--’without ceasing’--’in everything’--these qualifying words give the injunctions of this text their grip and urgency. The Apostle meets the objections which he anticipates would spring to the lips of the Thessalonians, to the effect that he was requiring impossibilities, by adding that, hard and impracticable as they might think such a constant attitude of mind and heart, ‘This is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.’ So, then, a Christian life may be lived continuously on the high level; and more than that, it is our duty to try to live ours thus. We need not fight with other Christian people about whether absolute obedience to these precepts is possible. It will be soon enough for us to discuss whether a completely unbroken uniformity of Christian experience is attainable in this life, when we have come a good deal nearer to the attainable than we have yet reached.

Let us mend our breaches of continuity a good deal more, and then we may begin to discuss the question whether an absolute absence of any cessation of the continuity is consistent with the conditions of Christian life here. Now it seems to me that these three exhortations hold together in a very striking way, and that Paul knew what he was about when he put in the middle, like the strong central pole that holds up a tent, that exhortation, ‘Pray without ceasing.’ For it is the primary precept, and on its being obeyed the possibility of the fulfilment of the other two depends. If we pray without ceasing, we shall rejoice evermore and in everything give thanks. So, then, the duty of continual prayer, and the promise, as well as the precept, that its results are to be continual joy and continual thanksgiving, are suggested by these words. I. The duty of continual prayer. Roman Catholics, with their fatal habit of turning the spiritual into material, think that they obey that commandment when they set a priest or a nun on the steps of the altar to repeat Ave Marias day and night. That is a way of praying without ceasing which we can all see to be mechanical and unworthy. But have we ever realised what this commandment necessarily reveals to us, as to what real prayer is?