Identifying the Elect, Part 3
1 Thessalonians 1:4-10
As you know, we've been looking at this chapter for the last couple of weeks under the title, "Identifying the Elect." And I suppose that you would all agree with me that nothing is more important in this life than having a proper understanding of your spiritual condition. Certainly that is of grave concern to those of us who understand what our spiritual condition needs to be. I am frequently asked, "How can I know I'm really a Christian?" I think that barely a month passes by that I do not have occasion to speak to someone in our church who is wondering about whether they are generally saved. Certainly not a week passes by that we don't receive mail from people who are struggling to identify their true spiritual condition.
It is also true that we are concerned not about ourselves alone, but about others as well. A wife is very often concerned that the salvation her husband claims is in fact real. A husband occasionally may be concerned that the salvation his wife claims is real. Very often we as parents might be concerned that the salvation which our children once affirmed is indeed genuine. And we may have a mother and father whose salvation we question. Or we may know friends who claim to believe in Jesus Christ but we look at their life and we wonder if they really do.
We are grappling certainly with a most important and significant issue that would ever face us, namely the proper understanding of one's spiritual condition. This particular chapter is of immense help to us because in it, I believe, Paul in commending the Thessalonian believers gives us a list of ten identifying marks that point us to the elect. Even though the electing work of God was done in eternity past, in the secret communion of His own mind, it can become known to us through some manifest evidences in the lives of individuals. If I am to know whether I am a believer, if I am to know whether someone else is a believer, here then in this chapter are some marks which can become a standard by which to make that assessment.
Notice please verse 4 cause that's the key verse, as we have been noting. Paul says to these Thessalonians, "Knowing, brethren, beloved by God, your election." He says to them, "I know intuitively deep down in a continuing knowledge that you are truly brethren, you are truly the beloved of God, you are the elect." It is that which causes him in verse 2 to give thanks to God always for all of them, making mention of them in his prayers of thanksgiving. His great joy over the Thessalonians was that he knew they were the elect. He knew they were true brethren. He knew they were the beloved of God.
The question then comes, "How did he know that?" How does one know when a person is truly, genuinely a child of God? Basically in this chapter he gives us two categories into which we probe to discern the marks that identify the elect.
Category number one, present condition...Category number two, past conversion...present condition is his concern in verse 3; past conversion, his concern in verses 5 to 10. But both of those categories blend together to give us a series of marks by which we can identify a true believer.
Keep in mind the Thessalonians had only been in Christ for a very brief time, only a matter of a few months. Paul had spent a brief time there evangelizing the synagogue on three Sabbaths and then certainly spending a little longer time there evangelizing more Jews perhaps, and certainly Gentiles. So that little church was born there as he and Silas and Timothy labored. But they were there only a matter of weeks and then they were on and forced to leave because of Jewish persecution. They went to Berea and then down into Achaia, Corinth, Athens.
And finally the Apostle Paul decides to send Timothy back to find out the condition of this little infant baby church in the midst of the lewd and immoral conduct of Thessalonica and the report comes back so good, the report comes back they're genuine, they're real, they're true and his heart rejoices and thus does he write this epistle. And with the information he has from Timothy who made the report and from the Spirit of God who knows firsthand and perfectly, he writes back this letter to encourage them to even grow stronger in the faith which they have so wonderfully manifest.
In chapter 1 comes that greatest of all commendations, he says, "I know you're real, I know you're elect." Then he gives the evidences of it. They stand as a timeless testimony to the standard of true salvation that marks anyone who is known to belong to God.
Now, first of all, we noted in verse 3 that there were three things that identified them as genuinely saved...your work of faith, and labor of love, and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. He says...Whenever I remember you in the presence of God our Father, I remember your work of faith, labor of love and perseverance of hope. These are the things back in verse 1 that indicate to me you are a church IN God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the things that allow me to give thanks to God always for all of you. These are the things that make me know, verse 4, brethren, beloved by God, that you're the elect. It is your work of faith, your labor of love and your steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Those are the first three evidences...a faith that works, a love that labors, a hope that perseveres. And you noted last time in our study, the fifth chapter and the eighth verse gives those same things. It says, "Since we are of the day," that is we're believers, "let us get our priorities right because we have already put on the breastplate of faith and love and have as a helmet the hope of salvation." There are the three things again; faith, hope and love. They are the great triumvirate of spiritual virtues and they are the evidences of true regeneration.
So we said there are three sort of foundational marks: production, that's a faith that works; affection, that's a love that labors; continuation, that's a hope that perseveres. But now for this morning, let's look at verses 5 to 10 and let's go to category two...not your present condition but your past conversion. He goes back to note how it was when they originally responded to the gospel, and what evidences grew out of that original response. He looks to the past and he remembers his initial encounter with them and how full of evidence it was of their genuine salvation.
By the way, I just want you to note that we're not looking only at the moment of gospel preaching and the moment of conversion, but at what resulted from that moment and became a pattern in their lives. But it was the moment of their past conversion that initiated it and it was evident from the very start.
Verse 5, the first word is key, "For..." It could be and perhaps should be translated, "Because..." So that verse 4 goes both ways...it is your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope that makes me know you're elect and then I know you're elect because... There's more and in verse 5 he introduces the fourth identifying mark of the elect, "For our gospel...or because our gospel didn't come to you in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake." Now that is a marvelous verse and I want you to catch the meaning of it. It is an essential verse.
He is describing, listen carefully, not the experience of the Thessalonians but the experience of the preachers who preached to them...Paul, Silas and Timothy. He is saying to them, "Our gospel...that is the gospel we preach...didn't come to you in word only but also in power and the Holy Spirit and full conviction." In other words, we were experiencing power and the Spirit and conviction when we preached to you. And that is an evidence that your salvation is real.
You say, "Well, I don't know...I don't understand the connection." The connection is very simple. The preacher, Paul, knows that when God is moving through him powerfully by the Spirit and with great assuredness and great conviction that it is so that God can do a saving work. And so he says from the very outset that, "I know you're real because I experienced such a powerful moving of God in the preaching that I brought to you." This is a thrilling concept, one which we don't see often treated in the New Testament. But what Paul is saying is...Whenever we would experience this moving power of God through our ministry, we would know that God was moving powerfully to accomplish the saving of souls. And that's his testimony. The very experience of the preachers indicated that God was saving some in that city. Our gospel, that means the gospel we preached. He calls it also "our gospel" in 2 Thessalonians 2:14. It was so much a part of the fabric of his life that it had become his own. Of course it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that Jesus died, was buried, rose again the third day...that great saving gospel, but it had become so much his that he could call it "our gospel."
By the way, the term "gospel" was used eight times in the two Thessalonian epistles. It's a major emphasis. So he says, "Our gospel came to you, the good news of salvation and there was some features in the coming, there were some things in our experience that tell us God was really at work in your life."
First of all, it wasn't just talk. It wasn't just talk. Look at verse 5, "Our gospel didn't come to you in word only." It wasn't just talk. Oh it had to come in word, no question about it. We're begotten again by the word, Peter says, 1 Peter 1. And Paul in writing Romans chapter 10 makes it very, very clear that faith comes by hearing the word about Jesus Christ. You can't get saved without the word. But it's not the word only, he says. That is so important. Faith does come by hearing, but there's more than that. It isn't just speech. It isn't just logic. It isn't just rhetoric. It isn't just clever communication. It isn't that people are going to get saved because you're interesting, or because you somehow attract their attention, or because you're clever, or because you can manipulate their mind. Not so. No matter how erudite the talk, no matter how clever the talk, no matter how intimidating the talk, no matter how subtle the talk, no matter how inviting the words, no matter how attractive the style...listen carefully...even if you speak the truth without the power of God, it accomplishes nothing. It has to have the power of God.
Why so? First of all, because in 2 Corinthians 4:3 and 4 the Bible says, "That the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine unto them." Even the light of the glorious gospel doesn't penetrate the darkness just by virtue of word only.
These people are blind. Not only are they blind, but Jesus said in John 3, "Men love...what?...darkness." They love their blindness. It's a comfortable blindness. They hold their sin tightly to their breast. And so you have blind men in dark who love the darkness. Word only, even the truth, can't penetrate that.
And then if you look at Ephesians chapter 2 you will note that the Apostle Paul says that men without God, without Christ are dead in trespasses and sins. And they are dead in trespasses and sins and not only enjoy their deadness but they don't desire life. Jesus said, "You will not come to Me that you might have life." So you have blind men who love their blindness, dead men who love their deadness. Word only can't penetrate it.
The light of the glorious gospel cannot shine unto them. They will not come that they might have life. The gospel must come in more than just talk. It isn't a result of cleverness, not at all. Paul told them later on, verse 5 of chapter 2, "We never came with flattering speech, we never came trying to elevate you and make you feel better about yourself. We never came with some ploy." He said to the Corinthians, "We didn't come in the wisdom of men," either. So it isn't just talk. Words alone can't work God's eternal purposes, it can't be done. Talk won't do it, even talking about the truth.
First Corinthians 4:20, did you hear this verse? "The Kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power." So the second thing he says is, "It didn't come in word only, but also in power." Yes in word, but in word and power. The divine power was woven into the fabric of the preacher's words so that those words came forth with energy, dynamic. He's not talking about the hearer now, he's talking about the experience of the preacher. Paul is saying, "When I preached to you it wasn't just words, it was powerful and I sensed that power." He's experiencing the inward power that the preacher sometimes experiences. And it makes him aware that God is moving through his preaching.
I'll tell you, that's an exhilarating experience, one for which I thank the Lord. When you preach and when God is using you in special ways to accomplish His purpose, there is within you, and I know this from my own personal experience, an indescribable and explicable sense of the moving of the Spirit of power in your life. There are times when I preach and I know that God is working because I am experiencing the movement, the powerful movement of God in my own heart and mind.
Where does the power come from? Back to verse 5, "Not just talk but power and in the Holy Spirit." You can't separate the person of the Spirit from the power. The power is not some mystical ethereal foggy sort of non-descript spiritual substance. The power IS the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:8, "You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you, then you will have the opportunity to be a witness for me." When we talk about preaching with power, we're not talking about some foggy, mystical commodity, we're talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit energizing the preacher. The two are inseparable.
So, Paul says, "When we came to you it was powerful. I was feeling the power." Again he's not talking yet about their experience of the power, he's talking about his own. He's saying we were experiencing Holy Spirit power.
You say, "Well, how do you experience that?" Well, very hard to describe. A number of things...you feel unusual energy in your heart, you feel an unusual clarity in your mind, you feel an unusual facility with the words, and there's a sense in which the Spirit of God is pulling all of the factors, all of the dynamics of communication together and something is happening which transcends you. They knew they were preaching with supernatural force. And they knew that if they were being used by God to preach with supernatural force, it was because God was going to do something with that power. They must have had confidence about Isaiah 55:11, "My Word never goes forth and returns to me...what?...void. It always accomplishes the purpose to which I send it."
Then the fourth thing they say, not only was it not just talk, but power and the Holy Spirit, but it was with full conviction. He says, "We were so assured in what we said. We were so confident in what we said as to the truthfulness and the clarity of our message." It was straightforward. It was confident. It was bold. Paul and his fellow preachers were powerful, Holy Spirit-filled men who spoke with conviction and boldness and confidence and assurance. They lacked subtlety, folks, they weren't sneaking around the corners trying to sugar-coat the gospel to get people to believe it. They weren't working on some strategy by which they could get the non-elect saved if they could make the gospel palatable enough. They were powerful, Holy Spirit-driven, confident, assured, bold men and they knew that in that experience God was working and that He was working through them to effect something in those to whom the powerful message come. They knew it wouldn't come back void.
So, let's add a fourth to our little list of marks. A faith that works, a love that labors, a hope that perseveres, a fourth way you can identify the elect is a preaching that is powerful...a preaching that is powerful. One of the good indicators of true salvation is having sat under powerful preaching.
Now let me say it another way and I want you to listen to this. There are a lot of people who claim to be Christians but they have sat under a kind of articulation of Christianity that lacks power, that lacks decisiveness, that lacks assuredness, that lacks directness. And maybe they have heard some weak, impotent, fleshly preacher spinning off clever quasi-Christian psychology and because it is couched in Christian terms, they may think they're Christians. But when someone has sat under the powerful Holy Spirit-anointed, convicting preaching of the true gospel, and they really understand it and it has come to them in the energy of the Spirit of God, that's a good indication they're dealing with reality.
So, Paul is saying the very experience of these preachers at the time of their conversion was convincing them that God was doing the saving work in the Thessalonians to whom they were preaching. And the Thessalonians knew it, too, as they experienced it. Look at chapter 2 verse 15, "For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the Word of God's message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God which also performs its work in you who believe." You heard it not as just talk, but the powerful Word of God working in you. So they were right, it really was powerful.
I believe one of the marks of the elect that identifies them outwardly is that they have responded to a true and proper powerful Holy Spirit-driven proclamation of the gospel. A lot of people talk about being Christians but aren't even clear on what the gospel is...to say nothing of having sat under strong conviction in the proclamation of that gospel.
Then Paul adds, verse 5, "Just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake." He's saying the quality of our preaching was affirmed by the quality of our lives. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake, it was for your sake we came to you, it was for your sake we preached, it was for your sake we lived the life. And you know what kind of life we lived, so you have the affirmation of our life to go along with our message.
So, Paul is saying, "Look, there was the quality of our life and the quality of our preaching." By the way, their life among the Thessalonians was remarkable. Paul was humble, selfless, gentle, caring, compassionate, worked with his own hands so he wouldn't have to take any money from them, treated them like a nursing mother. So he says, "Look, you know our life, you know our message, a powerful life, a powerful message. You've responded then, we know, to a powerful gospel. You've seen it lived out, you've heard it preached. That powerful gospel which we experienced indicates to us that God was working in you." So Paul says I know you're elect. I know you're elect because you responded to a true and powerful preaching from true and powerful preachers.
So, we can add another word, true saving faith is not only manifest in production, affection and continuation, but in presentation. The people who are genuinely saved have sat under a genuinely powerful Holy Spirit-directed presentation. Sometimes the Holy Spirit can do that individually through your reading of the Bible. But there will be a movement of the powerful Word of God in your life. I believe with all my heart, beloved, that that is something the church cannot yield up. We cannot substitute cleverness for power and what we need today in the ministry is men of God who are filled with the Holy Spirit and are thus filled with power who preach with boldness the Word of the living God which never returns void. There is no substitute for any of that.
Now in verses 6 to 10 he moves on from his own experience to the experience of these people who have responded. And the next identifying mark of the elect he gives in verse 6, let's call it "life that is new." Not only a faith that works, a love that labors, a hope that perseveres and a preaching that is powerful, but number five in our little list, "Life that is new." He says I know you're elect because you're different. Verse 6, "You also became imitators of us and of the Lord." Stop at that point.
Boy, if that doesn't say it, I don't know what would. How do I know you're a Christian and it's real? Because you became an imitator of us and of the Lord. You also, along with all the other true believers, you also became mimeti, that's the Greek word, mimeti from which we get mimics, little copies. You became little copies. And by the way, it didn't take very long, it's a transforming work. It isn't that they eventually sort of processed along until after years and years they finally were, you know, copying Christ and copying the Apostles. No. It happened right away. Paul was there a few weeks. He was gone a few months. He wrote back, got the word it had already happened. In the moment of salvation comes newness in a life that was new. And the way it showed up was instead of being copies of the ungodly, they were copies of the godly. Instead of having identifying characteristics of their father the devil, they had identifying characteristics of the Lord...which indicated they were His children. They were little mimics.
Over in verse 14 of chapter 2 it says it again. "Brethren, you became mimics of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea." Sure, you were copies. There's the evidence. New life, a little church, baby church, brand new, a few months old, didn't even have resident leadership, existing in that pagan city of several hundred thousand people, right on the Egnatian Highway, right on the tip of the Aegean Sea, a trade center with all the riffraff that comes and goes in that environment, we described it in detail, and here they were all on their own under the power of the Spirit of God becoming imitators of us and of the Lord. That's the mark of true salvation. And God can effect that even if there isn't anybody around to help. Little copies of Christ and His followers.
They had come in contact with the model Christ through His copies, us. And he says you've become copiers of us and of the Lord. There's the evidence of regeneration. There's the evidence of new birth. There's the evidence of newness of life. Paul says in Romans 6 that when you believe in Jesus Christ you're buried with Him by baptism into His death and you rise to walk in newness of life, Romans 6:4 and following. And that's exactly what had happened. The old died and they were brand new. They were crucified with Christ, nevertheless they live, yet they didn't live alone, but Christ lived in them. And His life was manifest through them and they were like copies of Christ." That's what "Christians" means, little Christs. It's a diminutive for Christ...little copies of Christ. Their life style was different from the sorted idolatrous paganism of their past, from the legalistic self-righteousness of the Jews in their past, they had become Christians, they had become little Christs.
He says I know you're elect, I can see the newness of life. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation...2 Corinthians 5:17 says...old things pass away, behold new things come." Galatians 6:15, "Neither circumcision is anything, nor non-circumcision but a new creation."
So, true faith is evident not only in production, affection, continuation, presentation but in transformation. Dr. Robert Thomas who teaches in our seminary has written an outstanding commentary on 1 Thessalonians and in it he says this, "The notion of imitating God and Christ applies especially to three things...holiness, love and suffering." Those are the three ways in which we are like Christ.
First Peter 1 makes it very, very clear, verse 15, "Like the holy One who called you, be holy yourself." So if we're like Christ, we're pursuing holiness instead of unholiness.
Secondly he says is love. Jesus said, "If you are characterized by love, all men will know you are My disciples." Paul says, "He shed His love abroad in our hearts." John says, "If we're true Christians, we manifest the love of God."
The third thing Dr. Thomas said was that if you're to be a little copy of Jesus Christ, it involves holiness and love and suffering...suffering.&nbs