Our Glory and Joy

Let’s take our Bibles and turn to 1 Thessalonians 2:17:

“But, brothers, when we were torn away from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan stopped us. For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.”

Father, we pray that this brief section from this letter may instruct our minds and fill our hearts and change our lives. Only you can do this. And so together we look to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Paul and Silas and Timothy had enemies. We’ve noted that. The enemies had clearly been suggesting certain things about the actions of this trio in Thessalonica, and not only about their actions but also clearly about their absence. And it would appear that they were suggesting that not only had Paul and Silas and Timothy been doing things which they shouldn’t have been doing, which Paul has responded to in the opening verses of the chapter, but also suggesting that the fact that Paul and Silas and Timothy were no longer present in Thessalonica was also because of malevolence. Their insinuations would appear to be that the Thessalonian believers had been abandoned and that their spiritual parents—namely, these folks, especially Paul—had been too frightened to come back and see them. And the insinuations deep into the lives of these people were such that Paul felt it important to address this as he writes to these Thessalonian believers.

And in verse 17 through here—actually, for a fair section into chapter 3—he rebuts his critics. And in doing so, particularly in these four verses tonight, he provides us with a wonderful illustration of genuine affection. These are some of the most heartwarming few verses that you can find in all of Holy Scripture in terms of a pastor’s care for those who are his spiritual children. And it is clear that Paul was not only committed to the Word of God, but he was equally committed to the people of God. And the pattern of his pastoral care clearly, in his mind, is the best of parental care. And that is why he has been using these pictures of children and of being a mother and a father to them.

Says John Stott, “He felt and acted towards them as if they were his own children, which indeed they were, since he had introduced them to Christ.”[1] Chrysostom, whom we mentioned last time, about 400 AD, commenting on Paul’s affection for the Thessalonians as he reads this section of the New Testament—Chrysostom, in somewhat prosaic and yet moving language, says, “Of what fiery warmth is this! Never could either mother, or father, yea if they even met together, and commingled their love, have shown their own affection to be equivalent to that of Paul.”[2]

Allow your eyes to scan again these few verses that we have read in this wonderful illustration of genuine affection. And then note with me the source, the force, and the course of this affection.

The Source

First of all, the source. Wherein lies the foundation for this kind of relationship?

Well, the key to it is in one word, and the word there is “brothers.” He might equally well have said “brothers and sisters.” It’s his kind of generic statement concerning the nature of the relationship with one another. And it teaches us concerning the nature of genuine Christian faith.

If you turn into his second letter and his second chapter and the thirteenth verse, you will find that he uses this same word with an appending phrase to it: “But we ought always to thank God for you,” he says, “brothers loved by [God].”[3] They are the loved ones. They are loved by God. Why? Well, “because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then”—and here comes the term of affection—“brothers,” or “brothers and sisters,” “stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.”[4]

What is the source of affection that exists between Paul as he writes to this group and the group with he and Silas and Timothy and, indeed, the group with each other? It is grounded in these great truths of the gospel: that these individuals had been chosen by God, that they had been called to faith through the preaching of the gospel, which Paul had been privileged to do, and the love of God for them extended back into eternity and forward into eternity.

When he writes to the Roman Christians in that great triumphant chapter, chapter 8, he says of them in verse 28,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; [and] those he called, he also justified; [and] those he justified, he also glorified.[5]

In the Ephesian letter, he says, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and [his] will.”[6]

Now, we take time on this simple little word to note the source of this affection so that we might recognize that genuine affection within the body of Christ is not something superficial. It is not a shared interest in a certain kind of worship. It is not an interest in religious affairs that attaches us. It is not a matter of a concern for the social well-being of our society. No, affection within the body of Christ is not superficial; it is substantial, because it unites those who were once faced with the dreadful predicament of their lostness. As we saw this morning, from Ephesians 2, we were outside of Christ, by nature lost and dead and unable to remedy our circumstances. We were “without [God] and without [hope] in the world. But now in Christ Jesus [we] who [were once] far away have been brought near through the blood of [the Lord Jesus] Christ.”[7]

Now, this means a lot of things, but it definitely means this: there is no place for pride and one-upmanship in the affection in the body of Christ, for the ground is flat at the foot of the cross. All the issues that disunite people in various clubs and societies are to have no basis in the family of God. I’m not saying they have no basis; I’m saying they are to have no basis. The issues of intellect or absence of the same, the issues of substance and financial provision or its absence, the matters of race and prior affections and concerns are all neutralized when the family of God begins to understand the wonder of the hymn that we have just sung, recognizing that all of us shared the same predicament and all of us have been redeemed by the same precious blood.

We’re all adopted children tonight. We all look around on one another in the passing of this cup and in the taking of this bread, and there are none of us here by certain special circumstances, none of us here with a special avenue of access that another has not enjoyed nor come by. We have all come by the same route. We have all come to the same place. We are, in genuine terms, brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.

There is no place for pride and one-upmanship in the affection in the body of Christ, for the ground is flat at the foot of the cross.

This came home to me this week. In the course of the events of the week, at one point I was with a friend, and in the routine of fiddling with some things, an objective bystander, observing our interaction with one another, looked down on us both and said, “And I take it that the two of you are brothers?” And we were about to explain no, and then we just said, “Yes, in a very real manner of speaking, that is true.” And you know, it warmed my heart. Because that was true, and that is true. This is the basis of genuine affection. Adopted, justified, redeemed, “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, who like thee his praise should sing?”[8]

And tonight, when we gather around this Table, let us be done with a stony heart. Let us be done with a proud and arrogant spirit. Let us better leave the elements alone and repent of our sin than eat and drink judgment to ourselves. “Naught have I gotten,” says the hymn writer,

         but what I received;
Grace hath bestowed it [when] I [had] believed;
Boasting excluded, [and] pride I abase;
I’m only a sinner, saved by grace![9]

Oh, there’s a lot in that wee word “brothers.” An illustration of genuine affection. Its source.

The Force

What then of its force? “Brothers, when we were torn away from you for a short time…” The people were suggesting that they ran away or they were staying away. “No,” says Paul, “we would never be away from you. Indeed, we are away from you physically as a result of being wrenched away from you, but we’ve never been away from you in thought. You’re never out of our minds. We’re always thinking of you, day in and day out. There’s never a day passes that I do not think of you,” he says. You understand that, those of you who are separated by a long distance from your loved ones. Don’t you know that? There is never a day in eleven and a half years that I have not brought to recollection my father, my sisters, and my loved ones. There has never been a day passed.

And if that is true of natural physical affection as we can understand it, then this is the great wonder of redemption. This is the great wonder of what it means to be placed in the family of God. He said, “For us to be away from you, we would have to be torn away from you. We left with great reluctance.” The word which is used here is sort of one of these stuck-together Greek words, aporphanizomai. And in the middle of that you get orphan. Aporphanizomai. That’s where we get our word orphan from. It speaks not only of those who have been deprived of their parents, but in Greek parlance, it spoke of parents who had been deprived of their children. And Paul says, “This is how I feel. I feel as though I’ve been deprived of my children. The way in which we were torn apart was forcible, and it was painful. It has involved physical separation.”

Says Phillips, “Since we have been physically separated from you, my brothers (though never for a moment separated in [our] heart[s])…”[10]

You know, it takes being a parent to understand this, doesn’t it? Children can never understand this. I never understood this. I’m not sure I fully understand it now. I think there are things that yet await me that will make it clearer than I understand it in physical terms today. But I get a glimpse of it.

If I may share with you a personal illustration of this: Never did this come home clearer to me, in terms of the nature of parental affection for children, than on the day that Susan and I left the United States after our wedding and honeymoon and got on a ship in the docks in New York to sail for London. And we were accompanied there by her parents. And it was, as many of you have known in those times of impending departure, very awkward, and the small talk was painful. And we were, of course, leading up to that inevitable moment when we would have to turn and hug them and say goodbye and walk up the gangplank and be gone. It didn’t help her father that we were flying on a Russian ship and that when we arrived at New York, the hammer and sickle were flying from the flagstaff. For a true-blue American, that was a little hard to take. Not that I found it easy, but it was cheap, you know. And I wanted Sue to start off correctly.

And so we went on a Russian ship. And we were full. We understood it was painful to part. We thought we understood what it was like. We wept. We left. We went out past the Statue of Liberty, and out into the Atlantic Ocean and gone. A few hours and we were over it, and now the New World and the new life, or the Old World and the new life.

About a year and a half later, when we came back to the States for our first visit, we sat down and watched the movies that my father-in-law had shot of that day of departure. And as we sat and watched these films, there came a point in the movie where it just went to pot—where it was all jumbled and went all over the place, and the camera moved. And I was about to say, “What in the world were you doing there?” And mercifully, I stopped myself, because I realized: he’d had the camera on his shoulder, and as he began to weep at the parting, he could no longer keep it in focus.

That is exactly just a microcosm of what Paul is saying here. I’ve listened again and again to parents tell me about their first child going to college. It makes me weep even thinking about them telling me about it. It makes me cry when they tell me about it. And it could crucify me thinking about it in relationship to my own children.

“Well,” says Paul, “our affection is way deeper than that”—missing them dreadfully, profoundly anxious on their account, longing to know that they’re going on. Look at his language: “Out of our intense longing,” he says—an intense longing—“we made every effort to see you.” Verse 18: “We wanted to come to you.” “I certainly did,” he says. “Again and again I wanted to come to you.” “When will I see you again?” he must have been singing. “When will our hearts beat together?”[11]

Now, the reason for their absence, we’re told, is the activity of the Evil One: “Satan stopped us”—18. He was about the business of putting obstacles in their path. Just what this involves we don’t know. You read the commentaries, and they have four or five suggestions for you. Where they got them from is interesting but certainly not from 1 Thessalonians 2. Again, I found John Stott to be so helpful when he said, “Since we lack this information, it is better for us to confess our ignorance than to express an unwarranted confidence.”[12] The details we’ll get in heaven, but for now, we realize that Satan was involved in this.

“Well,” says somebody, “does that suggest for a moment that Satan somehow or another was stronger than God?” No. God still retains supreme authority. In even the activities of the Evil One, as the book of Job makes clear, God remains supreme in all of his overruling. He overrules all evil for good. And even in the prevention, which was a real prevention here, God’s hidden plan was never once thwarted.

The Course

This display of genuine affection has its source in the grace of God, has a force that just pulsates from these verses and runs a course which looks forward into heaven. Look at verse 19: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of [the] Lord Jesus when he comes? Is[n’t] it you? Indeed, you are our glory and our joy.” He anticipates the return of Jesus Christ. And anticipating the course of events, he affirms the fact that when he thinks of these dear ones who have been brought to Christ under the ministry that God has given him, that they represent his hope, insofar as he anticipates the Spirit of God bringing them to maturity. They are his joy, as he is able to observe the evident genuineness of their faith; and they are the basis of his exaltation, symbolized here in this crown, as he anticipates, on the day of the Lord, pointing to such converts as these and being able to reveal them as the fruit of his service.

In even the activities of the Evil One, as the book of Job makes clear, God remains supreme in all of his overruling. He overrules all evil for good.

This is, interestingly, not any kind of random phrase on Paul’s part. He mentioned this idea in his letters with frequency. In Philippians 2, he speaks of the Philippians, and he says, “as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run [in vain].”[13] “When I stand before the Lord,” he says, “and I review my life and the ministry that God has given me, your presence will reveal the fact that I did not labor in vain.” Philippians 4:1: “my brothers, … whom I … long for,” he says, “my joy and [my] crown.” First Corinthians 9, he says to them, “You are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.”[14]

“Ah, but,” says somebody, “I thought I read in Galatians that Paul had said that he would never boast save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.”[15] And that’s exactly right. “Well then, if he would never boast in anything other than the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, does it not seem that he’s skirting a little with things by suggesting that these dear ones who have come to faith under his ministry are something of a basis at least for his encouragement?”

Well, think it out. What he’s declaring is simply this: that his joy in this world and his glory in the next world is tied up with the salvation of the Thessalonians, whom Christ, through Paul’s ministry, has signally performed. As an athlete anticipates a crown for victory, Paul looks forward to seeing them in eternity. And he says, “After Jesus himself, you, my dear ones, are the only prize worth having.”

You see, that is why we labored hard in 1 Corinthians 9 to notice this little driving phrase in Paul’s life: “Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.”[16] Tomorrow morning, loved ones, as you go back into the routine of your life, here is your objective: as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, to see unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ, so that on the day of his return, you may be able to look across and see those who are your glory and your joy.

Some of you as mothers, harried by all the affairs of life and busied by the routine of all of those baskets of laundry and various other things, I’m sure sometimes feel the pressure that comes from all kinds of sources in a word like this. But I do say to you again: if you’re able to look across at your children in heaven and see them there around the throne, then, should there be no others, let them be your glory and your joy.

Do you sense this supernatural affection in these verses?

Chrysostom, again, in a great, overflowing statement of affection for those who were in his care—the kind of affection that I hope to learn to have if I grow to be gray and older—he says, “There is nothing I love more than you,” writing to his church,

not even light itself. I would gladly have my eyes put out ten thousand times over, if it were possible by this means to convert your souls; so much is your salvation dearer to me than light itself. … This one thing is the burden of my prayers, that I long for your advancement. But that in which I strive with all is this, that I love you, that I am wrapped up in you, that you are my all, father, mother, brethren, children.[17]

Anne Ross Cousin, hearing of the statements of the godly Samuel Rutherford as he lay close to the end of his life and in prison in the town of Aberdeen, took some of those statements which came from his prison cell. And as he nears the end of his life, she pictures him thinking of the congregation which he will now no longer ever serve again, for the events of his life have torn him away from them. And as he stands, as it were, prior to death and on the very verge of heaven, she pictures him looking back to this little congregation on the Solway Firth, and here comes this great display of affection. I’ve quoted it to you before, but it’s so wonderful, it’s worthy of repetition. And she gives him the words “Fair Anwoth”—that’s the location on the Solway—

To me thou still art dear,
E’en from the verge of heaven,
I drop for thee a tear.
[And] if one soul from Anwoth
Meet[s] me at God’s right hand,
My heav’n will be two heavens,
In Immanuel’s land.[18]

What is the source of this genuine affection? It is found in the very blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is the force of such affection? It is the power of the Holy Spirit, quickening and renewing and changing. What is the course of this affection? It is a course that began in eternity, walks through time, and looks forward to the day when we will be gathered around God’s throne.

Not all of us will have the privilege of seeing many come to Christ, but all of us may ask of God the opportunity to reproduce ourselves just once. And if to that end you are prepared to commit yourself in daily prayer, then we can with justification anticipate that those whom we welcome with regularity around this Table will not be those who have relocated but those who have been brought to living faith in Jesus Christ through your witness and through mine. And so, if one soul from Cleveland should meet me at God’s right hand, then our heaven will be two heavens, in Immanuel’s land.

Let us bow together in prayer:

Father, prepare our hearts as we listen to these wonderful truths being sung and as we gather now around your Table—the great reminder of the source and force and course of this kind of affection. Stir our hearts for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

[1] John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 and 2 Thessalonians: The Gospel and the End of Time, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 69.

[2] John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians (Eerdmans, 1976), 334, quoted in Stott, 69.

[3] 2 Thessalonians 2:13 (NIV 1984).

[4] 2 Thessalonians 2:13–15 (NIV 1984).

[5] Romans 8:28–30 (NIV 1984).

[6] Ephesians 1:4–5 (NIV 1984).

[7] Ephesians 2:12–13 (NIV 1984).

[8] Henry Francis Lyte, “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” (1834).

[9] James M. Gray, “Only a Sinner” (1905).

[10] 1 Thessalonians 2:17 (Phillips).

[11] Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, “When Will I See You Again?” (1973).

[12] Stott, Message, 63.

[13] Philippians 2:16 (NIV 1984).

[14] 1 Corinthians 9:2 (NIV 1984).

[15] See Galatians 6:14.

[16] 1 Corinthians 9:19 (NIV 1984).

[17] John Chrysostom, Homilies, 334, quoted in Stott, Message, 70.

[18] Ann Ross Cousins, “The Sands of Time Are Sinking” (1857).