Received as what it actually is

Paul is thanking God for a young church, and the thing he thanks Him for is a decision they made about a category.

Read that slowly, because it turns on a single distinction.

They heard it from a man. Paul does not pretend otherwise — it was the word of God which you heard from us. A traveling tentmaker preached in their town, and what reached their ears reached them through a human voice with an accent.

And they did not receive it as a human word.

They received it as what it actually is — the word of God.

That is the decision every reader of this volume has to make, and it cannot be postponed by more study.

The same sentences are available to be taken either way. A man can read Psalm 19 as ancient Hebrew poetry of a high order, and it is. He can read Luke’s preface as a careful first-century historical document, and it is. He can read Paul’s letters as occasional correspondence to real congregations, and they are.

Or he can receive them as what they actually are.

Which is at work in you who believe. The verb is the one from yesterday — energeo, the working word. Received as God’s word, it operates. Received as a man’s word, it is admired, discussed, filed.

Which is the whole account of eight weeks.

A king tore his robe. A nation stood six hours in a square. Christ answered a wilderness out of Deuteronomy. An official read aloud in a chariot. Two men walked seven miles with their hearts burning. Peter preached from a scroll on the morning the church was born. A tentmaking couple corrected a scholar in their living room. An old man in Babylon read a number and went to his knees.

Not one of those people was reacting to literature.

The Book has been fire, hammer, honey, lamp, sword, seed, milk, mirror, goad and nail. It has run seed, lamb, blood, tree, bread, water, Name and dwelling from Genesis to Revelation without dropping a stitch. It has told you, in the writers’ own words, what they thought they were doing.

And it is still only asking for one thing from the man holding it.

And note that Paul thanks God for their reception rather than congratulating them on it. He does not treat their judgment as a compliment to his preaching or as evidence of their good sense. The right reception of the word is itself something God does, which is why the thanks goes upward.

Receive it as what it actually is. It is at work in those who believe.

Paul uses two different verbs for receiving in the one sentence. The first, paralambano, is the technical term for receiving a tradition handed on — the same word he uses in 1 Corinthians 15:3 for the gospel he received and passed on. The second, dechomai, means to welcome or accept willingly. They took delivery of it, and then they welcomed it.

The verb rendered is at work is energeo, and Paul uses it elsewhere of God working in believers to will and to act. Applying it to the word makes the word the subject of an active verb, which is the habit of speech studied in Week Five.

The very next verse says they became imitators of the churches in Judea because they suffered the same things from their own countrymen. The working of the word in them is evidenced not by enthusiasm but by their holding up under local hostility — which is what Paul is actually thanking God for.

1 Thessalonians is generally reckoned among the earliest of Paul’s surviving letters, written within about twenty years of the crucifixion. The claim that his preached message was the word of God is therefore not a late development in the church’s thinking; it is there at the start, made to people who had heard him with their own ears and could have disputed it.

The Thessalonians had received the message under real pressure — Acts 17 records a mob, a house raided, and Paul sent away by night. Paul’s letter is written to people whose acceptance of the word had already cost them, which is the setting for his claim that it was at work in them.

Look it upG3880 παραλαμβάνω paralambano, to receive what is handed on · G1209 δέχομαι dechomai, to welcome, accept · G1754 ἐνεργέω energeo, to work, be operative · G230 ἀληθῶς alethos, truly, in reality

Where this touches1 Thessalonians 2:13–16 · 1 Corinthians 15:1–3 · Galatians 1:11–12 · 2 Peter 3:15–16 · Hebrews 4:12 (Day Six of this week). The earlier turns were James 1, Ezra 7:10, the two builders, the Bereans, Colossians 3:16, Psalm 119:11 and Acts 20:32.